Mango Spend App Overview

Mango Spend

1. What it is

Mango Spend handles expense reimbursements, company-card receipt tracking, vendor invoices, and pre-approvals inside MangoApps. Employees photograph or email receipts; AI reads the vendor, total, tax, date, and category from each image. A policy engine checks every line against configurable caps, blocked categories, and duplicate detection before the report reaches an approver.

• Enablement: Mango Spend requires a license and is off by default. An admin enables it in Admin → Apps → All Apps.
• What it is not: Mango Spend is the employee-incurred and vendor-bill side of spend. It does not process payroll, calculate tax withholding, or move money — it produces payroll-ready CSVs and accounting exports that your payroll or ERP system consumes.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Mango Spend, and toggle it on.
2. In the Mango Spend sidebar, open Admin → Settings and review the policy defaults. The receipt-required threshold, stale-expense age and default currency all take effect immediately. Mileage rates and blocked categories are set on their own pages (Mileage Rates, Categories).
3. If you use mileage tracking, turn on Mileage tracking in Settings (it is off by default), then go to Admin → Mileage Rates and add at least one rate with a start date. Without a rate, employees cannot submit mileage lines — a mileage line no rate could price is refused at submit, whether Policy enforcement is on or off.
4. Approval defaults to the employee’s manager. To route approvals by amount, department, category, or cost center, enable Conditional approval rules + delegations in Settings, then create rules under Admin → Approval Rules.
5. Confirm the rollout by submitting a test report. The employee’s Reimbursements list should show the draft, and the manager’s Approve → Employee Spend should show it once submitted.

Silent-until-configured: Vendor invoices and pre-approvals are off by default. An admin must turn on Vendor invoices or Pre-approvals in Settings before the tabs, inbox sections, and submission forms appear. The same applies to per-diem rates, multi-currency support, and corporate card features. Each of these is a separate toggle in Settings; enabling the app alone does not activate them.

Roles: Every member with access to the app can submit reports and view their own data. Managers see the Approve section for their direct reports; anyone allowed to run payments sees Pay → Employee Spend. Mango Spend app admins see Settings, Categories, Mileage Rates, Budgets, Analytics, Saved Views, and the accounting sync surfaces.

3. How it fits together

Mango Spend tracks four record types. They serve different sides of spending but share a common approval pattern and appear in the same inbox.

Expense report — the core record. An employee creates a report, adds one or more expense lines, attaches receipts, and submits it for approval. Reports move through a single lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → Approved → Paid. An approver can also reject a report (final — the employee uses Duplicate to start a new draft from it; the copy dates every line today and carries no receipts) or send it back for changes (the employee edits and resubmits it). The employee can Recall a submitted report to draft; approval then starts over when it is resubmitted. A report cannot be submitted while it is empty or while any line has no amount. Each report gets a unique number (e.g. ER-2026-00001) and tracks its own total, reimbursable amount, and currency.

Expense line — a single purchase within a report. Each line is one of three types:

• Expense — a vendor, amount, category, and optional receipt.
• Mileage — a distance in miles. The amount is computed automatically from the mileage rate in effect on the trip date. If no rate covers the trip date the line has no amount and cannot be submitted; it is priced automatically as soon as someone who manages spend rates saves a rate that covers it.
• Per diem — a number of days and a location code. The amount is computed from the per-diem rate configured for that location.

Lines can be split across GL tags (cost center, project code, category) using allocations that must sum to 100%.

Company-card receipt — a separate record documenting a purchase on a corporate card. Nothing is owed back to the employee; the receipt exists so finance can prove what a card charge was for. Receipts follow their own lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → Approved. A reviewer can send a receipt back (it then reads Sent back), and until it is approved its owner can take a submitted receipt back with Withdraw to edit. If nobody else can review it — the submitter is the only Mango Spend admin and has no manager on file — the receipt says so instead of waiting silently. When corporate cards are enabled, the system can auto-match receipts to bank-imported card charges by comparing amount, date, and vendor.

