With over 60% of high-growth companies going hybrid, employees are spending more and more of their own money just to do their job.
From home-office setups with desks, chairs and keyboards, to subscriptions and beyond, it's easier for employees to pay for something on the spot and seek reimbursement rather than wait weeks for a manager to approve a request, make the payment, and eventually get what they need.
Approval processes and a lack of spending autonomy are bottlenecks to growth - with companies spending an estimated 520 hours a year on manual accounting and administrative tasks.
Without the independence to make work-related purchases, employees are limited in their effectiveness to execute and business leaders are drowning in admin.
But most businesses don't have the systems, tools, or time to enable employee spending without worrying about expense policy breaches or tedious receipt capture, so they revert to saying "no" more than they'd like to.
The solution? Cape Spend.
What is Cape Spend?
A key part of our value proposition at Cape is to enable people in organisations to spend without blowing up budgets and breaching expense policies. We're big believers in decentralised power to help businesses go fast.
We do that by allowing you to issue employees with corporate cards, customise the way they can spend, set controls and limits, and track everything from a simple dashboard.
That’s what Cape Spend is.
Whether it's SaaS subscriptions, cloud computing, Google Ads, invoices for stock, client lunches for sales, or any other expenses your team incurs, they can pay using a Cape card and save managers hours in approval processes.
The best part? You won’t need to dive into spreadsheets, hand around the same card to everyone in the office, or worry about going over budget.
How does Cape Spend work?
Once you’re approved as a Cape customer, here’s how you can start using Cape Spend on your account:
Issue cards to your employees AKA ‘Spenders’
Invite team members to join your Cape account to get their hands on a Cape card of their own. Simply click the 'People' link when you log in, select the 'Add Person' button, follow the prompts, and - voila! We'll send them an invite with instructions on joining and ordering a card.
Assign individual spending limits
Once added, your employees will appear on the ‘People’ screen, and you can assign them a monthly spending limit of your choice. Their limit will be a subset of your company's total limit (shown at the top of the screen).
You can increase or decrease your employee spending limits as often as you need via the ‘Edit limit’ button.
Get visibility of employee spending
You’ll also see a ‘People’ filter on your Transactions screen. Use this for real-time reporting of transactions for each employee you add. If you spot something out of the ordinary, take action before it becomes a problem.
FAQs about Cape Spend
What does my employee need to do?
First, we’ll send them an invite to join Cape and set up their login details.
Once they’ve logged in successfully, they just need to look out for the ‘Order Card’ button on their Cape dashboard.
They can choose whether their new card is sent to their home address or the address we hold for your company. They can activate their card as soon as it arrives and retrieve their PIN.
It’s as simple as that. No more reimbursements for company spending on personal cards.
How do I know who has registered?
When you first add an employee to your account, you’ll see a status of ‘Pending’ against their name.
Once the employee accepts our invite and sets up their login details, the status will change to ‘Active’.
How long does an employee have to accept their invite?
For security reasons, the link in the invite email will expire after three days.
Who has access to my company’s transactions?
Cape Spend is only available to account owners. (if you created the account on behalf of your company - that's you!)
Any new employees you add will only have access to their card and transactions and won't see all transactions across the company.
Empower growth with Cape Spend
Slow-moving expense approval processes are archaic and hampering the velocity of many businesses that want to move fast. Unfortunately, it also results in a higher rate of employee dissatisfaction and resentment towards organisations.
Using a solution like Cape Spend to empower your team to spend (within policy, of course) is the simplest way to remove expense-related bottlenecks and create a culture of trust and autonomy.
