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 are off by default: turn on Mileage tracking or Per-diem rates in Settings, then add at least one mileage rate or per-diem rate 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 and 30-day duplicate detection. No category is blocked until you block one.
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 at or 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: none — tick Block this category on it under Admin → Categories
- Duplicate detection: On
- Policy enforcement: On (turns off all policy checks when disabled — caps, receipt rules, blocked categories, duplicate and age flags, rate and budget checks; a report still needs at least one line and an amount on every line, including a mileage or per-diem line no rate could price)
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 under Admin → Categories.
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 Admin → Apps → All Apps.
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: an expense line with no amount, missing receipt, blocked category, mileage line with no distance, mileage or per-diem rate not configured, per-diem line with no location or days. A report with no lines, or with any line that has no amount (an expense line, or a mileage or per-diem line no rate covers), cannot be submitted even when policy enforcement is off.
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.
Can an approver pay less than an employee claimed?
Yes. While a report is waiting on them, the person deciding it — the employee’s manager, the approval chain’s current approver, or a Mango Spend admin — opens it and chooses Adjust on a line. They set the amount to pay, anywhere from zero up to what was claimed, and a reason the employee reads beside the line. The claim itself stays as filed. The report’s reimbursable total, the payroll file, the QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite files and the accounting push all pay the lower figure. Pay the full claim undoes it. An approver cannot raise a line above its claim; to pay more, send the report back so the employee changes it. Sending a report back, or the employee recalling it, returns every line to its claim. Once a report is approved its lines no longer change, unless a Mango Spend admin chooses Reopen for review on it — possible until the report is in a payment batch or sent to accounting. A reopened report goes back for approval (to the person who approved it last when it went through an approval chain), and the employee is told why. Company-card lines pay nothing back, so they have no Adjust.
How do reimbursement programs work?
A reimbursement program pays part of what employees spend in chosen categories — for example Continuous Learning: half the cost, up to $250 a year — under rules taken from a Policy Hub policy. Turn on Reimbursement programs in Settings, then create one under Admin → Reimbursement Programs: link the policy, pick the categories, and set the share of the cost, the yearly allowance per employee (calendar year of the expense date, optionally prorated in someone’s first year), how many days after the purchase a claim may be filed, whether a receipt is needed, the countries and minimum contracted hours that qualify, whether claims must be filed before an employee’s last day, how the payments are taxed, and the criterion the approver confirms. A program judges nothing until you choose Turn on, which records who confirmed the rules.
When a report is submitted, each line in a program’s categories is worked out: the share of its cost, limited to what is left of the employee’s allowance after claims submitted before it. A claim over the allowance is still filed and pays nothing, with a note saying why; a late, receipt-less or ineligible one is refused at submit with the reason. If an earlier claim is rejected, a later one can pay more when it is approved. The approver sees the arithmetic and each check, and can still set the line to pay a different amount, up to the claim, with a reason. Employees see what is left of each program on My Spend. Programs follow their own on/off status, not Policy enforcement.
With a published policy linked and AI on, Read the rules from the policy on the program page sets the values it finds beside the current rules, each with the policy’s own words, for you to accept or set aside — nothing changes until you do. When the linked policy publishes a significant revision, or stops being published, the program goes to Needs review and Mango Spend admins are asked to look; until someone accepts the new values or keeps the current rules, the rules last confirmed keep applying.
How do I hand off approvals when someone is out of the office?
Open Coverage in the Mango Spend sidebar (it appears once Conditional approval rules + delegations or Pre-approvals is on in Settings) and add coverage: the person going out, the delegate who will cover, and a date range. While it is active, and only while Conditional approval rules + delegations is on, an expense report submitted during the window that would route to the absent approver goes to the delegate instead, and the rerouting is recorded in the report’s audit trail with both names. With that switch off, expense reports are not rerouted — they keep going to the submitter’s manager — and only pre-approval requests follow the coverage. Three more things coverage does not do: a report that was already waiting on the absent approver before coverage started stays with them (a Mango Spend admin can decide it); a report routed to the delegate stays with the delegate after coverage ends; and company-card receipts are never rerouted. Pre-approval requests follow the coverage as it stands on the day — to the delegate while it is active, back to the original approver when it ends.