Vendor invoice — a bill the company owes a vendor, enabled separately in Settings. Invoices follow: Draft → Submitted → Approved → Paid, with an approver able to send back or decline. Payment records how the money left (ACH, Cheque, Wire, Card, or Other) and supports short-pays. A vendor roster tracks W9 status — missing W9s warn but never block. Invoice files must be PDF, PNG, or JPEG, up to 25 MB.

Pre-approval — permission to spend before the money moves. An employee asks “may I spend $1,800 on the Denver conference?” and a manager approves or declines. Once approved, expense reports can be linked to the pre-approval, and the system tracks actual spend against the approved amount. Over-budget is a warning, not a block — the employee is never stopped mid-trip. Pre-approvals follow: Draft → Submitted → Approved → Closed.

Budget — an admin-defined spending limit scoped to a dimension: the whole business, a single category, a cost center, a department, or a specific employee. Each budget covers a date range and is kept in your Default currency — spending is added up in that currency, so a budget in any other currency would compare unlike amounts (an older budget saved in another currency is flagged on the Budgets page). When a report’s total would push a budget past its limit, the policy engine flags a warning — it does not block submission.

How reports, pre-approvals, and budgets relate: A pre-approval reserves a ceiling (“you may spend up to $1,800”); the expense report records what was actually spent; a budget tracks all spend in its scope across all employees. These three levels of control operate independently but surface together in policy warnings at submit time.

Worked example: An employee creates a report titled “Denver Conference — June 2026,” adds an airfare expense line for $420 (category: Travel — Airfare, receipt attached), a mileage line for the 32-mile drive to the airport (priced at the rate in effect on the trip date), and a lodging line for $189/night. AI reads the airfare receipt and fills in the vendor, date, and tax. The policy engine flags a warning because the lodging line exceeds the Lodging category’s per-expense cap of $300. The employee submits; the report routes to their manager, who sees the policy warning and approves. Finance later batches the report into a payroll-ready CSV for Gusto.

Email inbox for receipts: Each user has a personal receipt email address (format: receipts+<token>@<domain>). Forwarding a receipt to that address creates a draft expense report with the attachment, and AI reads the receipt automatically. The receipt must be an attachment (a PDF or a photo): the text of an email is not read, and an email with nothing attached files nothing — the sender gets an in-app notice saying so. Up to 10 attachments per email, each up to 15 MB. Accepted file types: PDF, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF, WebP, and GIF.

4. Running it

Reviewing and approving reports

1. Go to Approve → Employee Spend.
2. Open a submitted report. Policy violations appear inline — warnings let the report proceed; blocks prevented submission and should not appear here.
3. Choose Approve, Request changes (under Send back for changes… — say what should change), or Reject (requires a reason).

When conditional approval rules are enabled, a report may pass through a multi-step chain. Each step’s approver decides in turn; approving advances the report to the next step. A Mango Spend admin can decide a report directly, which settles it for every remaining step — the decision card says whose it is first.

Approval rules match on amount thresholds, categories, cost centers, submitter role, department, location, or role type. The first matching active rule (by priority order) owns the chain. When no rule matches, the report falls back to the employee’s manager.

Paying out approved reports

1. Go to Pay → Employee Spend. The reports waiting to be paid are listed at the top; choose New batch.
2. Select a payroll export format: Generic, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, or an accounting format (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct).
3. Add approved reports to the batch (while the batch is still open, Remove takes a single report back out), then choose Export CSV & lock. Exporting locks the batch and downloads the file — it does not pay anyone: every report in it stays Approved.
4. Run the file through payroll or your accounting system. When that run is confirmed, come back to the batch and choose Mark as paid. That is the step that moves each report to Paid (and, when Notify employees on decisions / payouts is on, tells each employee).

A batch that has been voided keeps a list of the reports it released, with each amount, so a file already uploaded to payroll can be cancelled there. On the Pay lists, a report whose owner is no longer active in the company is marked, and the export warns about it — it is still paid.

Payroll formats produce one row per report. Accounting formats produce one row per GL slice (line or allocation), tagged with cost center and project code.

