Welcome to Payhawk!
We are super excited to have you on board and hope to make your life easier with our platform!
The Payhawk Customer Success Team is available to guide you through the entire process and you can also find them in the live chat every Monday-Friday from 08:00-18:00 CET for proactive support.
If you need to check some of the most common questions, search through the resources on the Payhawk help center.
Audience
This guide is for company employees who have Payhawk accountant rights for managing and exporting all company expenses, reviewing corporate card operations, and monitoring suppliers.
Before you start
To be able to follow the steps in this guide, you need to first:
For more information, see the articles about configuring your personal Payhawk profile settings.
Summary
This quick start will lead you through the basic steps for using the system as a Payhawk accountant and will help you get up and running with the Payhawk web portal and mobile app where needed.
Let's get started with your Payhawk experience!
Step 1 - Manage your company expenses
You can quickly manage, monitor, and pay all your company expenses from the Expenses app in Payhawk. Just log in to your account on the Payhawk web portal and go to Dashboard > Expenses.
Overview of expenses for Payhawk accountants
Expenses in Payhawk can be any of the following types depending on the source of funding:
Bill payment is a due or paid expense from your company's Payhawk account or an external bank account.
Company cash is an expense that has been paid with company cash.
Reimbursement is an expense that has been paid with personal (employee's) funds. Reimbursable expenses also include per diems and mileage.
Card expenses are automatically created whenever an employee pays with their corporate card.
For more information, see the articles about expenses for Payhawk accountants and authorized and settled card payments.
Managing your company expenses can include the following actions:
Save and manage filtered views
If you frequently search for and filter by a particular kind of expense - for example, category, employee, or total amount - then, saving that filtered view will save you some time.
You can easily save and manage views of your filtered expenses in Payhawk.
Filter the desired expenses by the required criteria.
Select a relevant name for your view.
Manage your saved filtered views by clicking on the current view and, then, selecting the Manage views option.
The dialog that opens displays the list with all your saved filtered views. Update or delete the desired ones and, then, save your changes.
For more information:
Pay company expenses
You can pay company expenses directly from Payhawk in less than 30 seconds.
In this way, your organization acquires a holistic view of its payments as it combines card, cash, and bank payments in a single process.
Go to Expenses and click on the + (plus) button to create an expense.
Select Bill and upload the invoice you wish to pay.
Check that all the details of the expense are correct and mark the expense as reviewed.
Go to the Pay > Confirm details tab, select the newly-created expense, and click on the Confirm details button.
Go to the Pay > Authorize tab and click on the Authorize button to initiate the payment run.
Note that for GBP invoices, Payhawk uses the Faster Payments payment schema and for EUR invoices, Payhawk uses the SEPA and SEPA Instant payment schema.
You will receive a confirmation request in the Payhawk application. Proceed by clicking on Confirm. Once confirmed from the mobile, the expense automatically changes its status to processing and after being processed by the bank, the status will change to paid.
When you've added the payment details of a supplier, Payhawk will automatically apply and use the account details for payments to the same supplier so that you can pay the invoice directly after reviewing it.
Also, Payhawk will save the payment information, that is, IBAN, Reference, Date, and Payment source, and provide it for you in your export file.
For more information:
Step 2 - Monitor card limits and spend policies
Sometimes keeping an eye on all corporate cards can be challenging and monitoring card limits and spend policies that affect a specific card may become demanding time- and effort-wise.
In Payhawk, corporate cards can be affected by stand-alone limits, spend policies, and team cards. While, as a Payhawk accountant, you cannot define spend policies, issue individual corporate cards, or create team cards, you can monitor these and the cards that are affected by shared budgets or spend policies.
Stand-alone limits
In Payhawk, a stand-alone limit is a monthly recurring limit defined for a corporate card. For more information, see the article about issuing cards for employees.
Spend policies
Company spend policies include predefined limits and other settings for cardholders whose cards are included in that spend policy.
Spend policies help Payhawk administrators manage multiple cards by using a company policy where they can easily configure limits and card settings for executives, managers, and employees alike. Spend policies also provide options for defining card controls on a group level - for example, recurring limits, ATM withdrawals, and approval chain for requests - and managing all cards in bulk without the need to deal with individual card controls.
For more information:
Team cards
Generally, team cards are shared budgets that apply to the cards of two or more cardholders within the company.
For more information:
Step 3 - Create and edit supplier details and export suppliers
Payhawk allows you to input the supplier information once, store it, and apply it to expenses that are due to a specific supplier.
For more information:
Create suppliers
You can create a new supplier in several ways. However, for this guide, let's create a supplier from the Suppliers app:
Log in to the Payhawk web portal.
Go to Dashboard > Suppliers.
Click on the + New button.
In the dialog that opens, fill in the available data and click on Save. As a result, your supplier is listed under the Suppliers > Active tab.