How do I reimburse employees — what is the batch process?
- Go to Pay → Employee Spend and choose New batch — the approved reports waiting to be paid are listed for you to add. Until you export, or after its file was marked failed, Remove on the batch page sends a report back to the waiting list, and the employee is told their report was taken out of the batch (when Notify employees on decisions / payouts is on). Removing a report from a failed batch opens the batch again and drops its old file, so export it again before you send it to payroll.
- Choose an export format: Generic, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, or an accounting format (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct).
- Choose Export CSV & lock — this locks the batch’s report set and downloads the CSV. Exporting does not pay anyone: the reports stay Approved. Before you export, the batch page names anyone the chosen format can’t identify (no payroll employee ID for ADP or Paychex; neither a payroll employee ID nor an email address for Sage Intacct; no email for Gusto or the Generic file). The payroll employee ID is the ID your payroll system knows them by; Mango’s own generated employee number is never exported. After exporting, Re-download CSV in the batch menu hands back the exact file that was exported; a batch exported before Mango Spend kept a copy of its file is rebuilt from today’s data instead, and the menu says so.
- Import the CSV into your payroll system and run the payout.
- Come back and choose Mark as paid once payroll confirms the run. Exporting alone does not mark anyone paid — this step does, and it sends each employee a payment notice when Notify employees on decisions / payouts is on (unless they have switched off Mango Spend notifications).
The Sage Intacct file’s Vendor ID is each person’s External Employee ID, or their email address when they have none. Files exported before October 13, 2026 carried an internal OneMango number there instead, so if your Sage vendors were set up from an older file, update their Vendor IDs to match.
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 Card Charges 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. Each cardholder is then told in the app which of their charges were reconciled with no receipt or expense line behind them, since a reconciled charge can no longer be matched to either. When a charge is matched to a line on a claim that was already filed, the line is no longer reimbursed (the company card paid it, unless your cards are set to individually billed), the claim’s Activity records the amount before and after, and the employee — plus the approver while the claim is still waiting — is told in the app.
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 a 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 a Mango Spend admin (or whoever manages spend rates) to add a rate on the Mileage Rates page 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. Once a rate that covers the date is saved, the waiting line is priced automatically — there is nothing to re-enter. A line keeps the rate it was priced at, so deleting a rate later does not change lines already priced at it.
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 reminds the approver after 3 days, and every 3 days after that — pre-approval requests and company-card receipts are reminded the same way. If the approver still hasn’t acted, you may need to follow up directly. App admins can also decide the report themselves from Approve → Employee Spend.
A card transaction shows “Unmatched” after we imported the statement — why?
The auto-matcher pairs a charge only with an expense line on a report that is still a draft, has changes requested, is waiting for approval, or is approved but not yet in a payment batch, and only when: the amount matches exactly, the dates are within one day of each other, the cardholder on the card account is the employee who filed the line, and the vendor agrees (the same name, the line’s vendor at the start of the card descriptor, a name at least 90% similar, or — for a line with no vendor — its description naming the merchant). If any of these is off — the expense isn’t filed yet, the amount was split, or the vendor name is too different — the charge stays unmatched. The cardholder can match it manually under Card Charges, or an admin can match it from the same page.
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 Admin → Apps → All Apps, 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 one draft report per currency in the file.
- 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 on the Categories page).
- 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: An in-app alert goes out at 80% and at 100% of a budget’s limit — to the budget’s owner when the budget is for one employee, otherwise to the Mango Spend app admins (the company admins when no app admin is named). Each alert fires once per budget per recipient.
Can reports under a certain amount be approved automatically?
No. Every submitted report goes to a person for a decision — the employee’s manager by default. To send reports to different approvers by amount, category, cost center or role, turn on Conditional approval rules + delegations in Settings and add rules on the Approval Rules page. A report with no matching rule and no manager goes to your company admins and Mango Spend admins.
More help
- Mango Spend Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Mango Spend questions from these articles.