Managing corporate spend is necessary within a business, but there are ways to track it more effectively.
This can be done by using spend management software - helping to eliminate manual tasks, which are more prone to risks as a result of human error.
That’s just one of the reasons why your business should be using expense management software, but it’s useful to identify what it is before understanding why your business needs it… With previous, more outdated methods, an employee would fill out a sheet along with an invoice that a manager would manually review and approve. Then, the accounts team would process it to reimburse the employee.
With modern expense management software, this process is streamlined, with the creation of pre-approved budgets and allowing employees to track their expenses from anywhere.
The whole reimbursement process becomes faster, allowing more efficient use of company time.
But how else will expense management benefit your business?
Using spend management software means that data is being collected in real-time, so it provides live spending trends and updates the database instantly.
This data is more reliable and clearer to view, allowing companies to make informed business decisions based on this data to help regulate future expenses.
Many processes used within expense management software utilize automation, which reduces the amount of manual work needed from employees.
For example, receipts can be digitally uploaded at the click of a button, so employees can focus their time on other important tasks.
Not only is it time-consuming to manually enter data, but sometimes mistakes can be made, due to human error.
Some of these errors may seem small, but can largely ruin profitability, so automation improves this accuracy to ensure that a company’s financial information is always up to date and correct.
Company regulations can be difficult to keep up to date, but are made easier by using spend management software.
Some platforms allow managers to approve employee expenses, but some of these approvals could be based on an outdated policy.
But, if a violation of a company policy does occur whilst using expense software, it can be tracked and stopped in real-time.
With this software, it’s easier than ever to personalize required fields, like the category of spend and approval details.
This ensures that the software includes the most current and necessary information to help submit expenses accurately.
The more accurately employees can upload data, the more reliable the data will be, so spending habits will be easier to track.
Of course, it’s useful to collect data, but your accounting team needs insights to help a business’s future and avoid overspending.
With expense management software, useful insights like the warning of duplicate payments and unused subscriptions are identified, which can be acted upon immediately to cut costs.
Not only does it help with current insights, but it can help your finance team to make accurate predictions of future corporate spending with these real-time insights.
It’s evident why your business needs to utilize expense management software to account for all business expenses accurately.
Making it easier to control corporate spend ensures the smooth running and profitability of a company, allowing it to run as efficiently as possible.