How Mesh helped Sezzle streamline month-end close and eliminate travel expense turbulence

Sezzle has much tighter control over employee spending since switching to Mesh.

Prior to using Mesh, Sezzle relied on traditional corporate credit cards and reimbursement solutions. Credit cards were given to sales teams and developers, to manage everything from travel expenses to cloud computing expenses. But Treasury Director Sean Doheny quickly noticed that spending seemed to be growing with the corporate card program.

“The second you give someone a company credit card, they end up finding more and more reasons to use it,” he explains. “It just kind of snowballed.”

With Mesh, the spending is much more controlled and easier to monitor. Transaction information can be pulled at any moment and statements generated instantly at month-end rather than waiting periods for traditional business credit cards.

“Receipt management and attachment is much easier with the automated inboxes, and there’s a lot less reaching out to coworkers and requesting receipts for specific expenses,” adds Sezzle staff accountant Alison Salzer.

Sean agrees. “We’re not sitting here 15 days after month-end close with somebody submitting a reimbursement for the previous month,” he says. “We’re capturing expenses when they’re happening.”

The Sezzle team was immediately impressed with Mesh’s dedication to innovation.

“When we met Mesh CEO Oded Zehavi, he gave us the demo and talked about his vision for the company,” Sean says. “It was kind of like we shared the same DNA.”

That synergy has allowed Mesh to continuously evolve and develop solutions for Sezzle’s needs as they grow as a company too. Sezzle initially started using Mesh to manage software subscriptions, but has now replaced the need for other reimbursement and travel spending platforms.

“It flipped the script,” Sean says. “We approve the expense before it’s incurred. We know what the transactions are going to be, and that the receipts are going to be captured instantaneously as well.”

In addition to the assurance of knowing that the budget is under control, Mesh has also given Sezzle new ways to think about spend management.

“I really appreciate the constant new features and improvements,” adds Alison. “It feels like there’s something new every month since we’ve been with Mesh. They rolled out travel and the Plug & Play cards, which have been a game-changer.”

Now, Sezzle can issue cards with all the security and control features of a virtual card with the convenience of a physical card. The Plug & Pay cards can be linked to any virtual card to keep teams on budget, and reassigned with a few simple clicks.

Before Mesh, employees were responsible for submitting receipts and expense reports after traveling. This not only created extra work for employees, but often led to expenses being submitted late.

So, Sezzle decided to move all of their travel expenses to the Mesh platform.

“Now everything lives in Mesh for our travel — booking flights, hotels, meals and incidental expenses, and physical cards,” says Sean. “We have a younger workforce, they’re a little more savvy. They use it in their digital wallets as well.”

In addition to being easier for everyone, Mesh has also helped the Sezzle team change their mindset about spending. It makes them think about what they can justify spending on travel, and then request a budget accordingly.

“It puts more power back into the hands of the employees who are actually traveling,” Sean adds.

Beyond the control and productivity that Mesh provides for Sezzle, the customer support team is continually working with Sezzle to improve their experience.

“The customer support team at Mesh is fantastic,” says Alison. “We meet with our account executive every two weeks, which is unheard of. We don’t do that with any other vendor that we use.”

Recently, Mesh worked with Sezzle to create a direct integration for their accounting software since one didn’t already exist — including the customer in every step of the process.

“I’m struggling to think of an issue that we’ve had that took time to resolve,” Sean starts. “But every issue we have ever had has been resolved quickly and Mesh has just been fantastic to work with.”