Overview
Airwallex's Spend Accounting Hub is the home for accountants to reconcile card expenses in record time. It's purpose-built with your workflow in mind, from review to sync, and loaded with the power-user tools your finance team needs to close the books on the first of the month. This guide assumes you've already connected your accounting provider or set up your accounting data. If you haven't done so, head to one of the guides below and come back here afterwards.
- If you use Xero, Netsuite, or QuickBooks, we offer direct integrations. These let you seamlessly import accounting data and sync back your expenses and bills.
- If you use another provider, we may still offer a bank feed integration, which syncs unenriched transaction feeds from your wallet currency balances. We recommend complementing this bank feed with an .xlsx upload of your accounting data via our custom accounting data connection.
What's the Accounting Hub for?
Card expenses tend to come in high volumes, which makes reconciliation and syncing a unique challenge. The Spend Accounting Hub is a bulk reconciliation tool built for exactly this reason. At this time, the accounting and sync process for other Spend items (reimbursements and bills) are managed separately in their respective sections.
Getting started: how do I sync to my accounting provider?
There are two ways to push expenses from Airwallex to your accounting provider:
- Bulk processing via the Accounting Hub: sync items marked as ready to sync in bulk.
- Automatic sync on approval: the final approver on an expense triggers sync automatically. You can disable this in Spend > Accounting > Settings if you'd like to keep business approval separate from syncing.
You can use both at the same time, but it's important to understand how they interact, particularly whether you want automatic syncing enabled or disabled. This guide walks you through the Accounting Hub's features first, then covers recommended setups.
Accounting Hub layout
The Accounting Hub is split into four accounting statuses (plus an "All" view):
- Review: expenses that have not yet been synced.
- Ready to sync: expenses staged for a final check before syncing.
- Synced: expenses that have been successfully synced to your accounting provider.
- Sync failed: expenses that require action before they can be synced.
These are accounting statuses, which are distinct from expense statuses (submitted, in approval, approved). Expense statuses track where an item is in the submission and approval process; accounting statuses track where it is in reconciliation.
Review
All expenses that have not yet been synced land here by default. You can code expenses that have been submitted or edit codings on expenses already in progress.
You can also bulk-edit from this screen: select multiple expenses using the tick box on the left-hand side, and a bulk edit toolbar will expand from the top of the table. Use it to choose the field you'd like to edit and the value to apply.
Once an expense is prepared, mark it as ready to sync.
Pro tip: expenses don't need to be approved — or even submitted — to be marked ready or synced.
Ready to sync
All expenses here already have their required fields filled out. You can perform a final check before syncing items to your accounting provider.
Synced
All expenses here have been successfully synced to your accounting provider.
Sync failed
All expenses here have an error that needs to be resolved before they can be synced. Review the error, correct the issue, and retry.
Recommended setups
Most teams will fall into one of the following configurations.
Option 1: Sync on your terms
- Set up your approval flows for business approval, without an accounting or finance check in the process. (For many organisations, low-value expenses may not require any approval at all.)
- Turn off automatic syncing on approval, so that nothing flows into your accounting provider without your review.
- In the Accounting Hub, filter the Review section to approved expenses, correct or add accounting allocations, and bulk-sync them to your provider. You can also sync incomplete or in-approval expenses, especially as month-end close approaches.
Why we recommend it: your accountants get full control over what syncs and when, and they can work through everything in bulk — the most efficient way to reconcile high-volume card expenses.
Option 2: Sync as you go
- Leave automatic syncing on approval enabled.
- Set up your approval flows so that all items have at least one approver, ensuring nothing flows directly to your accounting provider unreviewed.
- Code and sync items from the Review section as needed, independently of expense submission or approval.
If you sync an item before it's submitted with a receipt, a later submission and approval will trigger a resync to the same accounting record with the new information. However, if an item is approved before you get a chance to review it, it will sync automatically without your input. You can update and resync afterwards, but this can be difficult to track.
Option 3: Approve to sync
- Leave automatic syncing on approval enabled.
- Set up your approval flows with an accounting or finance check as the final step.
- Only approve once all accounting allocations are correct and you're ready to sync.
- You can still use the Accounting Hub for bulk edits, but it won't be central to your workflow.
This approach requires clicking into each individual expense rather than managing items in bulk, which can slow things down for high-volume teams.