Chequebase - A B2B SaaS Expense Management Web Application.

Managing expenses for businesses especially SMEs in Nigeria can be a complicated and convoluted process. Business owners have to handle various tasks, including processing invoices, meeting deadlines for approval and payment, multiple bank transfers, and dealing with delayed employee reimbursements. Although there are set of different tools available to manage these functions, using multiple platforms can lead to confusion and inefficiencies. Consequently, small businesses face a significant challenge in managing their expenses effectively.

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In emerging economies, banks are often hesitant to provide funding to businesses due to insufficient data to support and underwrite them. This can lead to missed opportunities for businesses to obtain the necessary capital to grow and expand their operations.

Due to this problem, we realized the need to make it easier for businesses to manage their expenses, budget and invoices by creating a All in 1 Spend management platform, that manages every non-payroll expenses made within the company and to Third parties. Could be small expenses like Travels, software subscription, electricity, food, e.t. c

All expenses flows through one platform, step by step. From payment request made to approval to the money being spent.

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Help businesses plan and manage their non-payroll expenses

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Help owners gain insights into spending across entire organization.

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Provide assistance managing their financial reporting requirements.

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Assist businesses in achieving their revenue targets.

I classified our target users into FOUR segments which covers the businesses and users that we intend to sell our product to.

COMPANY SIZESMEs Large enterprises

BFSI

Healthcare

Travel and Tourism

IT & Telecom

Energy & Utility

E-commerce

Nigeria

Kenya

Ghana

Egypt

South Africa

Founder

Chief Finance Officer

Head of departments

Staff (Employee)

Before embarking on a new project, I always endeavor to think through and document any potential limitations or constraints that may arise at the long run. By doing so, I can address potential roadblocks early on, which often helps to minimize unnecessary delays, reduce costs, and ensure a successful outcome.

The platform may need to handle multiple levels of approval, complex reimbursement policies, and various integrations with other financial systems.

Employees may be resistant to changing their expense reporting processes, so the platform needs to be intuitive and user-friendly to encourage adoption.

Expense reports often contain sensitive financial information, so the platform needs to have robust security measures in place to protect this data.

Different organizations may have unique expense policies, so the platform should be flexible enough to accommodate various customizations. Additionally, as the organization grows, the platform should be able to scale to handle increased usage and data.

I did a competitive analysis of few existing spend management product in our target market by carefully analyzing their Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat .

I did this to better understand what these competitors are doing right and learn from their mistakes. This usually helps in building a product that has a competitive advantage in the market.

After several days of sourcing quantitative researches and surveys that really validated that this problem actually do exist.

We set up a meeting with three distinct stakeholders who we had reached out to earlier on Linkedin - they represented the 3 groups of users that our product will be built to accompany.

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I took notes during the meeting and made three User stories based on information and insights we deduced during our interviews with them. It was really an eye-opener.

Based on the Secondary Research we conducted and the one-on-one interview we had with a couple stakeholders(Users) , I developed a Business persona for our target industries.

These personas represents the characteristics, goals and frustration of businesses within each industry as regards how they manage their spending

The perfect word that explains the concept of how Chequebase works is HIERACHY. I drew up a diagram to summarize how our product’s Approval Workflow works.

This diagram illustrated the workflow in a large business. However, in a small business of, let’s say 20 employees. Same applies, only that a single person, such as the CEO or a designated finance manager may be responsible for approving all spending requests.

CHEQUEBASE BRANDING

Onboarding ( Sign up, Sign in, Reset Password)

On this page, the CFO/Accountant is able to see and manage all money spent, request made and reimbursement. Also. the HOD can also manage all transactions under his department here.

The section includes various features such as account balance/details, Funding company account, sending money within the company and a summary of the transaction history of the whole company ( on accountant side)

The HOD & Employee do not have access to this feature. However, similar functionality is present in the Budget feature of the Head of department’s

Subaccounts are a key feature on the Chequebase app, that allows for better tracking and management of expenses across different departments within an organization.

With subaccounts, a company can easily allocate (approve) specific budgets to different departments or teams, and track their spending against those budgets in real-time.

Cards are created by the Accountant (owner) who then assign the cards to each head of departments. These virtual cards helps companies maintain tighter control over their spending while providing employees with the flexibility they need to make purchases quickly and easily.

The Budget feature enables the accountants to set/approve and manage budgets for different departments while also tracking their expenses against those budgets. A department cannot spend more than its approved budget.

Reimbursement is a crucial aspect of this product, as it allows accountants or CEOs to track and manage expenses incurred by employees from their own pocket while conducting business.

Employees are able to submit expense reports, and head of departments/Accountant are to review, approve, and reimburse expenses in a timely manner.