How to automate expense management in Campfire

Key takeaways

• Campfire is an AI-native ERP for growth-stage finance teams, with unlimited entities and 180+ currencies.
• Its assistant, Ember, proposes accounts, departments and custom dimensions for uncategorised transactions.
• For cards you already hold, Vergo codes at the receipt level, texts for receipts and posts entries through Campfire's API.
• Otherwise card spend reaches Campfire through card platform integrations or as bank lines through Plaid.

Where should you go next?

• Vergo's Campfire integration
• What expense management software integrates with Campfire?
• Get started with Vergo

How do you automate expense management in Campfire, step by step?

1. Connect Campfire. Vergo connects through Campfire's public API, reads your chart of accounts, and posts coded card spend as journal entries or bills, with receipt files, through Campfire's API.
2. Connect your existing cards. Connecting your existing cards involves no card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. Collect receipts by text. Employees handle everything by text message — no app to download, no portal login — and Vergo chases missing receipts itself instead of waiting for a report.
4. Code at the line level. Vergo suggests account, department and tags for each receipt line, and the entity.
5. Hand off to Campfire. Coded spend is posted as journal entries or bills with receipt files attached.

What does Campfire need on each card charge?

• Account from the chart of accounts.
• Department and tags.
• Entity, in a multi-entity setup.
• Receipt file.

How is this different from Ember?

Ember works on transactions that are already in Campfire, proposing accounts and departments for what is uncategorised. By then the receipt is often missing and the bank line shows only a merchant. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought — the account, department and tags — not just the vendor name on the header, before the charge reaches the ledger.

A practical example

A marketplace company on Campfire operates in the US and Canada. A growth manager pays for a trade show booth and sample shipping on a bank-issued card. Both receipts are requested by text; Vergo then suggests events for the booth and freight for the shipping, both on the marketing department and the Canadian entity where the show took place. The accounting lead confirms, and the entries are posted to Campfire.

How Vergo handles this

Vergo proposes the coding by inference from your own accounting structure and history — no rule library to build, no keyword lists to maintain, and new vendors are coded on first sight. Across Campfire entities, it learns which teams spend in which entity and currency. Every coding shows why it was chosen, so a reviewer confirms in seconds instead of re-coding by hand. Approval workflows are optional and fit how you already control spend: route by GL account or by amount — or skip approval flows entirely and let policy flags catch only what breaks a rule.