For more information:
Archive suppliers
If a wrong supplier has been added to the list with active suppliers, an existing supplier has become outdated, or the supplier details are inaccurate and you prefer to keep them out of use instead of deleting them, you can move the company under the Suppliers > Archived tab.
Go to the Dashboard > Suppliers > Active tab.
Select the desired supplier by clicking on it.
Click on its three dots menu and select the Archive option. As a result, the supplier will move under the Archived tab.
For more information, see the article about creating, archiving, and searching for suppliers.
Manually import suppliers
You can manually import your existing suppliers by using the Excel template file and, similarly, allows you to export your existing supplier database from Payhawk.
Note that you won't be able to manually import suppliers if you have an active ERP integration with Payhawk.
Go to Dashboard > Suppliers.
Click on the three dots menu, select the Import suppliers option, and click on the the template file link to download the template file locally.
Fill in the necessary data for the supplier import in the file and go back to Payhawk and upload the file with your supplier data. Click on Continue.
On the next screen, a summary of the uploaded data will be displayed. Confirm the import in the system and click on Import.
For more information:
Step 4 - Schedule bank payments
People with the rights to confirm details at the company can schedule bill payments to be executed on the expense due date, a specific date, or to be paid immediately after their authorization.
Also, the scheduling can be done for single expenses one by one or for multiple expenses in bulk.
To schedule a single bill payment over a bank transfer of an expense:
Go to the Expenses > Confirm details tab and select the desired expense.
From the Payment execution method drop-down menu, select the payment option:
Pay now for executing the bill payment immediately after its authorization by the respective people at your company.
Due date for executing the bill payment on the expense due date as detected by the Payhawk OCR. Note that due dates can only be set in the future.
Specific date for executing the bill payment for a date you select from the calendar. Note that past dates will be disabled.
When ready with the details confirmation of the expense, click on Confirm details. As a result, the expense will move under the Pay > Authorize tab for the authorized people at your company to proceed with the payment or confirm it for scheduling.
For more information:
Step 5 - Export expenses on demand and schedule email exports
As a Payhawk accountant, you can export your data for accounting purposes. The Payhawk on-demand export allows you to get the exact data you need, slice and dice it as you wish, and be on top of your numbers.
For expense data reporting, Payhawk supports the following formats by default:
Excel
CSV with and without document images
PDF full account statement
MT940
The on-demand expense reports in Excel and CSV include the following data:
Balance statement
Payments
Unpaid expenses
External payments
Deposits
Export accounting data in Excel
Exporting accounting data from Payhawk is a straightforward and user-friendly process. Note that all on-demand reports are downloaded directly in the browser and that at the time of file download, you will also receive an email with a download link, which for security reasons is only valid for 12 hours.
Log in to the Payhawk web portal.
Go to the Export app and click on the Export button. As a result, the On-demand export dialog appears.
In the dialog and from the Period drop-down list, either select a predefined period or choose the Custom period option to define a specific date range.
Select the format in which you want to generate your expense report by clicking on the respective field, for example, Excel. As a result, the Export button becomes active and displays the number of expenses which will be included in the Excel report.
Click on the Export [number] expenses button to download the report to your computer.
Schedule email reports
You can schedule your expense reports in CSV, Excel, and MT940 formats and define the frequency at which they will be sent to you or your team by email.
Log in to the Payhawk web portal.
Go to Dashboard > Exports.
Click on the Add scheduled export button.
From the drop-down menus, select the team member who will receive the scheduled report, its format, and its frequency.
Click on Save to confirm your choice.
For more information:
Step 6 - Approve and decline expense requests
If your company uses an expense workflow and you are part of the approval chain, you will be able to approve and decline expense requests.
As an approver, you will receive the expense requests in your Inbox. All requests that you have to review will be under the PENDING tab. Once you approve or decline them, the requests will move to the ALL tab.
When rejecting and deleting expense requests, note the following:
When you reject and delete a request for a card expense, this will not delete the expense but will display the reason for declining to the accountant.
When you reject and delete a request for any other expense, this will delete the expense as well.
Approve expenses on the Payhawk web portal
Go to your Inbox and select a request that you want to review.
Review the expense-related information and the uploaded expense document.
If you want to proceed with approval, click on Approve. As a result, the accountants can continue with their review process.
If you want to decline the expense request, click on the Decline button. In the dialog that opens, select the Return to employee option, provide the reason for your decision, and click on Return.
You can also reject and delete the expense request by selecting the Reject option, providing the reason for your decision, and clicking on Reject.
Approve expenses in the Payhawk mobile app
Go to your Inbox and select a request that you want to review.
Review the expense-related information and the uploaded expense document.
If you want to proceed with approval, tap Approve. As a result, the accountants can continue with their review process.
If you want to decline the expense request, tap the Decline button. In the dialog that opens, select the Return to employee option, provide the reason for your decision, and click on Return.
You can also reject and delete the expense request by selecting the Reject and delete option, providing the reason for your decision, and tapping Reject.
For more information: