Key Ways to Bring Company Spending Under Control

To respond to the ups and downs of business and make better, more strategic financial decisions, your company must know what’s in the bank right now and what’s going to hit the ledgers soon.

Getting a handle on spending can be challenging, especially if your business uses manual paper-based processes, spreadsheets, and semi-automated systems that provide an incomplete and outdated picture of where the dollars are.

Here are just a few ways spending goes astray and bogs companies down in tedious tasks.

• Employees travel on business and hang on to receipts and delay submitting expense reports because the process is time-consuming. As a result, the company doesn’t know the tally for meals, cab fares, and other expenses until weeks after they occur.
• It takes an estimated 11 days¹ to get sign-off approval for vendor invoice payment from time of receipt. With invoices coming on paper and by email, the whole process can be slower than need be. And without a system to track the spending throughout the process, the accounting team doesn’t have a clear, accurate view of overall spending.
• As for accounting and finance team members, they each spend an estimated 14 hours² a week processing expenses and another 13 hours³ handling vendor invoices. With that amount of time punching details into spreadsheets, fewer hours are left for the value-adding work the company needs and team members want.

The examples are each part of broader strategies for improving control of spending with an assist from more fully automated finance processes. All can help turn what are now moments of fuzziness turn into moments of financial focus, giving you the clarity needed to make decisions and seize opportunities.

Capture spending early on

The inherent challenge with manual processes is that the clear view of spending they provide often comes too late to make sound business decisions. Spreadsheets and paper forms also can trap information in silos instead of making it available to eyes across the company that need it.

The challenge only grows as a company does and the paper trails grows longer and muddier. Automated expense and invoice solutions, on the other hand, can scale up as a company does.

One way to gather spending numbers earlier is a central portal for submitting vendor invoices. Another is to use a purchase order process that lets you know spending is coming before it hits you and the books.

A mobile app can reduce the spending-data lag by letting employees snap pictures of receipts and then putting the numbers and purchase information into expense reports. At that point, you know what expenses are coming and aren’t waiting on employees slow to file reports. The employees, too, will likely appreciate not having to tote around piles of receipts.

Cut errors and fraud risk

Mistakes occur when you combine people, paper, and manual data entry.

Cutting and pasting details between receipts and forms and spreadsheets is a mind-numbing task prone to error, whether by the traveling employee or a member of the accounting staff. Optical character recognition can improve accuracy and save time, while giving the accounting staff time to peruse supplier invoices for inaccuracies or to ensure employees complied with spending policies.

Duplicate invoices can be another recurring problem. Automated processes can cross-check invoices and receipts and hunt down duplicates – before a second payment goes out.

Manual processes carry another risk beyond simple error: the potential for fraud, whether it’s fudging on mileage or fake invoices for goods or services never received.

Automation solutions that incorporate intelligent technology can detect overstated, non-compliant or phony expenses and close the gaps in processes that can foster unintentional error or potential fraud. They can spot invoices that came from unrecognized suppliers or didn’t match purchase orders. Or they can use a built-in mileage tracker to accurately measures that expense. Few employees are likely to miss jotting down trips.

Make better decisions with better data

Automated spending processes can bring visibility and unity to data now hidden on paper or amid disconnected systems across the company.

By gathering data from multiple sources into a single platform, you and others who need to can see spending no matter where or when it occurs. With data presented in an easy-to-use format, you can identify areas to cut costs, see risks, negotiate discounts with suppliers, and target opportunities with the best ROI.

With the assistance of automation, your finance team can gain confidence in the spending numbers and in the insights they can now share. And your company can gain the agility needed to respond to changing business conditions.

And, circling back to those hours spent chasing expenses and invoices, you can gain time and efficiency. And that’s something both the company and employees can enjoy.

Automating and controlling spending

Download a copy of the Top Five Ways to Improve Control Over Spend for additional insights into controlling spending and to learn how SAP® Concur® solutions can help with automating expense and invoice processes.

1, 2, 3. Source: Analysys Mason 2022, Travel, Expense, and Vendor Invoice Management Study