"Before Pliant, every credit card statement brought a cold sweat."
Lasse Iskanius is the co-founder of the Finnish marketing agency Julkee x Lempee. He explains how Pliant credit cards have changed their day-to-day business.
Julkee x Lempee is a Helsinki-based marketing agency specialising in ongoing marketing services, including digital marketing, content production, and marketing analytics. Julkee x Lempee follows a holistic marketing approach that focuses on continuous service, efficiency, synergy and speed of implementation.
Customizable Virtual Cards: Precise spending control across various projects and campaigns
Real-time Transaction Insights: Improved transparency in expense management for effective cost control
Automated Receipt Management: Receipt collection and reconciliation processes within the Pliant app
Challenge: Digital payments with traditional cards
Iskanius and his team use credit cards to pay for dozens of SaaS subscriptions, paid media, and other items employees need for their daily work. “Every day I receive a lot of receipts. To manage those is tedious”, says Iskanius. Julkee x Lempee buys additional licenses to package as a service for its clients, or to use themselves.
Credit cards are the preferred payment method for Julkee x Lempee’s performance marketing budgets. They use them for advertising on media platforms, like Meta, TikTok or LinkedIn.
The company faced various challenges with traditional credit cards from its bank. For Iskanius, it was a problem to get more than one card per employee. In the end, he had various transactions that he could not assign to an employee.
“All the payments on the credit card statement were in coded language. I had no idea what the charges were for”, says Iskanius.
Having one card for many services caused significant chaos when there was a case of credit card fraud. Fortunately, there was no financial loss, but all payments were declined and had to be processed manually.
Solution: Managing expenses effortlessly
With Pliant, the marketing agency can create virtual cards with custom limits to reduce the risk of credit card fraud and to track all transactions.
Pliant provides Iskanius with detailed information about every payment in real-time. Now it is easy for him to oversee the budgets for different projects and to manage receipt collection and reconciliation in the Pliant app: “The previous card provider was missing the information layer and that level of transparency Pliant has.”
Every card holder at Julkee x Lempee receives regular notifications for missing receipts and is asked to upload them in the app. The team also uses the receipt inbox for regular payments. “I can automate receipts collection, for example, for Meta and various SaaS subscriptions. Those emails will automatically be forwarded to the receipt inbox and the receipts will be matched with the transaction”, says Iskanius.
“Pliant simplifies the management of our client's media budget for us. We create at least one virtual credit card for each campaign, ensuring precise spending control and budget compliance. With customizable limits, we avoid exceeding client budgets and can easily track spend across projects.”
Lasse Iskanius, Co-founder of Julkee x Lempee
Outcome: Pliant provides transparency and independency
Pliant has a direct impact on everyday life in the marketing agency. The co-founder’s workday is hassle-free since using Pliant’s credit cards. Iskanius’ employees use their own cards independently for daily expenses to create content and to run media campaigns. Also ,the manager for all SaaS tools has multiple virtual cards and doesn’t need permission anymore to buy software licenses for clients. Iskanius automatically receives the information he needs to invoice customers.
“With Pliant, every week we save valuable hours we spend on growing the business and taking care of our people. In the past I got a cold sweat every time I got my credit card invoices. Now I see every transaction in real-time and get status updates if we reach our limit or miss receipts. The Pliant payment apps are part of my everyday workday routines.”
