How to automate expense management in Puzzle

Key takeaways

• Puzzle is AI accounting software for startups, small businesses and their accounting firms.
• Its AI Categorizer handles most transactions and emails about the ones it cannot place.
• Vergo collects receipts by text for any card, suggests the coding and posts entries through Puzzle's API.
• Without it, receipts reach Puzzle mainly through Brex and Ramp syncs, and bank-issued cards arrive through Plaid with none.

Where should you go next?

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

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

1. Connect Puzzle. Vergo connects through Puzzle's public API, reads your financial accounts, and posts coded card spend as transactions or journal entries through Puzzle's API, with reimbursements posted as bills to the employee through the same 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 category, class and department. Vergo suggests each from the receipt and your history.
5. Hand off to Puzzle. Coded spend is posted as transactions or journal entries, and reimbursements are prepared as bills to the employee.

What does Puzzle need on each card charge?

• Category: the account on your chart.
• Class, department or project: available on the Complete plan and up.
• Receipt, for audit and investor diligence.

Where does Puzzle's AI stop and Vergo start?

Puzzle categorises from the transaction: merchant, amount, memo. That suits recurring software and payroll well. A single receipt that mixes team dinner and client gifts, or a marketplace order, is coded best from the receipt itself. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the GL account from what was actually bought, not just the vendor name on the header.

A practical example

A seed-stage startup on Puzzle keeps its corporate card at its bank. The founder buys a monitor and a team lunch on one marketplace order. Once the receipt arrives by text, Vergo suggests computer equipment on the engineering department for the monitor and meals on general and administrative for the lunch. The fractional controller confirms, and the entries are posted to Puzzle with the receipt.

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 a startup on Puzzle, that history may be short, so Vergo also reads what was bought on each receipt. 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.