Performing efficiently is key for companies that strive to improve constantly. And nothing slows down employees more than inconvenient and cumbersome processes. With clever spend management software, financial tasks can be handled the easiest way possible—especially with a holistic solution that covers different aspects simultaneously. We have checked several software solutions designed to help with the most time-consuming business issues.
What is spend management software?
Spend management software serves as a powerful tool for freelancers, but also small and medium-sized companies that are looking for financial support. It is especially handy for entrepreneurs who do not have financial advisors or an accounting team taking care of expenses. Businesses that aim to streamline processes within their financial team can tremendously profit from spend management solutions.
Depending on the software and chosen service, they automate processes, organise data, and give a better overview of the company’s funds and expenses through improved spend visibility. Moreover, spend management can eradicate typical errors that occur when manually inserting information. In short, the software can speed things up and simplify, which saves business owners and their teams a lot of time and trouble.
Common challenges for companies
There is a basic rule: The larger the company and their daily tasks, the more time is needed to take care of expenses. Paying employee wages, taking care of invoices, reimbursing staff for their expense reports, ordering office supplies—the list gets longer and longer. But spending is unavoidable to make money. If not managed efficiently, double-handling of invoices and other expenses is pretty common, as most amounts need approval from team leads or the company’s CEO or CFO. On top of that, the responsible finance manager has to make sure that receipts won’t get lost, errors can be ruled out and invoices contain all necessary information to avoid additional tax payments and trouble with authorities.
On the other side of that process, employees might have to wait longer than necessary for reimbursements. Part of the problem can be the inefficient use of corporate cards. If there is just one card for the department, it might not always be clear who currently uses it or who is able to pay with it. Accounting then cannot transparently match expenses with employees, which would save lots of time in the approval process.
Partners, freelancers, clients, or suppliers can crabby when payments take longer than usual—rightfully so! Transferring money quickly shows respect for the work, trust, or service of others, and improving that bond with business partners can lead to long-term relationships and a stable business environment. On top of improving spend management solutions, companies need to set ground rules for employees. When managers do not communicate the basic guidelines to staff expenses or neglect to thin out the expense report, this can lead to a longer-than-usual process and extra work for accounting, team leads and employees.
What are the benefits of spend management software?
Good spend management software is specially designed to eradicate the pain points and guide employees intuitively to reduce errors and stressful situations significantly. When choosing software, companies should therefore focus on their respective needs and individual challenges.
Automate processes: Features like OCR scanning of invoices minimise manual errors and save time in the pre-accounting stage. Smart software is also able to detect recurring addresses and subjects to show if an invoice has been received earlier before. By getting rid of manual checks and implementing automated flagging of critical issues, companies can avoid double payments.
Transparent overview: Seeing in real-time what happens to the company’s funds is important to make informed business decisions—including approval processes. Cloud-based services can be accessed at any time from nearly any device, so postponing necessary payments due to uncertainty is a thing of the past.
Keep receipts and invoices safe and sound: Accounting is obliged to keep track of every expense made. No receipt? No accounting entry. If tax authorities ask for them, it is best to present them as a digital receipt. They’re easier to store and are much less likely to be destroyed or stolen.
Reimbursement made easy: Some software programs and services offer handy reimbursement options, such as sending reimbursement requests via an app. Instead of waiting for team leads, the finance team or top executives like the CFO or CEO to go through their e-mails to respond, a push notification can remind them to quickly react and approve the payment.
Customise card payments: When offering corporate cards for business-related payments, spend management software even allows controlling the budget. By setting individual limits or handing out virtual credit cards for one-time payments, even an external working freelancer can receive a card to pay for subscriptions, flights or other necessary services.
Easy-to-handle interfaces: Maybe most importantly, spend management software should include smart interfaces that are linked to accounting tools such as Xero. This way, all incoming information is available in further accounting processes.
The best tools for companies
Finding the right tool is essential to improving efficiency in spend management. And as different needs ask for different solutions, companies should also keep in mind which services match with already implemented software and well-working processes. Here are a few tools and software solutions that can help businesses save time, stress, and money.
