Using Pleo – Turing Fest
How Pleo saved Turing Fest an entire day of receipt chasing every month
The challenge
Founded in 2016, Turing Fest has since become Europe’s go-to cross-functional tech conference. Hosted annually in Edinburgh, the conference is a learning party centered around the start-up space. It brings together the biggest minds in tech to share practical insights into the art and science of building and scaling start-ups.
The event is split into three tracks focusing on building, growing and leading. However, everyone is encouraged to branch out of their silos. After all, it takes a village (and a lot of expenses) to build a business.
At the heart of Turing Fest, you’ll find the importance of working in harmony across departments. It’s reflected in both the event and also how the team now handles their business spending, thanks to Pleo. So, when questioning their previous financial processes, Turing Fest’s COO, Tannya Gaxiola and Brian Corcoran, CEO, identified the following challenges:
Lack of spending overview
With every missing receipt comes a blindspot for financial projections. Doing things manually, and relying on credit cards, left Turing Fest’s finance team in the dark when it came to knowing where and what their money was being spent on. And for Tannya, before switching to Pleo, she was chasing 50% of the receipts.
Shared company credit card
Sharing company credit cards around the entire business is not only almost impossible to keep tabs on, but it leaves room for potential fraudulent activity and it’s a nightmare for everyone involved. From finance teams having to chase those pesky missing receipts to your team members having to ask for permission to buy what they need to do their best work.
Teams are left to pay out-of-pocket
Manually dealing with expenses costs both the company and the team. Paying out-of-pocket places the financial burden on employees, and with the administrative process often being tedious and long, people could be waiting weeks or even months to get back what they’re owed.
The solution
A holistic business spending solution that saves admins time and money, all while keeping everyone on the same page.
“Before we started using Pleo, we were using credit cards. It was a constant horror of chasing receipts. It meant overspending and not having good visibility into where our money was going. It’s just so easy with Pleo, that when somebody doesn’t do it now, I almost can’t believe it.”
The results
Building a tech conference isn’t an overnight job. With mountains of moving parts and a never-ending to-do list, the last thing Tannya needed to worry about was expenses and manually tracking every single payment. With Pleo, Tannya is able to rest easy at night knowing everything is accounted for and no one is left out-of-pocket.
All their expenses centralised
Whether you’re buying catering, subscriptions, flight tickets or coffee for the team, it’s easy to lose track of spending, especially around tight production deadlines that Turing Fest have to work with. With Pleo, every expense is tracked in real-time, in one place.
A whole new level of spend visibility
The days of overspending and not knowing exactly where company money is going are over for Turing Fest. Instead of chasing individual paper receipts, Pleo handles it automatically, saving Tannya on average, an entire day a month to focus on the work that really matters.
Real-time control for admins
Everyone at Turing Fest has their very own Pleo card. For peace of mind and complete control, admins can set individual spending limits that’ll keep everyone on the same page. And for that extra layer of security, Pleo cards can be frozen at the tap of a button.
A productivity boost
The Turing Fest team no longer has to worry about finding receipts, and can instead focus on getting their job done. With automatic receipt reminders, categorisation and reconciliation, the administrative burden of expenses has been completely eliminated.
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