Putting Expense Data into Action

To stay on the top of cash flow and plan your spending effectively, it is essential to make informed decisions. When you automate expenses, you will end up with valuable data on various areas. This data will help you get a clear and accurate view of the company’s spending so that you can plan better for the future. This insight is important to develop expense policies and to identify areas where employees are filing non-compliant expenses.

Quick Tips to Control Non-compliance

Watch trends and spending patterns when expenses are submitted. This can reduce costs associated with suppliers and identify instances when employees are not complying with the rules.

Ensure spending happens within policy, but at the same time it better to keep in mind that out-of-policy spend does happen. Managers do approve out-of-policy expenses. No matter whether it is a mistake or an intentional act, these can go unnoticed unless they are closely monitored.

Analyzing historical data can help determine spending limits. Evaluating trends will help you set reasonable limits for meals and train or plane tickets. Also, you can compare these to industry standards and define your business rules.

Also, the data can be used to improve forecasting and cash flow projections. And, by reviewing expense trends you can identify future spending and much of the guesswork can be eliminated.

Gaining access to solid data is valuable since it gives you detailed information and insight on what actually is going on. Like other data sets, what you get from the data counts. Only implementing expense management software will not fix all the issues, it is the data that helps you make changes in behavior to drive positive results.