One of the most important components of your company is your expense management process, and how you execute it.
Therefore, if you haven’t already, it’s essential that you incorporate the right expense management solution into your business, to ensure your process is as effective and efficient as possible.
But how do you choose the right software?
To help with this, we’ve put together this article to give you a brief overview of how expense management software works, and what key things you should look for when choosing this type of software.
How does expense management software work?
Expense management software is designed to help you monitor, analyze, and control your corporate expenses with as much ease and accuracy as possible.
For many businesses, there are a vast number of expenses which could be occurring in the space of a single working day. This can include things such as business travel expenses on accommodation and food, software subscriptions, employee transport, and much more.
When using expense management software, you’re able to track every expense transaction that occurs in your business – across a variety of teams and departments – and extract crucial data on each payment.
This can include information such as – the amount spent, the type of payment made, the service or product being purchased, the recipient company, the corporate card used, and much more important data.
What key components should your expense management software have?
To give your company the best expense management software, there are a variety of things you need to ensure the platform provides.
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Spend controls
One of the first things to look for in your expense management software is advanced spend controls.
These are unique features that allow you to adjust various aspects of your corporate expenses and payment capabilities, to ensure your company is spending in a way that best suits its needs and aims.
For example, one of the many spend controls you should ensure your software has, is spend limits. These are specific limits you can put on your expense payments so that any transactions which would exceed these limits are prevented.
For extra control, you can even tailor these limits for each individual team, or specific company cards, for instance.
This ensures your expenses are handled more closely, and that any established expense budgets are adhered to.
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Automated expense approvals
You should also make sure your chosen software can apply automated expense approvals in your process.
These allow for certain expenses which meet specific criteria to be approved automatically, without needing a human employee to review and manually approve.
On one end, this takes the responsibility off senior employees who need to approve these expenses, as they can spend their time more efficiently on other tasks whilst the software handles expenses.
On the other end, employees can receive reimbursements much quicker without the delay of manual approvals, and this leaves them out of pocket for much shorter periods – thus improving your company culture for its employees.
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Useful spend insights
Another key thing to ensure your expense management software has is useful spend insights.
These are crucial for helping you improve your corporate expense spend and consistently find new ways to optimize your company’s revenue.
One of the many insights you should have access to, for example, is where the software notifies you of any cheaper alternatives to your expense payments.
A scenario where this could apply is if an employee pays for accommodation on business travel. The software can notify you of any cheaper accommodation options with a similar service nearby.
Insights like this will help your company maintain optimal cost-efficiency with your expenses, without compromising on quality or necessity with the services you pay for.
Be sure to apply these important considerations when choosing your expense management software, and you’re sure to have an expert platform from the right provider.
