Attention business owners, it’s time you had a chat with your finance team.
As the owner of an organisation, it’s easy to get caught up in overseeing the company that you lose track of the processes running within your organisation. This is even more so when running a small business, where the CEO is probably busy juggling ten things at once.
However, chatting with your team is essential, especially your finance team. It’s so important that 88 per cent of companies who financially outperform others in their industry have employees who feel heard.
Without a doubt, the finance team is one of the most critical departments in the company. But unfortunately, most finance teams are undervalued, with staff suppressing ideas they are afraid to share.
So here are some of the things that your finance team might not be telling you.
Chasing receipts is very stressful.
While business owners may think that employee reimbursements and petty cash are simple enough to execute, their finance team doesn’t think so. The reason? Receipts.
Receipts are a pain point for your finance team, especially when dealing with the loss of receipts. According to research, 53 per cent of finance personnel in organisations state that their most significant pain point in expense management is employees losing receipts or submitting claims without receipts.
Not only is it painful for your finance staff to chase employees for receipts, it’s frustrating for them to do an extra step for a process that’s supposed to work. Ideally, your finance team should get all receipts along with the claims to make their jobs easier.
There are more unaccounted funds than you realise.
Research shows that loss of receipts costs businesses up to $10,000 a year, and it’s not surprising why. Unaccounted employee transactions that come without receipts could still get reimbursed, especially if you’re using a corporate credit card as part of your expense management process.
Besides that, your finance team also deals with losing company funds from fraud. A big issue with reimbursements is that employees can submit receipts for personal claims, which are not visible to your finance personnel. Plus, it’s also a lengthy process to double-check each employee’s claim.
They are getting sick of spreadsheets.
As perplexing as it may seem, your finance personnel do not like spreadsheets. They are hard to manage, require a ridiculous amount of manual work, and are notoriously unreliable.
A 2015 study revealed that one-third of large businesses surveyed had made poor decisions due to spreadsheet problems. Plus, one in five large companies had suffered direct financial loss due to poorly written spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets are error-prone, and it’s unreasonable for a finance person to manage them and do other tasks simultaneously. Ideally, your expense management process should be able to reconcile all transactions automatically, saving your finance personnel a lot of time (and stress!).
The repetitive work is getting boring.
Studies have shown that 90 per cent of workers are bored with repetitive tasks which could easily be automated. Your finance staff probably knows that they could automate almost every task in the expense management process, like collecting receipts, reconciling transactions, and recording expenses.
Menial and repetitive work is not only dull, but it’s also unproductive for the organisation. By eliminating these tasks, your finance team could better spend their time doing more high-level work, such as budgeting or coming up with better expense policies for the organisation.
They wish for a better way of managing expenses.
Being in the finance team is not easy. Besides managing company expenses, they also need to generate financial reports, plan and budget for the organisation, and develop strategies to minimise its financial risk. So wouldn’t it be great if automation made their expense management job easier?
Finance teams want an end to employees losing receipts, late expense claims submissions, and an end to how long it takes to reconcile, review and approve payments manually. Luckily, these are all easily solved with finance automation.
Budgetly’s prepaid corporate card and expense management solution is an easy way to help your finance personnel with their expense management process.
With Budgetly, staff can easily capture receipts as they make the transaction, managers can set and approve budgets with a click of a button, and all transactions are automatically reconciled in the system. Sounds like a win for the finance team!
To learn more about how Budgetly works, download our eBook, Managing Expenses with Budgetly. Alternatively, schedule a demo with us today to find out how we help organisations make expense management easier.
