FAQ and guidelines

The opening date for the award submission process started on July 8th.

The official deadline for all submissions is the 20th September (11:59pm CET). Submissions made after this time will not be counted. 

The winners, runner-ups, and applicants will be notified by email on September 27th. We’ll be publicly announcing all runner-ups and winners on the 24th October.”

Winning individuals and companies must agree not to disclose that they are a winner until Pleo has made the information public during the Awards ceremony.

You can select an individual (be that yourself, a teammate, or a peer, or a colleague) or a team or company, depending on the award category. Each category is specific if the award recognises an individual, a company, or a team.

The Beyond Finance Awards will be celebrated at the Beyond event happening in London on the 24th October. The winners will be finalised by our jury members on September 26th, and you’ll be notified of the status of your application on September 27th.

To enter, eligible entrants may visit this link anytime during the entry period and follow the on-screen instructions and the guidelines. All responses and supporting documents must be in English, non-English entries will be disqualified.

Each entry submitted must be completed in its entirety. Once an eligible submission has completed their entry, they must click the “Submit” button on the submission form for the entry to be considered. All entries must be submitted by September 20th at the latest at 11:59:59 PM CET. 

Entries submitted later than this date/time will not be accepted. Pleo may disqualify an entry if it includes any content which, in Pleo’s opinion, is otherwise unsuitable in connection with this Awards programme. Pleo reserves the right to reject or disqualify any entry at any time, in its sole discretion, without incurring any liability.

For information on how Pleo processes external data, please refer to the following documents: Pleo Privacy Policy and Pleo Data Processing Agreement (DPA).

To be up for the chance of winning any of the awards this year, entries must be Pleo customers or partners (accounting, consulting, and integration partners).  

If you’re not yet a customer or partner but are interested in knowing more about Pleo? Sign up for our global newsletter, the Pleo Digest here.

The winners will receive a Beyond Finance Awards winners trophy, an opportunity to participate in our Awards Ceremony and VIP celebration in London on the 24th October 2024, and the opportunity to be featured in a series of Pleo sponsored promotion (customer or partner story, interview, and a custom social toolkit) to continue building on your personal or company profile. Winners will also receive a digital badge. 

The runner-ups will receive an official Beyond Finance Awards certificate and the opportunity to be featured in a series of Pleo sponsored promotions. There will be no retail value associated with any of the prizes.

We have 9 awards up for grabs: The forward-thinking finance leader, Finance team of the year, Success at scale, Trailblazer of the year, Partner in accounting, Integration Partner of the year, Partner ambassador of the year, Excellence in efficiency, and Power to the people.

Please reach out to awards@pleo.io for any questions in relation to the awards or your submission. Thank you. 

We’ve put together some general submission pointers as well as award specific submission pointers to help you draft your response. These specific submission pointers are available on each award specific page.

If you’re submitting an entry for an individual award, please also include a photo of yourself to the submission form. We accept PNG or JPG, with preferably high resolution. 

If you’re submitting an entry for a company or team award, please attach your company logo to the submission form — preferably as SVG (or similar vector format), if unavailable then high resolution PNG with transparent background (min. width 1000 px). 

If you’re submitting an award on behalf of a team or company, please add their company logo. And finally, if you’re submitting an award on behalf of an individual, please add their photo.

Yes, this is possible. The acceptable supporting documents include: PDFs, PPT, JPG, JPEG, PNG, video files (with a 100MB limit in total). If you have several supporting documents, you’ll need to add them all at once otherwise they’ll get overwritten. 

You will not be able to edit a submission, Should you want to correct an answer, you will need to re-submit. In this case Pleo will use the latest version of your submission as the source of truth.

You may submit one submission per award category but you can apply to multiple award categories. Important to note that you’ll need to fill out a new submission form every time you select a new category.

Submissions will be evaluated by our jury committee on a variety of creative, strategic, and analytical factors, with particular attention paid to the answers provided in the submission form. 

We’ve put together some general submission pointers as well as award specific submission pointers to help you draft your response. 

Here are the general pointers: 

• Be specific: Provide concrete examples and data points wherever possible
• Focus on Impact: Quantify the tangible impact of your initiatives using relevant financial metrics or key performance indicators
• Highlight Innovation: Showcase how you used technology or new methodologies in your approach and unique aspects of your approach that sets it apart from conventional practices 
• Address challenges: Clearly demonstrate challenges encountered and how you navigated these
• Demonstrate alignment: Explain how your initiatives/approach aligns with wider business goals 
• Showcase visionary leadership/ownership: Describe your vision for the future of finance within your organisation or industry and how your objectives align with broader industry trends and emerging challenges.

Answers to the following questions can be written or in video format. Specific submission pointers per award are highlighted on the submission form once you select the award you want to apply for.  These submission pointers are not exhaustive and should be considered as examples of what you can demonstrate to make your entry stand out. 

Pleo guarantees that all submissions for the awards contest shall be evaluated with the utmost integrity and impartiality, ensuring that all entries are reviewed on fair and equal terms. The judging process will be free from any form of discrimination or preferential treatment. If you have any feedback or concerns regarding the evaluation process, please forward them to awards@pleo.io

We have a jury committee made up of seven qualified members including three members from Pleo and four external thought-leadership experts. You can find all information about the jury members on our Awards home page.

There will be one winner per category and two runner-ups per category.

Submissions will be evaluated by our jury committee on a variety of creative, strategic, and analytical factors, with particular attention paid to the answers provided in the submission form. 

Pleo guarantees that all submissions for the awards contest shall be evaluated with the utmost integrity and impartiality, ensuring that all entries are reviewed on fair and equal terms. The judging process will be free from any form of discrimination or preferential treatment.

Yes, a company can win more than one award based on the total number of nominations received. 

However, individuals can only win one category. 

Winners, runner-ups and applicants will be notified by email on September 27th