Are you thinking of improving your efficiency as an education provider? This article explores the benefits of automating your expense management processes and how it can help you be more efficient and reduce costs.
Education providers in Australia face unique challenges when it comes to managing expenses efficiently. Unfortunately, many of them are stuck with traditional expense management methods, which can be time-consuming, prone to errors, and a burden to staff and teachers.
Outdated Expense Management Methods in Education Providers
As an education provider, you probably use one of the following manual methods to manage expenses.
- Petty Cash: The most common expense management method used by education providers is petty cash. However, this method often lacks the flexibility of money top-ups. Plus, the manual reconciliation process can be time-consuming and prone to errors.
- Cash Advances: Some schools provide cash in advance to staff members before a purchase. However, this leads to complexities in reconciling transaction amounts and unnecessary back-and-forth between employees and finance teams. It’s also highly susceptible to missing receipts.
- Employee Reimbursement: Reimbursement methods, where employees pay for expenses using their own money first, are burdensome for staff and teachers. Like other manual methods, they are also prone to loss of receipts and tedious paperwork.
- Corporate or Business Cards: While corporate credit cards offer convenience, they often lack many functionalities, such as real-time expense visibility and budgeting control. Applying for these cards can also be a hassle, leading to a complicated card-sharing system.
Why Should Education Providers Automate Expense Management?
With over 90% of Australian teachers claiming to be overworked and needing more time to plan their lessons, dealing with tedious paperwork is the last thing they need. However, many education providers continue to rely on outdated expense management methods simply because they are unaware of the alternatives.
Automation has enabled education providers to save up to 4 hours a week on admin, along with achieving the following benefits:
Process and Efficiency
Automation simplifies expense management processes, reduces errors, and eliminates time-consuming tasks such as receipt management. 56% of companies consider losing receipts as a significant pain point in expense management.
Cost Reduction
Automation helps education providers save costs by minimising indirect expenses, including loss of receipts, time spent on manual work, and expense fraud. Only 27% of businesses have systems to flag out-of-company expenses, leading to potentially fraudulent activities.
Workload Reduction
By automating manual tasks, education providers can alleviate the burden on staff members. Statistics show that 26% of finance teams feel overwhelmed by manual work, while 97% of employees believe automation can benefit their organisation.
How to Automate Your Expense Management System
For education providers, the right expense management system should be able to help them achieve the following goals:
- Elimination of paperwork: A system should minimise or eliminate the need for manual paperwork and provide a seamless and paperless expense management process.
- Receipt management: An automated system should capture and store receipts for each transaction, ensuring they are never lost or misplaced.
- Reconciliation and budgeting: The system should enable automatic reconciliation of transactions with banks, set and allocate budgets, and provide real-time tracking of expenses.
- Integration with accounting software: Synchronisation with accounting software allows for easy integration of expense data, streamlining financial processes.
- Flexible and agile: This includes instant money top-ups and viewing transactions in real time.
Are you an education provider looking for a better way to manage expenses? Budgetly helps Australian schools develop a better system that empowers their staff and teachers. To learn more about Budgetly, download our eBook, Managing Expenses with Budgetly. Alternatively, schedule a demo today for a personalised chat with our team.
