Teampay, a startup that provides a company expense management platform managed via a chatbot, launched Thursday with $4 million in seed funding.
The chatbot works by allowing employees to request and receive money up front for expenses, as opposed to spending their own money and completing an expense report after the fact.
Teampay allows companies to create virtual cards for specific expenses, and set whether they're for a one-time use, or weekly, monthly and so on. Managers can approve expenses, and Teampay allows for the creation of approval hierarchies. The bot also lets user log receipts, analyze that day, week or month's expenses, and hear about where there may be double-spending.
Teampay can be used on its own via the web or mobile devices, but also integrates with the Slack messenger platform and any email platform.
Teampay doesn’t perform reimbursements, but it can sit alongside a third-party reimbursement tool if the company so chooses, as well as cover corporate credit card reconciliations. Internally, Teampay uses Abacus for reimbursements.
CEO and founder Andrew Hoag said that he had experienced the same problem Teampay addresses, namely not having access to a company’s money, as an employee. According to Hoag, Teampay puts some of that access back into the hands of the employees, where they can interact with the chatbot to earn quick approval for a virtual card to, say, take a client out for lunch.
“The response has been great,” Hoag said of the product release. “Our customers have been forwarding their user praise.”
