Spend Module Configuration Guide

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Estimated Read Time: 10 minutes

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Sections in this article:

Introduction

Getting Started

Enabling the Module

Choosing your Annual Calculation Period

Enabling Automatic Reconciliation

Enabling Project Spend

Customising your Spend Module

Amending Spend Labels

Adding Custom Data

Adding Spend

Manually Adding Spend

Bulk Adding Spend

Automating Spend

Add Spend Via Zapier

Adding Spend Via the API

Adding Spend Via our NetSuite Integration

FAQ

 

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Quick Introduction - What is the Spend Module?

When using Gatekeeper without the Spend module, there are a few ways you can track Monetary Values of agreements & obligations...

The simplest way to do this is to populate the "Annual Contract Value" field for all your Contracts

With this single field populated, Gatekeeper can show you value summaries in Dashboards, Repository tables, within Contract records and you even get a nice summary within your Vendor records too, showing you totals of all agreements held

 

Pictured below: Some of the dashboards & views where Contract Values are displayed

However, these Annual Value calculations are not designed to be perfect indications of expenditure - they're more useful to give users an indication of approximate/expected value

Thus comes the question:

Can Gatekeeper be used to track expected contract expenditure, as well as actual current expenditure and can this be used to plan budgets, calculate operating costs etc?

 

➡️ This is where the Spend module comes in!

 

How does Spend do this?

At its core, the Spend module gives you an extra set of data you can link to your Vendors & Contracts to track individual payments

Not only does this give you visibility of those payments alongside your other key Gatekeeper data like Legal Obligations & Risk, but the Spend module provides you with insights & calculations which can help you planning budgets or assessing how "in-control" you are of expenditure.

 

What the Spend Module provides (simplified)

• An additional customisable Data Set (Spend records) linked to your Vendors - which also comes with the ability to allocate Spend to specific Contracts too
• Spend Calculation Summaries within each Vendor & Contract record
• A Spend Dashboard (& other Spend Reporting Options)

 

 

📘 Appendix: All Core Spend Fields

 

 

 

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Getting Started ✅

Enabling the Module

Once Spend has been added to your subscription, the module can be enabled/disabled by Configuration Admins here:

Step 1) Go to Modules > Spend

Step 2) Set Spend Module Configuration to  Enabled 

 

 

Enabling Automatic Reconciliation

You may notice as you visit the various Reporting pages of the Spend module that one area it offers insights is based on the Contracts which are linked to the spend entries

Linking Contracts while adding Spend can increase the complexity of the import process - especially if using Bulk Import via CSV or Automatic Import via API - therefore you can use a setting that will allow Gatekeeper to link Spend entries to some Contract records to for you

 

With this setting enabled, whenever you import (via bulk import/API) new Spend for Vendors with only 1 Live Contract, Gatekeeper will assume the Spend must be part of that contract and automatically link it for you

 

Pictured Example - A Spend record being added via bulk import which automatically links to the Vendor's only Contract record after the import is completed

 

Step 1) Go to Modules > Spend

Step 2) Set Reconciliation from  Manual to  Auto 

 

Enabling Project Spend

If you are using Projects to track sets of Contracts/Vendors relationships, you can leverage Spend to include a budget for the Project

Step 1) Go to Modules > Spend

Step 2) Set Spend Module Configuration to  Enabled 

 

 

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Customising Your Spend Module 🛠️

 

Changing your Annual Calculation Period

When adding Spend Entries to your repository, you will see that assigning the Date that the Spend occurred is mandatory

This date plays a key role in the insights Gatekeeper provides to assist you in tracking & planning your budgets

As such, you also need to decide which dates should be included in the various calculations & summaries provided by Gatekeeper

Step 1) Go to Modules > Spend

Step 2) Below, Annual Calculation, hit "Change"

Step 3) Select your desired period, then hit ✅ Save

 

Amending Spend Core Field Labels

There may be some Spend Calculations which does not match how you organisation already classifies Spend. If so, you can amend the labels of the Core Spend fields to make them easier to understand for you & your users

Step 1) Go to Modules > Spend

Step 2) At the bottom of the page, find the field label you wish to amend

Step 3) Click the  menu icon & hit Edit

Step 4) Enter the revised label "Translation" & hit ✅ Save

 

Adding Custom Spend Fields

We advise you to look at the Spend data model to get an understanding of the fields which come prebuilt for your Spend entries.

