How to have a great company Christmas without losing control

‘Tis the season to be worried about spending. Companies want to reward employees for another hard-working year, want to celebrate the holiday season in spectacular fashion.

They blow through budgets, lose receipts, spend hours on reimbursements, and start the new year with admin headaches. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

What if you could have everything you need this Christmas season without breaking the bank?

What if you could get Christmas right?

There are three main steps you can take. Each step addresses specific pains that come with holiday season spending, and the benefits of using Soldo to tackle them.

First, you need to know what to expect – and act on it.

Get a grip on Christmas spend 

It might start with something as ‘small’ as getting a Christmas tree for the office. Someone needs to buy it, along with the rest of the office decorations. Maybe that same person is also in charge of organising the Christmas party. Lots of seasonal shopping to do.

But whether you pass around a company credit card or ask employees to pay out of pocket, you still risk going over budget. And you probably end up with way too many mince pies.

With traditional expense management options, you can’t track company spending as it happens – and month-end brings ugly surprises.

Soldo combines smart prepaid company cards with a complete management platform. This means you can give someone in your company a Soldo card – or attribute one to a department, team, or project – and load it with a specific amount for them to use.

With our web console, you can track all card activity, and decide how and where it can be used. You can top it up in a click, from anywhere.

Here’s how you stay in control of spend:

 1. Make your rules

Instead of letting teams run amok with a company card at their Christmas parties, use Soldo cards and:

• Set spend limits (daily, weekly, or monthly) to stay in budget
• Disable specific merchant categories, such as gambling
• Prevent actions such as cash withdrawals or contactless payments
• Set notifications and alerts on spending

2. Divvy up funds

Create different Soldo wallets to hold funds for teams and projects, and keep budgets organised.

For instance, you might want to create a wallet to manage your Christmas ad campaign spending, so that everyone involved in the campaign has access to funds when needed.

3. Keep tabs

More importantly, you can see all payments in real time across the company. You can block cards if they’re being misused.

It’s safer for you, and employees can simply make all Christmas-related purchases knowing there’s no risk of overspending.

Skip the admin hangover in the new year

Every year, finance teams everywhere are left to clean up after another chaotic holiday season.

There are receipts to be found, and expenses to be reconciled and reimbursed. There are spreadsheets to fill out, reports to generate, and paperwork galore.

While some engage in Christmassy activities until the end of the year and forget about them after, others enter the new year fussing over the expenses, ensuring everything is reconciled straightened out.

And no one should start new year’s reliving Christmas through a spreadsheet. Soldo solves this issue in two ways.

1. Capture Christmas spend on the go

Employees with Soldo cards can make payments and snap a photo of the receipt to upload in a couple of clicks. Sales team going out for a Christmas lunch? All they need is a Soldo card and our mobile app. The finance team gets all transaction information moments after use, to then create detailed, real-time reports.

Search and find the transactions you need across wallets, cards, etc., export reports in the format you prefer (Excel, PDF), and transfer data to your accounting software. Then voilà, your Christmas spending is in order.

2. Automate your bookkeeping

Organising your holiday season spend can be done in a jiffy. Rather than wasting time manually importing payment information into your system, you can automate the process.

Soldo integrates with accounting software such as Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, and NetSuite, to simplify expense reconciliation.

Syncing Christmas expenses and receipts with the software is easy, and you can automatically receive bank statements from Soldo straight into the accounting platform.

And the cherry on top: you can sync data such as receipts, tags, and transaction codes, so you have everything you need in one place. Then, you can look back at your Christmas spend with something better than a grimace.

Bring joy to the whole company

Many companies choose this time of the year to gift employees (mostly chocolate and prosecco). And no matter the size of the company, gifts should be thoughtful, and relevant to each individual.

This sounds like a big ask – unless people can get themselves something they want.  And they can.

Hand out Soldo single-use virtual cards, or ‘gift allowances’ with a pre-set amount on it, and ta-da!

While you’re at it, make it easier for teams to organise gatherings this holiday season. Instead of getting someone to coordinate different team lunches, dinners, and pub meetings, delegate responsibility.

Assign roles and permissions

Soldo lets you assign different roles to users hierarchically, such as employee, manager, and admin. You can then give them different permissions with different levels of access to data and spend.

For instance, you can assign the role of manager to the actual manager of a team or individual, and give them visibility over their team’s spending. This way, you’re not putting all responsibility on the finance team to manage spend at a chaotic time of the year.

Have an unforgettable holiday season

These are only a few ways in which a comprehensive spend management platform like Soldo can turn your Christmas around.

And this includes improving employee experiences, making it easy to pay for things they need and want. Making it effortless to reconcile, and eliminating lengthy reimbursements.

Picture a paperwork-free Christmas which also saves you time and money. No receipts to piece together, and instant reports with all the information you need.

You can see for yourself how Soldo helps you have a better Christmas – and a better year after.