Mango Spend FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Mango Spend.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Mango Spend Overview.
Setup
Do I need to configure anything before employees can start submitting?
Mango Spend seeds a default set of expense categories the first time anyone opens the app, so basic expense reports work immediately. Mileage and per-diem lines require an extra step: you must add at least one mileage rate or per-diem rate in Settings before employees can submit those line types. The policy engine is on by default with a $25 receipt-required threshold, a 90-day stale-expense flag, 30-day duplicate detection, and Alcohol and Gifts as blocked categories.
What are the default policy settings, and where do I change them?
All policy settings live under Settings in the Mango Spend app. The defaults are:
- Receipt required above: $25 (set to $0 to always require a receipt)
- Flag expenses older than: 90 days
- Duplicate lookback: 30 days (accepts 1–365)
- Blocked categories: Alcohol, Gifts
- Duplicate detection: On
- Policy enforcement: On (turns off all policy checks when disabled)
Two default categories also carry per-line caps: Meals & Entertainment at $75 and Travel — Lodging at $300. You can change any cap, add new categories, or block additional ones in the Categories section of Settings.
Permissions and access
Who can submit, approve, and configure Mango Spend?
All roles — member, manager, admin, and super admin — can access the app by default. Members submit and view their own reports. Managers see their own reports plus their direct reports’ and can approve them. App admins see every report in the business, manage settings, run payment batches, and view analytics.
Why can’t a manager see another team’s expense reports?
Managers see only their own reports and their direct reports’. To see all reports across the business, the user needs app-admin access. Promote them to app admin or super admin, or give them the Mango Spend app-admin role in the Apps Marketplace.
Day-to-day
How do I forward receipts by email instead of using the app?
Each user has a personal receipt inbox address (visible in their Preferences). Forwarding a receipt to that address creates a draft expense report for the day and adds a line with the attachment. AI extraction runs automatically and fills in vendor, amount, date, tax, currency, and a category guess. One email can carry up to 10 attachments, each up to 15 MB. Accepted file types are PDF, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF, WebP, and GIF.
How does the policy engine decide what to flag?
The engine evaluates every report at submit time and stores the result — approvers see the same flags the submitter saw. Each violation is either blocking (prevents submission until fixed) or a warning (informational, does not block).
Blocking violations: missing receipt, blocked category, mileage line with no distance, mileage or per-diem rate not configured, per-diem line with no location or days.
Warnings: expense older than the configured age, per-line or daily cap exceeded, possible duplicate, budget exceeded, mileage or per-diem rate mismatch with the configured rate, card-receipt vendor mismatch.
How do conditional approval rules work, and what happens if none match?
Enable Conditional approval rules in Settings first — without it, every report routes to the submitter’s manager. With it enabled, the system walks your rules in priority order and uses the first one that matches. A rule can match on amount range, categories, cost centers, departments, locations, or submitter role. Each rule defines an approver chain of one or more steps, where each step is either the submitter’s manager or a named user. If no rule matches, the submitter’s manager is still the fallback approver.
How do I hand off approvals when someone is out of the office?
Create an approval delegation under Approvals. Pick the person going out, the delegate who will cover, and a date range. While the delegation is active, any report that would route to the absent approver goes to the delegate instead. The rerouting is recorded in the report’s audit trail with both names.
How do I reimburse employees — what is the batch process?
- Go to Payment Batches and create a new batch — it pulls in all approved-and-unpaid reports.
- Choose a payroll format: Generic, ADP, Gusto, or Paychex.
- Export the batch — this locks its report set and downloads the CSV.
- Import the CSV into your payroll system and run the payout.
- Come back and mark the batch Paid once payroll confirms the run.
For accounting, you can also export bill CSVs for QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, or Sage Intacct, or push approved data directly if you have a Merge.dev accounting integration connected.
How do I reconcile corporate card transactions?
Enable Corporate cards in Settings, then add a card account — either by importing a CSV statement or connecting a live Plaid bank feed. When transactions come in, the auto-matcher pairs each charge to an expense line using amount, date (within one day), and vendor name. Exact matches pair automatically; fuzzy matches require the vendor name to be at least 90% similar. Unmatched charges stay in the card inbox until an employee matches them manually. At month-end, an admin opens the reconciliation view, picks the card and month, and marks it reconciled — this is permanent and cannot be undone.
How does multi-currency work?
Multi-currency is off by default. Turn it on in Settings and set your default currency (USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, or AUD). Employees can then submit lines in any currency. The FX rate is resolved from your business’s rate table in this order: direct rate, auto-inverted rate (the reverse pair), or USD triangulation (converting through USD). Rates can be entered manually, pulled from the European Central Bank daily feed, or overridden per pair. Each line’s home-currency amount is snapshotted at submit time and does not change afterward.
When something looks wrong
Why can’t I submit my expense report — it says a receipt is missing?
A receipt is required on any line whose amount is at or above the receipt threshold (default $25). Some categories — Meals & Entertainment, Airfare, Lodging, Ground Transportation, Office Supplies, Software / SaaS, and Conferences — also have Always require receipt turned on by default. Attach a receipt to each flagged line and try again. If you want to lower or raise the threshold, an admin can change it in Settings.
Why didn’t my mileage line get priced?
Mileage lines are priced from the mileage rate in effect on the trip date. If no rate covers that date, the line cannot be priced and submission is blocked. Ask your admin to add a mileage rate in Settings with an effective-from date on or before the trip date. There is no built-in default rate — the admin must configure at least one.
An employee’s report has been stuck in “Submitted” for days — what do I check?
Three things to look at: (1) Is the assigned approver still active? If they left or were deactivated, the report has no one to act on it. (2) Is there an approval delegation in place that may have rerouted the report to someone who doesn’t know they have it? Check the report’s audit trail for a delegation entry. (3) The system sends approval reminders after 3 days — if the approver still hasn’t acted, you may need to follow up directly. App admins can also approve or reassign from the admin view.
A card transaction shows “Unmatched” after we imported the statement — why?
The auto-matcher requires three things to pair a charge: the amount must match a submitted expense line exactly, the dates must be within one day of each other, and the cardholder on the card account must match the employee who submitted the line. If any of these is off — the employee hasn’t submitted a report yet, the amount was split, or the vendor name is too different — the charge stays unmatched. Employees can match it manually from their card inbox, or an admin can match it from the card transactions view.
Licensing and limits
Does Mango Spend require a licence?
Yes. Mango Spend is disabled by default and requires a licence. An administrator enables it from the Apps Marketplace, and it is opt-in per tenant.
What are the limits I should know about?
- CSV import: 500 rows maximum per file. The import creates a single draft report with all imported lines.
- Receipt email: 10 attachments per email, 15 MB per attachment.
- Duplicate lookback window: 1–365 days (default 30).
- Default per-line caps: Meals & Entertainment $75, Travel — Lodging $300 (editable per category in Settings).
- Report numbering: Auto-assigned as ER-YYYY-NNNNN (year and five-digit sequence, unique per business).
- Batch numbering: Auto-assigned as PB-YYYYMM-NNN.
- FX rate sources: Manual, European Central Bank daily feed, or Override.
- Budget alert thresholds: Admins are notified at 80% and 100% of a budget’s limit. Each alert fires once per budget per admin.
Is the auto-approve setting functional?
The Auto-approve reports below field exists in Settings, but it is not connected to approval routing. Setting a value there has no effect — every report still routes to an approver. This is a known limitation.
More help
- Mango Spend Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Mango Spend questions from these articles.