Understand expense statuses in Pleo

This article explains how an expense typically moves through Pleo—from the moment it appears in Expenses to being ready for bookkeeping (Pending → Completed → Reviewed → Exported).

What each stage means

Pending

An expense is Pending when the card payment hasn’t fully completed yet—because the merchant (or the card network) hasn’t finished processing it.

At this stage, the expense may not be ready for review or export until it’s completed/settled (depending on your company workflow).

Completed

An expense is Completed once the payment has settled (finalised), meaning the transaction is fully processed and the final amount is confirmed. At this stage, you can typically:

• Add or check details like receipt, category, tags, VAT/tax fields, and notes (depending on what your company requires)
• Prepare the expense for review and export

Reviewed

An expense is Reviewed when a reviewer (often Finance or an admin) has checked the expense and set a review outcome. In Pleo, reviews are typically:

• OK (accepted)
• Needs details (something must be added or corrected)
• Not OK (not accepted)

Exported

An expense is Exported when it has been sent from Pleo to your bookkeeping flow. This can happen in two ways:

• Accounting integration export (if your accounting system has a direct integration)
• File export (if you use a custom file format, such as CSV/Excel—typically used when there’s no direct integration)

Exporting moves the expense data to accounting. Depending on your setup, exported expenses may be locked or restricted from further edits.

A typical Pleo lifecycle (end-to-end)

1. A card payment appears in Expenses as Pending
2. Pending → Completed once the payment settles
3. Completed → Reviewed when Finance/admin checks the expense
   • If Needs details, the cardholder updates the expense and it can be reviewed again
4. Reviewed → Exported when the expense is sent to accounting
   • Via integration export, or
   • Via custom file export

Common scenarios (and what to do)

If an expense stays Pending

This usually means the merchant hasn’t completed processing the payment yet. If it’s pending for longer than expected, check:

• Whether the merchant has completed the transaction on their side
• Whether the transaction was reversed/voided (in some cases, pending transactions may disappear if they never settle)

If a reviewed expense needs changes

If the review status is set to Needs details, the cardholder should:

1. Open the expense in Expenses
2. Add or correct the requested information (receipt, category, tags, note, etc.)
3. Save the changes so it can be reviewed again

If an expense is marked Not OK

This means the expense wasn’t accepted by the reviewer. Any next steps (for example repayment to the company) are handled outside of Pleo, according to your internal process.

If an expense can’t be exported

Common reasons include:

• Missing required accounting fields (for example tax codes, account mapping, tags)
• The expense hasn’t been reviewed as OK yet (depending on your workflow)
• Export setup issues (integration errors or missing export configuration)

Glossary

• Settled: A payment is settled when the final transaction is confirmed and the amount won’t change
• Review: A post-purchase check to confirm the expense is valid and correctly documented
• Export: Sending expense data from Pleo to your accounting system (via integration or file)