How to automate expense management in CMiC

Key takeaways

• CMiC codes employee expenses to company, job, cost code and category, and card spend has to meet the same structure to show up in job cost.
• CMiC's eXpense app lets people enter expenses by photographing receipts, and CMiC Imaging can import expenses as AP invoices with images from outside expense and card providers.
• Vergo proposes job, phase, cost code and category from how your team coded similar spend, with the reason shown.
• Your IT team enables CMiC API access once; Vergo reads your job structure and posts coded entries to CMiC.

Where should you go next?

• Vergo's CMiC integration
• Get started with Vergo

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

1. Enable API access. CMiC's API sits in your environment, so your IT team enables access once. Vergo then reads your jobs, phases and cost codes.
2. Connect your existing cards. Fuel cards, supplier cards and corporate cards: connecting your existing cards involves no card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. Collect receipts from the field 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 every line to the job. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought — the job, phase, cost code and category — not just the vendor name on the header.
5. Deliver to CMiC. Confirmed spend is posted as coded entries through CMiC's API, with the receipt image, so nobody re-keys it.

What does CMiC need on each card transaction?

• Company: the CMiC company the job belongs to.
• Job and phase: where the cost lands in job cost.
• Cost code and category: for example labour, material, equipment or subcontract, so committed and actual cost compare correctly.
• Receipt image: for owner billing backup and audit.

Where does CMiC stop and automation start?

CMiC gives employees the eXpense app and gives AP an import path for expenses captured elsewhere. Either way, a person decides the job, phase and cost code, often a superintendent choosing from a long list on a phone. When that choice is wrong, the cost report is wrong until someone reclasses it. Vergo proposes the coding from your history and shows why, so the superintendent confirms rather than searches.

A practical example

A general contractor on CMiC has a superintendent who buys anchor bolts for one job and rents a light tower for another on the same afternoon. Vergo texts for both receipts, proposes the first job's concrete phase with the material category for the bolts, and the second job's general conditions phase with the equipment category for the tower, citing earlier purchases. The project accountant confirms, and both costs are delivered to CMiC already coded.

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. For CMiC, the proposal covers job, phase, cost code and category together, because a right job with a wrong category still distorts the cost report. Approval workflows are optional and fit how you already control spend: route by GL account, by amount, or by project — or skip approval flows entirely and let policy flags catch only what breaks a rule. Card spend, employee reimbursements and AP invoices run through one coding model — same coding, same review, one reconciliation — and payment stays on the rails you already use.