Datarails launches spend management product tied to budgets

Datarails has launched Datarails Spend, a spend management product that links company expenditure to financial plans and brings purchasing requests, purchase orders, contracts, invoices, corporate cards, payments, and reconciliation into one system.

The product allows employees to submit purchase requests against live budgets, giving budget owners visibility into the financial impact before they approve purchases, commit funds, or receive invoices.

It also manages contracts and invoices in one place. Datarails says invoices are automatically captured, coded and matched against purchase orders and contracts, while discrepancies and unexpected charges are flagged for review.

Finance teams can issue physical and virtual corporate cards with company-defined controls, and schedule approved bills for payment before funds leave the business. The product also connects spending records to enterprise resource planning systems to support reconciliation.

Datarails uses artificial intelligence to extract invoice information, code and classify transactions, match records and detect discrepancies.

Plan first

Datarails positions the product around budgeting, rather than controls applied only when employees make purchases. The approach is designed to give finance teams visibility into planned expenditure before commitments are made.

The product connects to FinanceOS, Datarails' financial data layer for planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, cash management and month-end close. Bringing spending and planning data together is intended to reduce the need for finance teams to combine information from multiple systems.

"Most spend platforms kick in when an employee wants to buy something," said Didi Gurfinkel, the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Datarails. "Datarails Spend starts earlier, with the plan. Before a request is approved, finance can check it against live budgets and see what's left to spend. Once approved, the commitment stays tied to the budget through every step: purchase orders, contracts, invoices, payments and reconciliation. Actual spend flows back to the line it was approved against, so finance always knows what's been spent, what's committed and what's still available."

Datarails provides software for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, combining financial planning and analysis, spend management, cash management, ticketing and month-end close on one platform.

FinanceOS serves as a governed data foundation that connects financial and operational information, supporting the company's effort to bring financial processes into a single environment.

AI role

Datarails said that the artificial intelligence is intended to reduce administrative work across the spending process, rather than make decisions about how companies allocate their budgets.

"The goal is not to automate decisions about where a company's money goes, but to eliminate the manual work around those decisions. That is where AI can make a real difference in the spend process," said Gurfinkel. "The result is a shift from reactive spend management to proactive financial control for all companies."

The product is available now.