How to automate expense management in Unit4

Key takeaways

• Unit4 treats every dimension as an attribute, and account rules decide which are required, optional or fixed.
• Unit4's Travel Expenses handles claims, per diems, cash advances and approvals.
• A corporate card feed is not described in Unit4's product guides, so card spend needs its own route.
• Vergo proposes each required attribute by inference and delivers the result through Unit4's API.

Where should you go next?

• Vergo's Unit4 integration
• What expense management software integrates with Unit4?
• Get started with Vergo

How do you automate expense management in Unit4, step by step?

1. Connect Unit4. Vergo connects directly through Unit4's public API and delivers coded spend as imported expenses or financial transactions, with every attribute your account rules require.
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. Consultants and project staff reply with a photo; 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. Fill the attributes. Vergo proposes account, cost centre, project and any other attribute the account rule requires.
5. Deliver to Unit4. Confirmed spend arrives as imported expenses or financial transactions.

What do Unit4 account rules require?

• Account from the chart.
• Attributes such as cost centre, project, employee and department, each required, optional or fixed by rule.
• Derived values: a project can fill its cost centre automatically.
• VAT treatment, including partial deductible VAT.

Where does Unit4 stop and automation start?

Unit4's account rules are strict by design: a posting fails if a required attribute is missing. That protects reporting but means someone must know the right project for every charge. Travel Expenses does this well for claims an employee submits. Company card charges, arriving from a statement, have no one attached to answer the question. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought — the account, project and cost centre — not just the vendor name on the header.

A practical example

A consulting firm on Unit4 bills time and expenses to client projects. A consultant pays for a client workshop venue and a train ticket on the company card. After a quick text for the receipt, Vergo proposes the venue to the client project as rebillable, which fills its cost centre by rule, and the train to the same project's travel account. The project controller confirms, and the costs appear on the project in time for the month's invoice run.

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 Unit4, the proposal is complete against the account rule, so a posting is not rejected for a missing attribute. 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, by amount, or by project — or skip approval flows entirely and let policy flags catch only what breaks a rule.