How Edenred went from 6% to 85% on-time payments with Precoro

Meet Edenred

Edenred is a global company that helps employers manage work-related payments and employee benefits. Its services cover things like meal and childcare benefits, vouchers, prepaid cards, and other payment solutions that businesses use to support employees and handle everyday spending.

Headquartered in France, Edenred has a presence in 44+ countries with 12,000 employees. For more than 60 million users and 1 million client companies worldwide, it’s become a foundational platform that connects employers, employees, and merchants to make benefits and mobility payments more accessible and transparent. Precoro is currently used within Edenred’s UK entity.

We’ve spoken to Barbara Meszaros, who leads transactional finance for the UK and Belgium entities of Edenred Paytech, part of the Edenred Group, and has worked with Precoro for 2.5 years.

Edenred’s starting point

Before Precoro came into the picture, Edenred faced one glaring issue that posed a significant operational risk: inconsistent purchasing practices. The company didn’t have a single standardized procurement system across the entire business.

Purchasing was completely decentralized, with each department buying independently. Without a consolidated view of company-wide spend, Edenred’s team couldn’t clearly see what money had already left the business and what they could plan budgets around.

Coming into Edenred, the biggest challenge that we had was a lack of consistency. So every department handled purchasing in its own way, and only something like 50% of our invoices had purchase orders.

Barbara Meszaros, Transactional Finance Lead

Purchase orders weren’t routine: only about half of the invoices Edenred received included one. Such poor PO coverage meant the spend wasn’t approved upfront. Instead, it was presented to the team well after it was already committed.

What POs did exist were scattered across emails and spreadsheets, without a central system to store them. That put the burden on the AP team, who spent time chasing down information that should have been there from the very beginning.

The breaking point

That fragmented setup soon turned into a measurable business risk:

Only 6% of invoices paid on time

Supplier payments showed the cracks in the upstream process. Edenred was only able to pay around 6% of invoices on time. They arrived without prior approval or POs, and often lacked complete data, so the AP team had to essentially reconstruct the purchase and fill in the gaps before they could pay for it.

Alongside growing internal pressure, supplier relationships also became strained. Edenred faced the risk of operational disruptions as payment delays began to affect external partners. With no centralized system and scattered documentation, the company reached a point where having no structure and fragmented procurement posed too great a risk for the business to ignore.

There's no way that a business should be managing only 6% of its invoices on time. Operationally, that’s too much of a risk.

Barbara Meszaros, Transactional Finance Lead

What Edenred was looking for

Edenred knew exactly what had to change, and it started with building a centralized structure to support future policies.

Before any automation even entered the conversation, the company first wanted a clear, standardized purchasing process that every employee could easily follow. Alongside that, centralization was also a priority: every document, from requests to contracts, had to be stored in a single platform, so everyone responsible for spend knew exactly where things stood.

POs were at the center of the change since Edenred wanted a system that ensured everyone raised them, that they followed a consistent format, and that nothing was missing. The approval structure also had to support that, so spend could be authorized before it was committed, not after the fact.

Transparency was equally important. In the previous process, no one had a reliable view of what had been spent, received, or paid. That gap in visibility, in turn, made budget planning an issue. Without a clear understanding of spending, Edenred couldn't factor existing costs into future budgets.

How Precoro helped Edenred build the processes they needed

Precoro proved to be the right fit for Edenred’s needs and helped build one process with controls to enforce it. The team now has a single place to track all purchasing activities without having to scramble through spreadsheets or emails. Approvals moved to the front of the process, and the AP team now spends more time processing invoices than chasing information.

Edenred introduced a "no PO, no pay" policy alongside Precoro, and the system gave it a solid foundation. A built-in approval workflow automatically routes every order to the right approvers, enforcing a consistent process before any money is committed. Teams now know that AP won’t pay without an approved PO behind the invoice.

Scattered documentation was one of Edenred's core frustrations. Precoro provided a single place to store every contract, invoice, and PO, so finance can analyze past spending and prepare for upcoming commitments, while cost center owners see what has arrived and what hasn't.

The “no PO, no pay” policy guarantees that every piece of information is where it’s needed. Every invoice now has to trace back to an approved purchase order. The AP team saw the results: 3-way matching is faster, and exceptions are fewer.

One system meant one place to measure performance. Advanced dashboards gave Edenred a clear, ongoing view of what was working, what was stalling, and where the process could go further.

Introducing Precoro meant that everyone raised the purchase orders in the same way. There was one place to go to. It wasn't all over the place. We built an approval workflow, so that ensured that we were having all spend approved prior to spend.

Barbara Meszaros, Transactional Finance Lead

Precoro’s stakeholder impact

Precoro's impact reshaped how every stakeholder experienced purchasing at Edenred. A controlled, consistent process replaced scattered approaches in every corner of the company. Orders are now raised the same way, approvals are made before money is committed, and there’s a clear document trail from PO to payment. These effects were immediate across the board.

Adoption didn’t happen on its own. The shift required a mindset change across the business, and that only worked because the rollout had support from the top. Once leadership backed the new process, Edenred paired Precoro with a clear “no PO, no pay” policy, which gave teams a practical reason to move towards an established purchase order system.

Results

After introducing Precoro and enforcing a structured purchasing process, Edenred moved from reactive operations to controlled, predictable workflows. Purchasing, approvals, and payments now run through one system, which gives the business visibility, consistency, and clear, measurable benefits.

Advice to other companies

Edenred’s experience shows that procurement issues start well before the invoice stage. The root cause sits much deeper, in a purchasing process without enough structure and centralization to support its scale. Before fixing payments, focus on the areas where spend is actually created, emphasizes Barbara Meszaros.

I think my advice would be to centralize early. Introduce the "no PO, no pay” policy—it’s a must for any AP department. Emails and spreadsheet-based POs feel manageable, but it really creates a lot of errors, delays, and there is no visibility for the bigger finance teams that are there.

Barbara Meszaros, Transactional Finance Lead