Skip to content

The Pleo Blog

Looking for pleo.io?

Book a demo
Three stacks of coins

Tools & Tips

Stay in control of expenses with Pleo’s spending limits

Giving your team their own cards to buy the things they need is a great way to make them feel trusted and motivate them to do their best work. But equally, as a manager or admin, it’s important to feel in control of your team’s spending. Whether you’re focused on more accurate forecasting or just keeping your team’s social budget on track, it all comes back to spending limits.

Putting a cap on employee spending can be particularly handy if your business is going through a rocky period, or if an economic downturn is looking likely. The best thing about spending limits is that you can adjust them any time you want — things change, but you’re always in control.

“As an employee, you are empowered with a spending limit that makes your life easier” - G2 review from VP Product

Spending limits to suit everyone

You can set up two types of spending limits on Pleo:

  • Card limit: This can be monthly/total/no limit, and it’s the cap on the amount a user can purchase. It’s a "soft limit" meaning that if the amount of the previous transaction is under this limit, the next transaction will go through, even if it exceeds the limit.
  • Limit per purchase: As the name suggests, this refers to setting a limit on any given single purchase. This means that any transaction(s) over this limit is automatically declined.

For example, you might want to cap your team’s mileage spending at £300 a month. Or maybe you want to give a more junior member of the team a total card limit of £1,000 at any one time, which you can adjust as they grow with the team and want to take on more responsibility.

Learn more about setting up spending limits for your team.

Pro tip: set up a review process for any expenses that need special attention, such as when an employee spends over £500

As an admin, you can set up a threshold which triggers a review process for any expense that is equal to or exceeds that threshold. The flagged expense will be highlighted for the reviewer of that particular team to approve. Every expense breaking the set threshold will appear instantly in the reviewer’s feed in both web and mobile versions of Pleo. Plus, they’ll get an automatic email from Pleo every Wednesday if there are any expenses that need attention, so nothing gets left behind.

How to set up a spending limit

As an admin, setting up spending limits is simple. Just follow these steps:

  1. Click on People
  2. Choose the user you want to add or update limits for
  3. Select the Limits tab at the top of the pop-up on the right hand side of the screen
  4. Here you can set the limits of this user — these will come into effect instantly

Spending limits are totally optional — but if you don’t agree a limit, spenders will draw funds from the central Pleo Wallet.

If you choose not to set up spending limits, you might find your team is unsure about whether to buy something and expense it. Or they might end up paying for something out-of-pocket without the proper guidance, which could create more stress for them and for your finance team. Spending limits can be helpful in guiding your employees as to what’s okay to buy and what’s not.

Smarter spending for your business

Save time on tedious admin and make smarter business decisions for the future. Join Pleo today.

Book a demo

Powered in the UK by B4B partnership

Bar graph showing increase in cash

Sign up to the video series to get more tips and tricks for smarter spending 🎥

Country

Pleo needs the contact information you provide to us to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For information on how to unsubscribe, as well as our privacy practices and commitment to protecting your privacy, check out our Privacy Policy

Don't miss other articles in this series