What is Pleo?
Who should use Pleo?
Pleo’s main features
- Virtual and physical cards with individual spending limits.
- “Pocket” feature for automated expense management, including invoices, out-of-pocket expenses, mileage, and reimbursements.
- Dashboard for invoice management, facilitating the accounts payable process, and scheduling payments.
- Analytics dashboard for reporting and a real-time overview of company expenses.
- Integrations with accounting solutions, ERP systems, travel management platforms, bookkeeping software, taxi and transportation services, and single sign-on (SSO) solutions.
- Pleo mobile apps for iOS and Android that enable employees to take pictures of receipts on the go and receive instant notifications as they spend.
Pleo’s pricing model
- Starter: Free for up to three users. Best for entrepreneurs and small companies.
- Essential: £39/month. Aimed at businesses that need an all-in-one spending solution.
- Advanced: £79/month. Best for companies with more entities and/or those that need custom configuration.
Pleo integrations
Accounting systems
ERP systems
Business productivity solutions
Travel management platforms
Countries and languages supported by Pleo
A step-by-step guide to Pleo’s platform (with screenshots)
Probably the first thing you’ll want to do is to order virtual or physical (or both) cards for your employees and set up their own spending limits.
And, of course, you can also manage your personal card:
In the Expenses section, as an admin, you can see the company’s available wallet balance and recent expenses.You can also manually add an expense here by adding a receipt.
Admins can study the expenses of their employees in detail and also assign categories to expenses — for example, Subscriptions and Software (for SaaS products that you use), or Hardware (in case someone purchased a laptop, for example), or Internet & Telephone (in case your company is covering someone’s Internet bill).The Analytics section (available only to paying Pleo customers) provides reporting on your company’s expenses which you can organize in any way you want. For example, you can learn how much money your company spends on marketing, or what kind of expenses a certain employee reports. You can build all sorts of different reports here, and on the screenshot you just see an example of one:
In Invoices, you can find and sort invoices that require payment or are scheduled or have already been paid. And you can approve or reject invoices that are pending approval. There are many sorting options for invoices — for example, you can sort them by status.
You can also manage your company’s Subscriptions in a section conveniently separated in the main menu to provide you insights into what recurring payments might be happening on your accounts.Then, there is Wallet. Admins can see transaction history and top their wallets up.
You can also find transactions by time period and download the balance statement:
You can top the wallet up via bank transfer or direct debit. And you can set up an automated top-up if you want it to happen regularly but don’t want to do it manually.
You can choose to top up from any top bank available in your country. In the UK, for example, Pleo allows top-up from 50+ banks.There is also a Pocket feature that allows you to keep track of out-of-pocket expenses, mileage, or expenses paid for using withdrawn company cash. Employees may add expenses manually using Pleo’s desktop and mobile apps.
As an admin, you can manage the employee directory, add or remove users, and set up individual card spending limits. You can add people manually or in bulk by uploading a file. You can also give access to Pleo to an external bookkeeper.
In Export, you can set up the export of receipts into your accounting system.
Speaking of accounting systems, Pleo integrates with 30 of those:
You can connect Pleo with such accounting software as Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Billy, Datev, Dinero, Fortnox, Inventio and many others. It is nice that Pleo is integrated with some local accounting tools that people use in certain countries.The accounting system can be set up in Settings:
In Settings, you can have many more Pleo functions hidden but most importantly, you can manage your account’s billing, invite employees and manage the company’s info.In the Review section of Settings, admins and bookkeepers can approve card and Pocket expenses company-wide. As written on Pleo’s platform, Company Review can be enabled alongside Team Review for a multi-step review process. By enabling both Company Review and Team Review, all expenses and Pocket reimbursements will require two sets of approvals.In Settings, you can also set up Benefit allowances, and make them custom for each team member.And you have a separate section for Mileage where you can set up mileage rates, download claims and see the mileage expenses.
Settings also offer Power-ups where you can enable integrations with tools (besides ERPs) that Pleo is integrated with.
TravelPerk is proud to be one of them. Together with Pleo, TravelPerk makes up an end-to-end business travel expense management solution.TravelPerk is a best-in-class business travel management platform that helps customers easily book and manage corporate travel. The solution integrates with other tools including many popular expense management solutions, including Pleo.How it works:
- A user makes a business trip booking on TravelPerk using a Pleo card.
- Pleo fetches an invoice and adds it to the expense in Pleo.
- They receive the transaction data directly from the card issuer and assign a category to the spend.
- The travel expenses can be streamlined into your accounting system.
Review of Pleo's mobile apps
Employees can make a photo of the receipt and assign the category of the expense to it right in the app.And they can even associate the expense with a certain client of theirs which helps accountants and finance managers as well as managers of your employees to keep an eye on overall spend and ROI.
Pros and cons of the Pleo platform
Pros of the Pleo platform
- Pleo offers a three-week free trial of the platform’s Essential plan to help users ascertain whether it meets their expense management needs.
- Users benefit from Pleo’s automatic spending categorizations that facilitate a streamlined expense process.
- Pleo supports digital wallets like Google and Apple Pay, facilitating one-click merchant payments.
- Pleo’s simplified interface provides excellent ease of use, however, if you have any questions, you can contact the Pleo team.
Cons of the Pleo platform
- The platform does not currently support businesses outside Europe.
- Pleo may charge foreign transaction fees.
- Pleo prepaid cards have to be topped up which means less flexibility than a credit card when it comes to managing daily cash flow.
- Onboarding is only offered with the more expensive plans.
How to get started with Pleo
- To get started with Pleo, you’ll first need to sign up via the website with your work email address. Pleo also accepts login through Gmail-based (G-suite) business accounts.
- You’ll then receive a link via email that asks you to set up your login credentials and select your company from a list that's synced with your country's company registry.
- As the person setting up the account, Pleo will also ask you to enter some personal verification details (date of birth, proof of address, photo ID, etc).
- Once your company’s Pleo account is officially verified, you can get started with topping up your wallet, inviting colleagues, and ordering Pleo company cards.
Video overview of Pleo
Alternatives to Pleo
- Yokoy
- Payhawk
- Rydoo
- Circula
- Soldo