Once you have done this, if you notice that there are fields you need to capture in Gatekeeper which do not exist in the standard data model, you can follow the below steps to add extra fields

 

Step 1) Go to Settings > Configuration > Custom Data

Step 2) Hit Add > Custom Group to add a new data group

Or you can select an existing Custom Spend Group & skip to Step 5

Step 3) Name this Group & select Allocated to: Spend

Step 4) Hit ✅ Save

Step 5) Hit ➕ Add New Custom Field

Step 6) Populate the field Label & Type, then hit ✅ Save

Repeat Steps 5 - 6 until all your new fields have been added to the data model

 

 

 

Adding Spend ➕

This section refers to ways you can add Spend yourself as a Gatekeeper user

These methods are recommended as steps to follow when first setting up your Spend module...

...Once you have all your historical spend imported via these means, we recommend setting up a more automated method for having Spend added to Gatekeeper via one of the below options ⬇️

 

Manually Adding Spend

Step 1) Open a Vendor record from within your Vendor repository

Step 2) Hit Add > Spend

Step 3) Populate the Spend metadata & hit ✅ Save

Mandatory Values: Date, Currency, Amount

 

Bulk Adding Spend

Step 1) Go to your Vendor repository

Step 2) Hit Add > Import Spend

Step 3) Hit Download Template ⬇️ to get a CSV file with all your Spend fields as columns

Step 4) Populate this template using Excel/Google Sheets, mapping your existing Spend data to the Gatekeeper template's format

Step 5) Download your populated template as a new CSV file

Step 6) Return to the Gatekeeper import page & upload this populated CSV file

 

 

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Automating Spend Imports ⚙️

Once you have set up & imported all your current & historical Spend data to Gatekeeper, we recommend creating a failsafe process to ensure Gatekeeper is kept up to date so you can rely on the insights & intelligence it provides

If you do not have the resources to automate this, you can  perform a bulk import on a regular schedule (e.g. once per month/quarter)

However, we recommend the below methods which require less manual effort as well as fewer delays/periods of inconsistency between your systems!

 

Adding Spend Via Zapier

Zapier is a web-based "Do it yourself" API tool

You can use Zapier to create "Zaps" - these are rules which you can give to Zapier which it will use to take data from your Financial tool and push this data into Gatekeeper

 

Adding Spend Via the Gatekeeper API

If your other financial solution does not have a Zapier integration, or if your organisation have an Integrations/BA team who usually handles the connections between software tools in your tech stack, you can leverage our open API to push data into Gatekeeper (or pull data from Gatekeeper)

 

Adding Spend Via our NetSuite Integration

When you have connected our native NetSuite integration, we allow you to automatically push Paid invoices back to Gatekeeper as "Spend"

This forms the final piece of the Gatekeeper-NetSuite Integration

 

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FAQs 💬

 

Q: What happens if we add Spend entries with a Date in the future

A: This is valid and fine to do.

However, Gatekeeper will not include these entries in any of the summaries / dashboards / calculations / reporting until the date is passed

...except for  the "All Time Spend" field

 

Q: How frequently is data updated via the Gatekeeper Suiteapp connection?

A: Data is updated hourly.

 

Q: Do Spend records need to be linked to Contract records?

A: No. Spend only needs to be linked to Vendors. However, many insights provided by the Spend dashboards & calculations are greatly improved by linking them to Contracts (where possible)

 

Pictured below: the Spend dashboard & Vendor Record calculations which are directly influenced by Spend entries which are linked Contract records