Moss
Moss helps upper management and finance by giving all employees more financial freedom. Employees no longer have to pay for business expenditures themselves, but instead, use a handy corporate card with fixed or open budgets. Approval processes are much faster than usual since payments can directly be matched to the respective employee. On top of these features, users have the possibility to add modular services such as invoice management and useful insight tools.
Wave
With Wave, freelancers as well as new and established enterprises can easily automate processes. It functions as a powerful bookkeeping tool that does not require in-depth financial knowledge but provides invoice management and card payment approval.
Avaza
With Avaza, businesses can track project time and streamline expense management with tools such as Slite or Trello. Therefore, the spend management software is perfectly suitable for agencies which work project-based. Unfortunately, useful accounting features are missing, but that should not rule out Avaza as a powerful solution.
Certify
Certify also specialises on spend management, with a great focus on reimbursement of expenses. It is designed to also help established businesses whose employees travel a lot. The tool is able to individually smoothen approvals and automatically calculate miles.
Expensify
Spend management becomes significantly less troublesome with Expensify, as it helps by automatically importing card expenses and creating helpful expense reports. It is mostly designed for small businesses that wish to save themselves from the typical accounting trouble.
FinancialForce
FinancialForce is a cloud-based accounting tool for larger companies which can provide them with great flexibility, especially with cash management and currency converting. Automation processes are easily implemented, even though the initial customisation can take a little longer than with other spend management solutions.
Receipt Bank
If enterprises are looking for a strong tool to digitise data, Receipt Bank can come in handy. It can be used to scan and automatically upload receipts, bills and more expenses—especially freelancers but also start-ups can profit from the simple, yet very relieving features.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks used to solely function as accounting software, but today it is so much more: Automation has simplified handling and managing expenses, which is great when businesses are already working with the accounting solution. Its intuitive approach lets even less experienced users find a way to save plenty of time during the workday.
| Compare your company’s spend with industry averages: Try our comparison calculator to see how your costs compare to the industry average. >>Benchmark your SaaS spending now!<< |
Spend management software: Moss provides a holistic solution
What if spend management software was able to solve all common problems? It would most definitely save plenty of time and take the pain out of typical finance tasks. Moss is here to help, as our modular approach combines smart solutions for all challenges that occur around business expenses. Clever invoice management helps spread tasks on many shoulders by making digitalisation an easy team effort. All employees can simply capture, pre-account and approve received invoices for payment.
With the help of Moss, companies can also revolutionise their approach to using corporate cards for regular or one-time payment processes. Cards can function as a means of payment for employees and eradicate an uncomfortable expense reimbursement process, including time-consuming expense reports. And let’s be completely honest: Nobody likes to take care of these unless they are hassle-free and done within seconds.
One of the greatest features of Moss is the ability to keep track of the company budget in real-time. Decision-makers will no longer have to make uninformed guesses on their current budget but instead see instantly, which payment is made by which employee. The data-driven, but intuitive presentation also helps with creating budget plans and much more.
FAQs
Spend management software allows companies to manage expenses more easily. Features include simplified reimbursement, automating and speeding up pre-accounting tasks, and offering improved insights into the organisation’s financial status. Some solutions are cloud-based and even offer interfaces that connect the software with accounting services such as Xero.
Nobody has time for unnecessary tasks, especially when they feel like chores. This is the case for many aspects of expenditure. Those tasks can even delay payments and affect the relationship between the company and its employees, clients, and suppliers. Additionally, it puts pressure on the finance team whose workload can be overburdening already.
In spend management, automation is key. Nobody should continue to insert data manually anymore when OCR scanning can simply detect all necessary information and use it to pre-account invoices. The technology dramatically reduces human errors, which is a crucial argument for any business.
We consider good spend management to be effortless and intuitive. It frees time that is usually used for matching employees with their expenses. Moreover, it should help evaluate the current financial status of the company. This way, informed decisions are made that truly help businesses thrive.
With an overall spending solution like Moss, time-consuming tasks are a thing of the past. The modular service helps with reimbursement of expenses, useful automation of annoying manual work, and organisation. On top, managers, and the finance team always have access to insights and liquidity information.
It is hard to say which spend management software is best without knowing the company’s special needs and challenges. However, Moss offers simple and intuitive solutions to a wide range of annoying problems by combining great functionality with automation. It is also modularly structured, which allows for individually tailored solutions.
