Finance and business leaders face conflicting priorities in 2021. They need to tighten the belt to deal with the impact of the pandemic, but also invest for growth as the world reopens.
Digitising your expense management processes is key to achieving these dual goals. During the pandemic, companies embracing digital expense management have enjoyed some important advantages over competitors. They reported losing less money to poor controls, higher levels of success in pivoting, and greater confidence in investing for future growth.
If you haven’t yet, now is the time to start looking at how digital expense management could help you over the next year.
The question is: where do you start? There are many different options available – all claiming to give you better oversight and control of your expenses than the next.
In this guide, we’ll go over three of the most popular types of digital expense tools so that you can pick the one that will have the most impact in your business.
Expense reporting software lets you process, pay, report, and audit employee expenses through a single cloud-based tool.
When employees spend money on behalf of the company, they take a picture of the receipt on their phone and upload it to the mobile app. Once they’ve captured the receipt, they can add it to an expense claim.
As soon as an employee submits an expense claim, their manager gets a notification either through a desktop or mobile app. The manager reviews the claim and approves it or sends it back to the employee if information is missing. If there are multiple people in the approval chain, the system automatically notifies the next approver.
Once all approvers have reviewed the claim the employee receives confirmation that their claim has been accepted. The system also lets them know when they will be reimbursed.
Most systems integrate with major accounting software, syncing information as soon as it’s captured.
Finance teams can run expense reports by user, division, spend category or vendor, helping them get a clearer picture of what is being spent where. Some systems even analyse spend patterns and automatically suggest cost savings.
Bottlenecks caused by inefficient processes, and too much paperwork, are the two biggest problems caused by outdated expense processes.
Expense management software fixes this by removing paper and automating approval workflows. All documents are stored digitally in one place, so you can access it from anywhere to approve it. The system notifies managers when it’s their turn to approve a claim, and automatically sends it to the next person in line.
The system stores all expense data in one place, so you have greater oversight of where money is spent, and by whom.
Employee satisfaction improves, thanks to the transparency and reliability of automated processes.
Everybody wins.
Specific capabilities vary between providers, so do your homework to make sure you select one that has everything you need. Here are some extras to consider before choosing a vendor:
Smart expense cards, such as Soldo, look exactly like traditional corporate credit cards. What sets them apart is that they’re attached to a powerful cloud-based expense management platform.
You apply for a multi-user account as a company, top it up from your main business bank account, and from there you’re in charge. You can issue cards for any – or all – of your employees without additional applications.
You access the platform through a desktop or mobile app to distribute funds as you wish or set budgets and controls. With Soldo, for instance, you can decide whether an individual user can use their card at restaurants but not cocktail bars, or to pay for travel and accommodation, but not retail therapy.
When employees spend on their smart cards, they get a notification through the app on their phone prompting them to snap a picture of the receipt, add the VAT and spend category. This information is immediately available to the finance team.
Most smart card systems integrate with mainstream accounting software. Soldo, for example, integrates with Xero, NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, and Sage. Transaction data is instantaneously transferred to your accounting software, making reconciliation and end-of-month reporting a breeze.
With smart cards, the spend management tool is directly linked to the means to spend, meaning they provide two big benefits that other solutions don’t.
1. Based on findings from our research report ‘A brighter future: better spend controls key to pandemic recovery’
2. Based on findings from our research report ‘A brighter future: better spend controls key to pandemic recovery’. Average amount saved in companies of 1 – 500 employees.
Specific capabilities vary between providers, so do your homework to make sure you select one that has everything you need. Here are some extras to consider before choosing a vendor:
Psst… you get all this and more with Soldo. Watch a demo here to see how it works.
Part travel booking service, part expense management solution. Modern travel management software helps employees book the cheapest flights, cars, trains, and accommodation, and to manage their itinerary. It tracks all spend taking place through the platform, giving finance teams a consolidated view on travel spend.
Employees book travel and accommodation through a dedicated service showing the best available corporate rates. Many providers will curate results based on a company’s specific compliance policies, avoiding routes or vendors that are not covered by insurance.
Most platforms have a mobile app through which employees can access the booking facility, manage their own itinerary, and look at the team itinerary as a whole. They can amend bookings and contact customer support through the app. In the case that a flight is cancelled, most platforms will automatically suggest an alternative.
Spend is tracked and available in real time to the finance team for analysis, because all booking takes place through the platform. Finance teams get insight into travel booking trends for individuals, teams or whole companies, which allows them to adjust their travel programme to increase savings.
Reconciliation is made easier by the fact that all details – including receipts and invoices – for each trip is captured in the same system even when bookings are made on a personal card.
If travel expenses are the lion’s share of your total spend, travel management software can help you cut costs and save time in the following ways:
Save money by giving staff access to the best corporate travel rates. Armed with instant access to total travel spend, you’re also able to negotiate better rates with key suppliers.
Ensure that all bookings are in keeping with internal policies and external regulations. You can set additional approvals for bookings above a certain amount or to specific countries. You can also make sure employees only book travel with favoured suppliers.
While this guide has outlined the three most popular forms of expense management tools available, individual providers can vary significantly in both functionality and cost. Once you’ve decided on the kind of solution that best suits your business, do additional vendor research to make sure you pick the option that will have the biggest impact on your business.
Soldo helps you simplify the management of business expenses by making administrative processes faster and more transparent.
