How to automate expense management in Workbench

Key takeaways

• Workbench is a project-business ERP whose job structure is independent of the accounting system beneath it, with sub-jobs up to six levels deep and user-defined costing activities.
• It offers desktop and mobile expense claims, and options to link company credit cards for tracking and reconciliation.
• Vergo proposes job, sub-job, cost centre and activity from how your team costed similar purchases.
• Coded entries post into Workbench after API credentials are enabled once in your environment.

Where should you go next?

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

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

1. Enable API access. Your team enables API credentials against your own Workbench environment once; Vergo then reads your jobs, cost centres, activities and suppliers and posts coded entries into Workbench.
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. Cost each line. Vergo proposes the job or sub-job, the cost centre and the activity for every receipt line, with the reason.
5. Post to Workbench. Approved spend posts as coded entries, and supplier purchases as payables, so job costs are current.

What does Workbench need on each card transaction?

• Job and sub-job: down to the level where you track cost.
• Cost centre: the part of the business that owns it.
• Activity or cost code: Workbench's user-defined costing activities.
• Account: for the accounting system Workbench feeds, such as Xero, MYOB or Business Central.

Where does Workbench stop and automation start?

Workbench gives staff a place to claim expenses from desktop or mobile and can link company cards for reconciliation. With six levels of sub-jobs and your own activity list, the choice on each line is the hard part, and it is the part a claim form leaves to the person holding the receipt. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the coding from what was actually bought — the job, sub-job, cost centre and activity — not just the vendor name on the header.

A practical example

A steel fabrication firm on Workbench has a site crew and a workshop. A supervisor buys welding rods and gas for a bridge job and a grinder disc pack for the workshop on one card. Vergo reads the receipt, proposes the bridge job's fabrication sub-job and consumables activity for the rods and gas, and the workshop cost centre for the discs. The project manager confirms, and the costs appear against the job in Workbench.

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 Workbench, the structure is your job tree and activity list, so a new sub-job is available the day it is created. 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.