Penta Review

Depending on your needs, Penta accounts can serve as the central bank accounts for your business or secondary ones for special payments.

The accounts are digital-first, available on desktop and mobile devices. You can open as many sub-accounts as you need under your original Penta profile and use them for different services, investments, teams and transfers as necessary.

All accounts support multiple currencies. You can exchange money through the service for a low, transparent fee.

All cards function seamlessly abroad in 35 other currencies and let you make payments to 212 countries.

The multi-currency accounts enable full-fledged online payments. The services available include sending and receiving assets, contactless payments via Google Pay, and even international transactions for a small fee of 0.5% of the sum paid.

If your team members request a payment authorisation, you can quickly and automatically confirm them. The company also supports batch payments and recurring transfers to your employees’ corporate cards, banks and clients if you go for a Premium plan.

One of the primary benefits of using this service is the possibility of issuing corporate cards to your employees and tracking their usage through a mobile app.

The way you use the cards depends solely on your company’s size and requirements. You can customise the limits and get an unrestricted number of business debit cards, withdrawing money directly from your bank account but not allowing overdrafts.

All your Penta card users can withdraw money, perform SEPA transfers and make any other payments that your business needs. All card details are accessible through an app and download the relevant forms or grant your accountant direct access to the reports.

Penta is a multi-user service, which means that you can set up various permissions for different employees to control their use of the funds accessible in their corporate cards.

You can grant a broad, Administrator role to your employee(s) and allow them to access any feature of your account and all parts of the platform.

Alternatively, specific staff members could get access to your account balance, transactions, categorisation, and statements. You could also assign people to control transfer categories, manage users and their cards, or prepare and send payments.

While Pentra features no accounting tools of its own, it boasts a robust integration system that lets you sync your transactions automatically, avoiding manual work, saving time and preventing human error.

It synchronises your financial actions daily and seamlessly integrates with your accounting tools. Plus, there are options for booking expenses and earnings to stay tax-compliant.

All banking activity will show up in your preferred accounting tool within a day. If you’re using Debitoor or Iexoffice, they get synced in real-time. Either way, the integration is available in Advanced and Premium Plans.

When it comes to integrations with accounting tools, you can connect your Penta account with:

• Iexoffice
• Debitoor
• Papierkram
• Billomat
• BuchhaltungsButler
• FastBill
• CANDIS

While the list isn’t that extensive and it caters mostly to German users, it’s likely to grow in the future. Plus, these software providers are the most popular among companies in the country.

The ‘Accounting’ tab of your account allows you to connect it with Debitoor and Iexoffice. If you’re on another service, you’ll find links that explain the integration process in-depth on the website.

The company claims one of its central values is transparency, which also includes Open APIs. The interface helps you to integrate your Penta account with even services you use that the company doesn’t support.

Penta works with solarisBank, a fully licensed bank to comply with the BaFin requirements, the highest security standard in Germany.

The online services include several layers of security, including two-factor verification for transfers and transactions via SMS.

Regarding your funds, Penta uses the standard of European Union credit institutions. It secures your capital worth up to 100,000€ in case of insolvency under the European Deposit Guarantee Fund.

Penta operates as a community, always seeking new ideas for improvement from its users. You can join the Slack group chat and follow the latest developments in the processes and procedures behind the scenes.

If you have any questions about the options available to you, there are several ways to find the answer. The FAQ section is extensive and includes many links, articles and explanations of all the basic features of the service in German and English.

You can also send an email to the dedicated address on the website and get a response in 24 hours. If your case is urgent or too complex for email, call the number provided on the website between 9 am and 6 pm Berlin time from Monday to Friday.

All customers using the Advanced or Premium plan can claim 5,000€ in credits that you can use on Amazon Web Services. That’s Penta’s way to help you grow your business.

Plus, if you’re using Stripe for your payment processing, Penta doesn’t impose any processing fees on the first 40,000€ in revenue.

You can redeem your rewards through your account. You’ll see it on the dashboard as soon as you purchase the Advanced or Premium plan.

Since it’s so focused on taking in feedback and developing its services accordingly, Penta published its Open Product Roadmap on Trello, free for anybody to see.

It shows all the latest features, short and long-term plans, intended advancements, and it even has a section for customers’ ideas. Join it, and you can always stay up-to-date with the newest announcements.

The current planned releases are virtual cards and direct debit collection.