3 Signs Your Team is Ready For a Float Card

Is your company experiencing rapid growth this new year? Does your organization host monthly seminars? Are you planning to accelerate your marketing efforts in 2022? As you grow, expenses only pile up and in order to stay afloat (no pun intended😉) one major way to streamline is increasing the number of corporate cards floating in your organization. 

Here are three signs that your company is ready to introduce Float cards.

1. You’re a fast-growing company with multiple departments🚀

If your team is growing that means more employees are spending and you have more expenses to keep track of. A great way to get a handle on this is by issuing corporate cards within your departments with an automated system to manage it all. At Float, our latest and greatest feature Team Management takes team spending to a whole new level.⬆️ It allows organizations to easily issue corporate cards across all departments and makes it easier to empower smarter spending within teams. Managers gain greater control and visibility over departmental spending with the authority to set predefined budgets, distribute corporate cards 💳 and approve spend requests in real time.🤩

If you’re worried about getting approved for corporate credit cards, don’t fret. At Float, we eliminate all the time-consuming processes you’d experience at the bank by issuing and delivering your cards in less than 3 days! Yes, you read that correctly.😉 Float wastes no time when it comes to helping fast-growing companies spend smarter!

2. You’re dreaming of a healthier spend culture.💭

At Float, we’re in the business of making your spending dreams reality.💫 By making it easier to issue corporate cards to employees, startups can empower their teams and give them the autonomy to make valuable spending decisions. It’s a positive demonstration of trust with employees and allows them to act quickly and be more innovative in their daily projects.

With all of these cards floating around, finance managers can rest assured. All Float cards are connected to our smart spend software, which effectively tracks and organizes all purchases in real time. In addition, for each individual card, managers have the ability to create spend controls for specific categories, departments and employees to limit and monitor company-wide spending

3. You want more efficiency in your operations ✅

Ditch the expense reports once and for all. And while you’re at it, you can stop chasing down employees for receipts. If your company is looking to bring more efficiency to expense management, Float can simplify your daily accounting tasks and automate the entire process by  collecting all your financial data in one place in real time. It removes all of the manual labour and saves you from long hours spent filtering through paper receipts from the entire year. Imagine that. Not to mention, Float cards give employees the freedom to make purchasing decisions faster, without being bogged down by long wait times for management to approve transactions and spend requests. 


If your team is on a clear path to growth and there are no signs of slowing down, keep the momentum going with Float’s corporate cards. Book a demo today and experience what it’s like to spend smarter with Float!

A First-Class Ticket to Managing Corporate Travel Expenses

Most people can agree that getting a handle on travel expenses without a good system in place can feel like walking in the dark with no flashlight. The good news is that Float has a first-class ticket for any organization to successfully manage corporate travel expenses, providing simple solutions to these common headaches. 🙌🏼

❌  Unclear and inconsistent travel expense policies 🤷🏼‍♂️

✅  Float helps you create simple financial policies for the entire company 👫👫

More often than not, expense policies for travel are not always clear. When employees don’t know what falls under an acceptable travel purchase, they have no way of avoiding issues when it comes time to submit expenses. Ensuring employees are aligned can make the paper trail a lot more smooth for finance teams. At Float, our software allows managers to create clear spending policies company-wide so employees are aligned on expectations before and during travel. Managers can also set category limits that every employee can understand and abide by to avoid exceeding travel budgets.

❌  Poor visibility over travel spending across the company 😧

✅  Float gives you a clear picture of travel spending 🔎

Does your finance team know the average daily cost of employee meals during business travels? 🥗  What about the average cost of transportation? 🚕  Most companies don’t have this information at their disposal and are often shooting in the dark when it comes to budgeting for business trips. They have no way of measuring or anticipating how much an employee is going to spend and thus are unable to set clear limits to stay on budget. 

With Float, finance teams can see all transactions being made in real time while employees are travelling ​​– providing key insights into the average costs of food, transportation, lodging and other business travel expenses. This real-time data is critical in helping finance teams and managers set department budgets for business travel in the future with appropriate spending limits for each category.

❌  Inefficient and time-consuming processes 👎🏼

✅  Float cuts expense reports with full automation ✂️

Manual expense processes are time-consuming and make it 10x harder to manage transactions ​​– and when employees are abroad, it can create even more headaches. Ditch the spreadsheets and paper receipts and automate the process with Float. We make it possible to record business expenses in real time, instantly notifying employees to submit their receipts upon every purchase. This has been a gamechanger for companies with employees travelling across the globe. So if your sales team is in Montreal from Tuesday to Wednesday and then in New York Wednesday to Friday, every purchase they make will be approved and recorded in a matter of seconds, all in one place.

