It’s Time to Wave Goodbye to Expense Reports. Here’s Why.

Out with the old and in with the new — this is a common trend we’re seeing within startups as many look to drive efficiencies and leave traditional processes behind. In case you’re wondering, that includes manual expense reports. This time-consuming process has plagued nearly every business for more years than we’d like to count. But this is changing. There’s a surge of innovation happening today that’s making it possible for startups to do expense management better and faster — so much so that you can wave goodbye to manual expense reports.

Keeping things manual will cost you a pretty penny 💵

On average, it takes 20 minutes to file an expense report, plus any extra time finance teams spend reviewing them afterwards. For startups growing at rapid speed where expense reports are piling and resources are lean, things can start getting out of hand — especially with more company cards floating around and being shared among team members. 

Manual expense reports waste valuable time and resources and exhaust your finance teams with menial tasks like reconciling books and chasing employees down for receipts. Today with automated expense software, all of this can be done in a matter of seconds.⏱ All expenses are recorded in real time and upon every purchase, employees are instantly notified to submit their receipts. This makes life exponentially easier for finance teams, eliminating those long hours of reporting and all of the back and forth in between. 👏🏼

Better cost control for a brighter future ☀️

Automated expense software also provides startups greater visibility and control over company spending, while driving operational efficiencies at the same time. It shifts employees away from meaningless tasks so they can be more productive and focus on delivering higher value work. When finance teams are no longer bogged down by expense reporting, they’ll have more time to dive deeper into financial data and find opportunities to reduce operational costs. 💰 At the end of the day, all of these factors empower startups to better control their spending, which will ultimately impact their financial strength over time. This type of resilience is vital, especially for startups, as they quickly move from one growth stage to the next. 🚀

No more errors ✅

Approximately 19% of expense reports come back with errors — yikes! Correcting these mistakes creates more work for your finance team and even more discrepancies in your company’s financial data should they go unnoticed. Not to mention, it becomes difficult to determine the difference between instances of human error and repeat expense fraud. 🕵🏽‍♀️

Thanks to automation spending software, these costly issues can be slashed completely. With a more efficient system in place, finance teams can streamline their financial processes and have better oversight into how money is being spent, who is spending it and why. It also allows them to set clear spending controls and prevent unauthorized purchases, while making it easier to manage expenses in a way that’s accurate and up to date.

Everyone in the organization benefits 🤩

Let’s not forget that it also takes employees a lot of time and effort to fill out those expense requests and awaiting approval. Not to mention, the stress that comes with using your own personal credit card and counting down the days until reimbursement. 🙄 As we can see, manual expense reports require attention from all members of an organization, which is why axing them completely would benefit everyone on the team!  🙌  With all transactions recorded in real time, automation eliminates the need for expense reports altogether. It’s just that easy. 😄

We eliminated expense reports. Now what? 🤷🏾‍♀️

The answer is: Float! Our automation spend software is an innovative solution that helps startups fast track on their journey to growth and leave ancient, time-consuming reports and processes in the past where they belong. We intentionally designed this software to grow with you at high speed, accompanied by our physical and virtual corporate credit cards. It doesn’t matter how many cards are floating around, Float easily tracks your expenses in real time in one place, giving you full visibility and control over your company spend at all times. 

So long expense reports, don’t let the door hit you on the way out! 👋🏽

To learn more about Float, contact us today!

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