How to setup Spend Categories?

What are Spend Categories?

The Mesh Spend Categories (SC) engine offers a customizable classification tool that catalogs your expenses and enhances automation. The engine translates straightforward category terminology into complex finance coding schemes, ensuring accuracy and ease of use. Spend Categories streamline end-of-month financial activities, resulting in faster reviews, minimized data entry errors, and significantly boosted productivity.

Note: The Spend Category functionality is particularly relevant for General Purpose cards, or travel cards, where customers set up a spending purpose, and they use the card with various merchants. Mesh offers a Merchant rule feature that can be used with Subscription cards.

 

How to setup Spend Categories?

Follow the steps below to enable and set Spend Categories for your entity:

1. Contact our team at [e-mail] to enable the feature. 

2.  Log into the platform as a power user (i.e., Admin or Pro), navigate to the Company Settings, and scroll down to the Spend Categories section. Once configured properly in the Mesh backend backend, 'Spend Categories' will be enabled. 

Note: As soon as the feature is enabled, a 'Spend Category' column and filter will be added to your Transactions and Accounting pages. Furthermore, a 'Spend Categories' checkbox will be added to Custom Fields under the mapping section

3. Click on the 'Manage Spend Categories' button.

3.1 Mesh pre-seeds several spend categories including those related to travel if this feature is enabled for your entity. 

3.2 You can add or modify the categories. To add click the 'Add Spend Categories' button, check relevant categories, and click on 'Add'. 

4. For each category added, you will need to:

4a. Set a Receipt & Memo policy (i.e., required or not required) and add a Memo Template.

4b. Map each Spend Category to the relevant custom fields with lists coming from the ERP (e.g., Account GL, VAT code, Department, etc.).

Notes:

• You can toggle ON to disable the category. 
• You can click the 'Show disabled spend categories' checkbox to display all categories.
• You can click the View category icon to navigate to the category's dedicated page.
• Mapping should follow your finance department's guidelines.
• You do NOT need to map all the Custom Field values to a Spend Category. Users can also select spend categories and or values for custom fields later when requesting a budget or tagging a transaction. 
• If you cannot see one or more of the Custom Fields created for your entity, you'll need to navigate to Company settings >> Custom Fields and make sure that you check the 'Spend Categories' checkbox under the Mappings section.
• If your company is NOT integrated with an ERP, you can still add Custom Fields and Spend Categories for transactional context.  
• You can add more categories (e.g., parking, fun activities, etc. ) with the same group type (refer to # 6). 

5. The 'Add Spend Categories' button allows you to view the categories already added and to add new ones. You can configure their properties on the main page. 

6. You can add a 'customized' category by clicking the 'Add a single spend category +' button. The newly added spend category must be based on an existing category type. You can specify the name, budgets affected, receipt/memo requirements, and the relevant custom fields.  

Note: Mesh provides a default mapping between Spend Categories and Budget Types (see examples below). 

• On-demand (General Purposes) cards include all spend categories.
• Subscription cards include software & subscription categories, as well as advertising.
• Travel cards include travel spend categories.

7. If needed you can modify the settings by clicking the View category icon.

7.1 You can change the name of the spend category under the 'Details' section.

7.2 You can change the mapping. In the below example, the Spend Category will exclusively apply to transactions made with General Purpose cards/budgets and not with any other cards/budgets (e.g., Subscription, field, travel or expenses). You can check one or all the boxes if relevant.

7.3 You an change the 'Receipt and Memo' policy and the way the SC handles attendees. 

7.4 To reinforce itemization toggle on the 'Require Itemization' option. If such an SC is selected, the user will be forced to itemize the expenses submitted.

Notes: 

• This feature also applies to transactions subject to post approval. 
• If the SC enforces itemization, the user will not be able to proceed with submitting the expense into the relevant workflow if the expense is not itemized. 

7.5  You can change the policy settings if enabled. 

Note: the policy will apply if the SC is NOT connected to a Travel Policy.  

7.6 You can change the 'Additional Information' - i.e., selecting a value for the Custom Field that Mesh will auto populate. 

7.7 You can add 'Conditional Custom fields'. These custom fields will appear on forms (e.g., General Purpose card request for)  or modals if assigned to a SC. 

 

How can you use Spend Categories? 

Although creating the relevant coding scheme early in the process is beneficial, it is possible to alter the selections made at the card/budget and transaction levels in case of errors or changes. The section below discusses where and how to change the SC selection. 

A. You can set the Spend Category at the card level. You may it per card or in bulk. 

a1. For a single card, navigate to Cards & Budgets, click on the Virtual Cards link, and then click on the three dots to edit the card, where you will be able, among other things, to set the Spend Category.

a2. In bulk, navigate to Cards & Budgets, click on the Virtual Cards link, search for your subscription cards or utility cards, mark/check the mentioned cards in the cards table, and use the Bulk edit Spend Categories option located in the upper right corner when the three dots are clicked, to set the spend category.

B. You can set the spend category on a transaction level. Navigate to the Transactions page, click on a transaction, and set the Spend Category. 

Note: The related custom fields will be added immediately, using the stars icon to denote automation.  This expedites reconciliation activities done by power users on the Transactions or  Accounting pages before syncing transactions to the ERP.

C. You can set the spend category on an expense level. 

D. You can relate an expense to a travel policy. Mesh is able to select a relevant spend category for each enabled travel policy but you can alter the offered selection. 

E. Users with an Employe profile can select spend categories when coding a transaction or submitting a reimbursement request.