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 Marketplace.
• 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 Marketplace, find Mango Spend, and toggle it on.
2. Open Spend → Settings and review the policy defaults. The receipt-required threshold, mileage rate, blocked categories, and default currency all take effect immediately.
3. If you use mileage tracking, go to Admin → Mileage Rates and add at least one rate with a start date. Without a rate, employees cannot submit mileage lines — the policy engine blocks them.
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 My Reports → Reimbursements list should show the draft, and the manager’s Approval Inbox → 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 Approval Inbox for their direct reports. Mango Spend app admins see Settings, Categories, Mileage Rates, Payments, 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 (terminal) or send it back for revision (returns to Draft). 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 policy engine blocks submission.
• 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. 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 a currency. 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. 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 Approval Inbox → 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, Reject (requires a reason), or Send Back to return it for revision.

When conditional approval rules are enabled, a report may pass through a multi-step chain. Each step’s approver sees only their portion; approving advances the report to the next step. An admin can override the chain and approve directly.

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 Admin → Payments and create a new payment 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, then export the CSV. Exporting marks each report as 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 delegate their approval authority to a colleague for a date range. During that window, reports that would route to the original approver go to the delegate instead. Both users must belong to the same organization.

Managing vendor invoices

When vendor invoices are enabled, the Approval Inbox → Vendor Invoices tab shows invoices awaiting action. 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. Recording payment 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. Imported accounting data (accounts, expenses, invoices, line items, payments, and webhooks) appears under Admin → Accounting Data.

5. Settings

Setting	Default	What it changes
Expense reports & reimbursements	On	Master switch for the reimbursement workflow. Turning it off hides the Reimbursements tab and the Payments surface.
Mileage tracking	On	Shows the Mileage Rates admin page and the mileage line type in the report form.
Per-diem rates	Off	Shows the Per-Diem Rates admin page and the per-diem line type.
Multi-currency + FX snapshot at submit	Off	Enables the FX Rates admin page and locks exchange rates at submission time.
Conditional approval rules + delegations	Off	Enables the Approval Rules admin page and Coverage tab. Without this, reports route to the employee’s manager.
Corporate cards (CSV import + auto-match)	Off	Shows the Card Accounts admin page and the Card Charges tab. Enables automatic matching of receipts to imported card transactions.
Who approves company-card receipts	Manager	Determines who sees company-card receipts in the approval inbox: the cardholder’s manager, a Mango Spend admin, or auto-approve.
AI receipt extraction (OCR)	On	Uses AI to read vendor, total, tax, date, and category from attached receipt images.
AI auto-categorization of receipt lines	On	Lets the AI assign a category when reading a receipt. Only applies when AI receipt extraction is also on.
Policy enforcement (caps + blocked categories)	On	Master switch for the policy engine. When off, no violations are computed or enforced.
Duplicate expense detection	On	Flags a warning when a line matches another line’s vendor, amount, and date within the lookback window.
Duplicate lookback (days)	30	How far back the duplicate check searches.
Receipt required above	$25.00	Lines at or above this amount must have a receipt attached. Set to $0 to require receipts on every line.
Flag expenses older than (days)	90	Lines with a spend date older than this trigger a warning.
Default mileage rate	$0.67/mile	The rate used when no mileage-rate entry covers the trip date. Admins should configure explicit rates under Mileage Rates.
Default currency	USD	The currency used for new reports and as the home currency for FX conversions. Options: USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD.
Blocked categories	Alcohol, Gifts	Categories employees cannot expense against. Comma-separated.
Default payroll export format	Generic	The CSV layout used when creating payment batches. Options: Generic, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct.
Notify employees on decisions / payouts	On	Sends email and in-app notifications when reports are approved, rejected, sent back, or paid.
Notify approvers when reports need review	On	Notifies approvers when a report is submitted for their review.
Vendor invoices	Off	Enables the vendor invoice workflow, vendor roster, and the Vendor Invoices approval inbox.
Pre-approvals	Off	Enables the pre-approval workflow. Employees can request spending permission before incurring expenses.
Vendor invoice approver group	Blank (Mango Spend admins)	The notification recipient group whose members can approve and pay vendor invoices. When blank, Mango Spend admins serve as the fallback.
Remind approvers about vendor invoices still waiting	On	Sends reminders to the approver group about pending invoices.
Remind approvers after an invoice has waited (days)	3	Days before the first reminder fires for a pending vendor invoice.
Warn about approved invoices due within (days)	5	Sends a digest warning about invoices approaching their due date.

6. More help

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