Eliminate end-of-the-year finance team blues
Feeling busy and overwhelmed? You’re not imagining it. There is more work for finance departments at the end of the year. In fact, according to Concur data, the highest volume of expense reports for the year hit the finance department in December with a peak around December 19—just when you’d probably like to be slowing down for some holiday cheer.
How can you get ahead of it to free you and your team up from all that paperwork? Here’s some guidance to get you started.
Start by empowering yourself
Sometimes the hardest part is just getting started. A great starting place is to join us for a webinar on December 5. We'll be chatting with small business analyst and co-founder of the Small Business Group, Laurie McCabe about how finance departments can beat the end-of-the-year blues. She’ll offer some great tips for SMBs on how to not just survive this time of year, but succeed through it. Register here.
Minimize the number of steps
Take a moment now, before December arrives, to give your expense process a thorough review. Look for areas of improvement and ways to reduce steps.
One busy-season process buster is the approval workstream. Be sure you know who’s going to be out of the office and not available to approve expenses in December. Getting a back-up in place ahead of time can save headaches down the road. Streamlining your expense process makes it easier for your employees to follow, reducing frustration and saving time and money.
Remember, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
While reviewing your overall process, take time to evaluate your expense policy. Ensure it is clear and concise. The easier your policy is to digest, the better chance it will be followed. This will decrease errors and make expense reports easier to review and approve. Need a template? Find one here.
Go beyond just automation to mobility
If you are still using a manual expense process, even if you’re emailing for approvals, it’s time to upgrade and join the modern era. Nothing will help you get through these busy times better than automating expense submission, approval routing and compliance monitoring with a cloud-based, mobile expense solution.
Automation is great. Mobility makes it even better.
Moving to an automated and mobile system isn’t as hard as you think. Companies such as Concur offer affordable solutions for businesses of all sizes. They understand it isn’t a one size fits all thing, and can get you up and running quickly, and before year-end.
Being able to streamline processes, increase visibility into spending, pull real-time data and access and approve expense reports from anywhere (the road, home office, etc), makes your employees lives easier and allows them to focus on more important things.
Give your team the tools to feel empowered
Moving to an automated and mobile system not only saves your employees time, it gives them the tools they need to complete their tasks with confidence. For an employee who has come off a week-long business trip, the thought of sifting through receipts and filing an expense report is overwhelming. And the feeling is mutual for the finance team member who has to review and approve the report, especially when it’s one of many pouring in at the end of the year.
Why not make life happy all around by giving your employees the solutions that will make expense reporting (and approving) faster. Happy employees lead to increased retention and better work engagement.
Your employees will toast you during the holiday party.
Don’t miss out!
Join us for a webinar on December 5. Small business analyst and co-founder of the Small Business Group, Laurie McCabe will share great tips for SMBs on getting through the busy season with style and sanity! Register now.