Managing categories

Go to Admin → Categories to add, rename, block, or set caps on expense categories. Each category can have a per-expense cap and a daily cap. Blocked categories prevent employees from filing expenses against them. A category can also require a receipt regardless of the global receipt threshold.

Nine default categories are seeded automatically the first time anyone opens Mango Spend: Meals & Entertainment, Travel — Airfare, Travel — Lodging, Ground Transportation, Office Supplies, Software / SaaS, Conferences, Telecom, and Other.

Setting up approval coverage

Under Coverage, an approver can hand their approvals to a colleague for a date range. Coverage needs Conditional approval rules + delegations or Pre-approvals switched on in Settings. While it is active:

• With Conditional approval rules + delegations on, an expense report submitted during the window that would route to the original approver goes to the delegate instead, and stays with the delegate even after the coverage ends. With it off, expense reports are not rerouted: they keep going to the submitter’s manager.
• A report that was already waiting on the original approver when coverage started does not move — they still decide it (or a Mango Spend admin can).
• Pre-approval requests follow the coverage as it stands today: they go to the delegate while it is active and return to the original approver when it ends.
• Company-card receipts are never rerouted; they stay with the reviewer chosen in Settings.

Both people must belong to the same organization.

Managing vendor invoices

When vendor invoices are enabled, Approve → Vendor Invoices shows every bill submitted to the group, and Pay → Vendor Invoices lists the approved bills waiting to be paid, alongside the Vendors roster. The approver group is configurable in Settings; if no group is set, Mango Spend admins serve as the fallback. Approvers can approve, send back (with a reason), or decline from the Approve page. Recording payment happens from the Pay page and requires choosing a payment method and optionally a reference number.

Managing budgets

Under Admin → Budgets, create period-bounded spending limits scoped to the whole business, a category, a cost center, a department, or a specific employee. Active budgets are checked at submit time; exceeding a budget produces a warning on the report.

Accounting sync

When Live accounting sync (Merge.dev) is enabled in Settings, approved reports and payment batches can be pushed to QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, or Sage Intacct. The Admin → Accounting Sync page shows push status and lets you retry failed pushes; a failed push of a report that a later push landed is shown as Resolved and no longer counted as failed. Imported accounting data (accounts, expenses, invoices, line items, payments, and webhooks) appears under Admin → Accounting Data.

5. Settings

Open Admin → Settings in the Mango Spend sidebar (Mango Spend app admins only). The page is laid out in the cards below; each row is named as the page names it.

What people can submit

Setting	Default	What it changes
Pre-approvals	Off	Enables the pre-approval workflow: employees ask permission to spend before the money moves, and the request appears under Approve → Pre-Approvals.
Reimbursements	On	Master switch for expense reports. Turning it off hides the Reimbursements tab, the receipts-by-email inbox, My Preferences and Pay → Employee Spend — close out any exported batch first.
Company card receipts	On	The receipt log for purchases already charged to a company card. Nothing is owed back to the employee.
Company card receipts → Reviewed by	The submitter’s manager	Who reviews a submitted company-card receipt: the submitter’s manager, a Mango Spend admin, or no one (auto-approve).
Vendor invoices	Off	Enables the vendor invoice workflow, the vendor roster, and the Vendor Invoices rows under Approve and Pay.
Vendor invoices → Approved by	Blank (Mango Spend admins)	The group (Admin › Groups) whose members approve and pay vendor invoices. When blank, Mango Spend admins do both.

Who can do what

Each defaults to Mango Spend admins and can name specific people instead, so finance staff do not need to be company admins.

Setting	Default	What it changes
Who can see company-wide spend?	Mango Spend admins	Analytics across every record type, the saved views built from it, and their emailed digests.
Who can run reimbursement payments?	Mango Spend admins	Building payout batches, downloading the payroll CSV and marking a batch paid.
Who can keep the rate cards up to date?	Mango Spend admins	The Mileage Rates, Per-Diem Rates and FX Rates pages. Categories and caps stay with admins.

