Smart financial management is at the heart of all sustainable businesses

September 4, 2017
Loc8 Insights Smart financial management is at the heart of all sustainable businesses

Imagine your business is slowly crawling towards the red, and you have no choice but to cut costs. Now if you’re a small to medium size business, you know you can’t afford to (and maybe even don’t have the heart to) lay off invaluable, irreplaceable employees.

Fortunately, cutting salaries and firing employees aren’t the only means by which you can get keep a check on your company’s finances. Getting employee-initiated expenses on track is the best way to find some extra room in the budget without putting a dent in your operations.

In the past, managing company expenses would require enough paperwork to give you daydreams about the document shredder. Accountants had to keep copies of invoices and budget reports, which led to a lot of paper wastage and left lot of room for human error. Companies eventually began shifting to a digital platform, which in the start was limited to using multiple Excel spreadsheets—a process some might find even more tedious than actually maintaining physical reports.

Now, however, the growing popularity of cloud-based Software-as-a-service (SaaS) products has resulted in a lot of small-business software apps popping up. Many of these small-business accounting software solutions have made operational tasks like managing employee-initiated business expenses easier and less prone to errors, and this is thanks to a huge number of smart features. One of the major advantages of using a software-based expense tracking solution is the ability to access the platform through multiple devices. This means expenses can be logged and managed on the fly by using the mobile app version of the service.

Smarter AI-based algorithms have certainly made our life a whole lot easier. Can you imagine having to actually type out a Google query without the suggestions popping up? Many smart expense apps have implemented a similar feature. Apps can learn your spending habits and automatically detect the kind of expense that was made. Apps that implement geo-location tracking can detect what particular location you are at and auto fill your expense report on that basis. Similarly, apps can be programmed to predict certain expenses by checking the date, time and amount. This kind of technology is just getting better every day. Some apps also have a tagging feature that lets you group similar expenses for more detailed reporting.

For large companies, having support for integrating your accounting software is a huge selling point. With this feature, report data can be automatically folded into the company’s chart of accounts, and employee reimbursement data can also be tracked and immediately updated on all platforms in real time, reducing the chances of a dispute.

Like most cloud-based SaaS solutions, expense reporting apps don’t require a lot of effort to implement. Of course, this also depends on the size of your organization, with smaller companies being at an obvious advantage. However, once you do integrate an expense tracker into your day-to-day operations, not only will you see savings in costs thanks to the elimination of fraudulent expenses but you’ll also find your employees to be more productive when they’re not slowed down by financial tasks.

Loc8 Field Service Software
Back to top