Dovetail regained visibility and control of team spend with Airwallex virtual cards

Introducing Dovetail

Dovetail is a full-service digital agency with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland, known for its expertise in building and scaling technology companies across Australia and the US. One of its most notable successes? Developing Afterpay’s mobile app and global websites.

As the team rapidly expanded, managing expenses with a shared corporate card became inefficient. Dovetail needed a smarter, more streamlined way to gain control over team spending – one that could scale with its growth.

The challenge

As a fast-growing agency, Dovetail’s team managed multiple clients and projects simultaneously, but its existing expense management system wasn’t built to scale. Relying on a single corporate card for all business expenses created inefficiencies, made tracking individual spending difficult, and posed security risks.

Uncontrolled SaaS subscription costs

Dovetail relied on a wide range of SaaS tools, but without a centralized tracking system, unused subscriptions piled up – especially as employees left or projects wrapped up. This lack of visibility led to wasted spending and made it challenging to optimize software costs.

Security and expense management risks

With multiple employees sharing a single corporate card, monitoring individual expenses became challenging, increasing the risk of unauthorized charges and manual errors. The finance team also spent unnecessary time chasing invoices and receipts, creating operational bottlenecks.

The solution

As Dovetail scaled, managing expenses on a single shared corporate card became inefficient and risky. To solve this, the company introduced Airwallex virtual cards to streamline purchases, improve visibility, and eliminate unnecessary spending.

With dedicated virtual cards for each employee, team members could make necessary purchases without delays, while the finance team gained full visibility into who was spending what. Setting daily, monthly, or per-transaction limits ensured financial controls were in place without slowing down operations. Managing SaaS subscriptions also became significantly easier – by assigning a dedicated virtual card to each tool, Dovetail could instantly track and cancel unused subscriptions rather than chasing down login credentials.

For international SaaS expenses, switching to Airwallex’s Corporate Cards eliminated costly foreign transaction fees on essential tools like Figma, GitHub, and Slack. Instead of incurring unnecessary fees on their local card, the team can now pay in USD without extra costs, improving financial efficiency on global software expenses.

Warren Durling

Chief Operating Officer of Dovetail

"Having all our global SaaS subscriptions in one place has streamlined our finance processes and enabled better tracking and control of expenses. It’s even better knowing that Airwallex isn’t hitting us with any international transaction fees."

Greater control, time savings, and reduced costs with Airwallex

Since switching to Airwallex, Dovetail has gained complete control over company spending while significantly reducing wasted time and money. The finance team no longer spends hours each week chasing receipts or reconciling expenses from a shared card, freeing up valuable time for more strategic work.

Dovetail has cut its monthly software expenses by 15% by optimizing SaaS subscription management, ensuring that only essential tools remain active. Eliminating international transaction fees on USD-based SaaS purchases has also provided immediate cost savings, allowing the company to reinvest in growth. More importantly, with greater security and control over spending, Dovetail has created a scalable financial system to support its continued growth.