How to automate expense management in SoftLedger

Key takeaways

• SoftLedger is multi-entity cloud accounting with up to six dimensions: locations, cost centers, products, jobs and custom dimensions.
• Bank and card activity comes in through Plaid and is converted into journal entries by hand, choosing account and dimensions.
• API keys have to be enabled for your tenant by SoftLedger before an admin can create them.
• Vergo proposes location, account and dimensions by inference and creates and posts journals through the API.

Where should you go next?

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

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

1. Enable API keys. Ask SoftLedger to enable API keys for your tenant, then an admin creates one under Admin, API Keys. Vergo reads your ledger accounts.
2. Keep your cards. Connecting your existing cards involves no card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. 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. Confirm location and dimensions. Vergo proposes location, ledger account, cost center and job for each line.
5. Post the journal. Vergo creates and posts the journal with its lines through the API.

What does SoftLedger need on each card purchase?

• Location: the entity in your group.
• Ledger account.
• Cost center, product or job, depending on your dimensions; jobs are tied to a customer.
• Receipt.

Where does SoftLedger stop and automation start?

SoftLedger's bank transactions screen turns a feed line into a journal once someone picks the account, cost center and other dimensions, with location taken from the context picker. That is fast for a few lines and slow for hundreds across entities. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought, then proposes location and every dimension at once.

A practical example

A multi-entity software company on SoftLedger has sales staff in two countries. One rep buys a conference booth for the US entity and client dinners billed to a customer job in the UK entity. Vergo texts for the receipts, proposes the events account with the US location and marketing cost center for the booth, and meals with the UK location and the customer job for the dinners. The controller confirms, and Vergo posts both journals.

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 SoftLedger, the location is part of the proposal, so entity-level books stay right before consolidation. 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.