Getting started for admins

Welcome and the setup checklist

Welcome to Summit Spend. In the next five minutes we'll take a new company from an empty account to a first export to your books. When you sign in as an Admin, the home page shows a setup checklist. It ticks off each step as you finish it, so you can leave and come back at any time. We'll take the steps in a slightly different order, starting with your accounting system.

Connect your accounting system

Start with your accounting system, so your GL accounts and coding fields are in Summit before anyone codes a charge. Go to Settings, then Accounting, then ERP connection, and click Connect on Sage Intacct. Here it's already connected. Once it is, click Sync now. That brings in your GL accounts, departments, locations, projects, classes and charge cards. Then open Accounting fields to choose which fields your team sees and which are required. You can rename a field to match what your team calls it. We walk through the Sage Intacct connection step by step in its own video.

Connect and assign cards

Next, your cards. Summit works with the company cards you already have. Go to Cards & banks and click Connect account. Sign in to your bank in the window that opens, pick the card accounts, and choose how far back to import. Then give every card an owner. Go to Settings, Cards & receipts, Card owners, and pick the owner for each card; the department comes from that person's profile. If you use Sage Intacct, fill in the Charge card ID too. A card without one shows "Not mapped" and won't export.

Invite your team

Now invite your team. Go to People and click Add person. Enter their name and the email they'll sign in with, tick Can log in, and pick a Role. There are three roles. Members see their own cards and add receipts and memos. Managers see every card and can approve and export. Admins can do everything, including settings. Anyone who approves spend needs to be a Manager or an Admin. Then click Send invite. The invite is good for seven days, and while it's pending you can resend it from Pending invites on this page.

Receipts, memos and approvals

Before charges start flowing, decide what each one needs. In Settings, Spend controls, Policy, the Requirements tab sets what must be filled in before spend goes to an approver: use Add a field to require a receipt or memo, and Stricter for some spend for charges over an amount. Under Reminders & alerts you can turn on reminder emails for missing receipts and uncoded charges. Under Approvals, card charges follow your company's workflow; keep it, or build your own. Anything in Summit that acts on its own, like reminders or automatic export, starts switched off. Nothing goes out until you turn it on.

Your first export

Finally, code a few charges and run a test export. Open a charge from Transactions and fill in its coding fields: GL account, project and whatever else your company requires. Once it's coded and approved, it waits on the Accounting page under Ready to sync. Check the first few land in your books the way you expect. Then send your cardholders the cardholder training video, and your approvers the approver training. You're set up.