How Spooner Vicars gave their international installation team flexible expense card options, reducing admin and improving currency tracking overseas.
Spooner Vicars specialises in sales, installation, and project management of industrial bakery machinery: Rotary moulders, high-speed sprag mixers, sheeting lines.
With engineers and installation teams regularly travelling overseas for 3-5 weeks at a time, the company needed a flexible expense management system that could handle complex international transactions without adding administrative burden.
While their existing expense process using Webexpenses was already efficient, some members of the sales and installation team wanted corporate cards, instead of the existing out-of-pocket process. The challenge wasn’t slow reimbursement. Quite the opposite.
“There was never criticism that we want Expense Cards because you guys take too long to pay our expenses,” explains Adrian Booth, who manages the finance operation alongside Carmen Marin. “It was just a few niggles that individual people had, with paying out-of-pocket.”
The real friction points were around foreign currency transactions. Team members travelling internationally would often convert expenses on the fly to match their personal credit card statements, which meant the audit trail between receipts and what hit the company accounts was lost.
For a small team handling complex international projects, maintaining accurate records was essential.
Rather than mandating a switch to corporate cards, Spooner Vicars took a measured approach. They piloted Webexpenses cards with their Sales Director, John, specifically because he was a high-volume traveller who could provide honest two-way feedback.
“We approached this very much as a new offering that’s there to be taken if you should choose to use it,” says Adrian. “It’s not going to be made mandatory. We’ve just given people that flexibility and choice.”
After the successful pilot, they rolled out cards to their installation team: The other group of high-volume travellers making lots of transactions overseas. But not everyone wanted one. “One of our newer guys, Chris, chose not to have one. His personal choice,” Adrian notes.
This flexible approach meant the team could focus on solving real pain points rather than forcing a wholesale change to working practices.
Three months into active use, the cards are proving their worth for international travel. “A team member just finished up a long-term trip, and it worked well,” says Carmen. “He used the card throughout the trip and there were no problems at all.”
The biggest operational benefit is how the cards auto-generate expense claims. “You can spend money on the card and it’s already generating 80% of the transaction,” Adrian explains. “You just need to go in, review it, attach your receipt, put it through for approval.”
For Carmen, who processes the expenses, the advantages are clear: “Getting rid of all the receipts, the paperwork. The submission and approval are straightforward.”
The transparency has also improved problem-solving. “If there’s been a problem on the card, a block or whatever, we can just see it and be part of it much quicker,” says Adrian.
“The push notifications, the warnings. All these incremental improvements make it feel much more like what we’re used to from day-to-day banking. You can see things straight away.”
Spooner Vicars plans to continue offering cards as standard to new starters, while keeping it optional. They’re also exploring using virtual cards for small-value purchases – nuts and bolts, proforma payments – where raising purchase orders creates unnecessary friction.
“For 2026, we’ll test and pilot internal purchase card use,” Adrian says. “We make quite a lot of small-value purchases. It could be much quicker just making simple card payments for a few hundred quid rather than all the purchase order admin.”
And as for the support Spooner Vicars gets from Webexpenses, our CX team has been crucial to the Expense Cards rollout’s success.
“The relationship we’ve built up with you through the installation has been fantastic,” Adrian notes. “And if Carmen hits a snag, fixing it has always been a quick email and a quick email back. Really helpful.”
Want to give your team the flexibility to manage expenses their way? Get in touch to find out how Webexpenses cards could work for your business.
