How to automate expense management in Deltek Maconomy

Key takeaways

• Maconomy is Deltek's ERP for mid-sized and large professional services firms running client-billable projects.
• Its expense sheets carry job, task, activity, location and entity on every line, with receipts attached and approvals before posting.
• Maconomy Touch lets staff submit expenses and mileage from a phone.
• Vergo proposes job, task and activity from your history, texts for receipts and creates expense sheets through the Containers Web Service after IT enables access.

Where should you go next?

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

How do you automate expense management in Deltek Maconomy, step by step?

1. Enable API access. Your IT enables Maconomy API access once; Vergo does the rest.
2. Connect the firm's existing cards. Connecting your existing cards involves no card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. Collect receipts by text. Consultants reply to a text with a photo, from a client site or an airport. 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 to job, task and activity. Vergo proposes the job number, task and activity for each line from how similar spend was charged, with the reason.
5. Create the expense sheet. Once your IT enables API access, Vergo creates expense sheets with receipts attached through Maconomy's Containers Web Service, coded to job, task and activity.

What does Maconomy need on each expense line?

• Job number: the client engagement the cost belongs to.
• Task and activity: which drive billing and utilisation reporting.
• Location and entity: for multi-office, multi-company firms.
• Tax code and receipt: for recovery and audit.

Where does Maconomy stop and automation start?

Maconomy has a mature expense sheet: lines split across jobs and tasks, receipts attached, approval rules by amount or job before posting. What it expects is that the employee knows the right job, task and activity when they fill it in. In a firm with hundreds of open jobs, that is where errors and write-offs start. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought, not just the vendor name on the header. The job and task are proposed from the employee's own recent charging.

A practical example

A consultant at an engineering consultancy on Maconomy pays for a hotel, a client dinner and a rail ticket on the firm card during a site visit. Vergo texts for each receipt, proposes the client job with the site-survey task for the hotel and rail, and the business development activity for the dinner, because that is how the consultant charged similar spend last month. The project manager approves, and the expense sheet exists in Maconomy with receipts attached.

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 Maconomy that structure is jobs, tasks and activities, so billable spend lands where it can be invoiced. 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.