Features

Setting	Default	What it changes
Mileage tracking	Off	Shows the Mileage Rates page and the mileage line type. Add a rate before announcing it — with no rate, mileage lines are blocked at submit.
Per-diem rates	Off	Shows the Per-Diem Rates page and the per-diem line type.
Multi-currency + FX snapshot at submit	Off	Enables the FX Rates page and locks exchange rates at submission time.
Conditional approval rules + delegations	Off	Enables the Approval Rules page and Coverage. Without it, reports route to the employee’s manager.
AI document reading (receipts & invoices)	On	Uses AI to read vendor, total, tax, date, and category from uploaded receipts and vendor invoices. Off: the fields are typed by hand.
AI auto-categorization of receipt lines	On	Lets the AI assign a category when reading a receipt. Only applies while AI document reading is also on.
Corporate cards (CSV import + auto-match)	Off	The card statement feed: shows Card Accounts, Card Charges and Card Reconciliation, and matches receipts to imported card charges.
Corporate cards are individually billed (employee pays the card bill)	Off	Off (the usual setup): the company pays the card issuer, so a charge matched to an expense line is not reimbursed. On: the employee pays their own card bill, so matched card lines stay reimbursable.
Mango Spend AI agent	On	Lets your team ask about their own spend, approvals, cards and budgets from the assistant, and draft a report or a spend request in plain English.
Live accounting sync	Off — no live sync	Pick a connected accounting system (a company admin connects it in Admin › Integrations) to push approved and paid reports to it as bills. Picking one turns sync on; choosing Off — no live sync turns it off.

Policy

Setting	Default	What it changes
Receipt required at or above	$25.00	Expense lines at or above this amount must have a receipt (mileage and per-diem lines never need one). Set to 0 to require a receipt on every expense line. This is not the whole rule: a category with Always require a receipt ticked needs one at any amount, and seven of the nine default categories have it ticked.
Flag expenses older than (days)	90	Lines with a spend date older than this trigger a warning.
Default currency	USD	The currency for new reports and the home currency for FX conversions. Options: USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD. Changing it converts nothing: every cap, rate and threshold keeps its number and is read in the new currency. A budget keeps the currency it was saved in while its spend is added up in the new one; the Budgets page flags it until it is saved again.
Default payroll export format	Generic	The file layout used for new payment batches. Options: Generic, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct. A batch can override it.
ADP company code (Co Code)	Blank	The first column of the ADP export. Left blank, the file carries the placeholder 0000, which ADP rejects. Only used with the ADP format.
Policy enforcement	On	Master switch for the policy engine: caps, blocked categories, the receipt rule, duplicate, age, rate and budget checks. When off, none of these is computed — including duplicate detection, whatever its own switch says.
Duplicate expense detection	On	Flags a warning when a line matches a line on another report with the same vendor, amount and date — or the same person’s line with the same description, amount and date, which is how a line typed in by hand (it has no vendor) is matched — within the look-back window. A rejected or cancelled claim is never matched. Needs Policy enforcement on.
Duplicate expense detection → Look back (days)	30	How far back the duplicate check searches.

Notifications

Setting	Default	What it changes
Notify employees on decisions / payouts	On	Sends email and in-app notifications when reports are approved, rejected, sent back, or paid.
Notify approvers of reports, vendor invoices, card receipts & pre-approvals awaiting review, plus invoice due/overdue reminders	On	One switch for eight messages: reports, vendor invoices, company-card receipts and pre-approvals awaiting review, approver reminders, and the invoice due-soon and overdue digests.
Remind employees about expense lines still missing a receipt	On	The recurring in-app nudge to an employee holding draft lines that still need a receipt.
Send budget alerts when a budget passes 80% or 100%	On	The in-app budget alert. It goes to the budget’s owner when the budget is for one employee; otherwise to the Mango Spend app admins, or to the company admins when no app admin is named.

Vendor invoice reminders

Setting	Default	What it changes
Remind approvers after … days	On, 3 days	Reminds the approver group about a vendor invoice that has waited this long.
Warn about invoices due within … days	On, 5 days	Sends the approver group a digest of approved invoices coming due, and of overdue ones.

6. More help

• Mango Spend FAQ — specific setup, operating, and troubleshooting questions.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Mango Spend from these articles.