❌  Delayed employee reimbursement ⏳

✅  ​​Get instant access to funds during business travel with Float  💳

No manager or employee wants to use their personal credit card during business travel let alone wait for reimbursement. It causes added stress to employees having to use their own money (not to mention waiting to get it back), while complicating expense management with piles of receipts for finance teams to sort through. 🤯 


Is your head exploding yet? Don’t worry, we’ve got an app for that. Our smart spend software along with Float’s physical and virtual cards enable companies to issue an unlimited number of corporate cards to employees in under 3 days. That’s right ​​– no more personal cards during business travel ever again.🕺🏻 So if your marketing team is off to Chicago for a conference, you can easily issue cards for all employees attending, set a spending limit and make each of them valid for the duration of the trip only. This makes it easier for employees to access corporate funds and spend during business travel, while simplifying the process for finance teams by no longer having to reimburse employees and chase them down for receipts.

Take off with Float ✈️

If your teams are travelling often, then Float should be one of the first things on your packing list! 🧳  Our smart automation spend software alongside our corporate cards simplifies corporate travel expense management, saving companies valuable time, energy and money. Float helps you understand where your money is coming and going, who is spending it and how much, allowing businesses to be more strategic, efficient and informed in the way they spend. 

To learn more about how Float can help your company spend smarter and travel better, connect with us today!

The Most Bizarre Business Expenses Ever Submitted

Have you ever wondered what employees are trying to pass off as legitimate business expenses? As a financial controller, you may think you’ve already seen it all. But our team at Float did some digging and uncovered some of the most outrageous expenses ever submitted. Here are some favourites.

Take your morning commute to new heights 💸

Ever wondered if a $2,500 helicopter ride labelled as “transportation” would be approved? Well, the answer is no. 🚁  However, during the pandemic, a $20K private jet to safely travel to an international photoshoot was quickly approved – no questions asked! ✈️

Something smells funky here 😬

Although it’s a key ingredient in some of our favourite recipes, it’s not quite the aroma you want while trying to get some shut eye on your business trip. In 2015, an employee from a sales team working in the food industry admitted to booking a separate hotel room for $85 per night to store hundreds of garlic samples simply because he couldn’t stand the smell. 👃🏼 The travel expense = not approved!

Repairs and maintenance…to thyself 💆🏼‍♀️

This past year an employee thought they would be able to get away with submitting a receipt for a $7K facelift, labelling it as repairs and maintenance. I guess you could say some repairs were made but not the kind that your CEO needs to pick up the tab for. 🤨

Everyone deserves a lunch break 🍽

Picture this, you’re a production crew member shooting a commercial on a farm. Among your fellow team members and models is a stable of horses waiting to enter the next scene. 🐎  Lunchtime rolls around and everyone’s gotta eat! In California, one woman felt that it was only right to expense lunch, even for the horses! 50 bags of carrots and a detailed explanation later, her finance team approved this and went on with their day. 🥕🤷🏻‍♀️

Allow us to pick your brain 🧠

How much does a human skull cost? Asking for a friend. In 2013, a finance manager expressed that one of the most bizarre expenses he came across was for a human skull.💀  While it was being used for a legitimate medical experiment, it’s not everyday that you see a transaction like this run through the general ledger. 


All jokes aside, many outrageous expense claims like the ones listed above can fall under the radar if a company doesn’t have a smart system in place. Using a platform like Float, finance managers can simplify expense management with full visibility over company spending, how much is spent and by who. It gives finance teams an eagle eye with more control and encourages employees to spend responsibly and ethically – minimizing the chances of ridiculous expense submissions. 👍🏼

Three Ways to Engage Your Virtual Team This New Year

If your team has shifted to a WFH or hybrid work routine for the foreseeable future, it’s important to keep a pulse on how everyone’s adjusting. While working from home has its perks, the kitchen-table commute can get monotonous, causing employees to feel disconnected, disengaged and fatigued. All of this combined can impact productivity, performance and general work satisfaction. As we adapt to this new way of work, managers need to find creative ways to keep employees motivated and connected in different ways. 

With a fresh new year ahead, there’s no better time than now to make some lasting changes. If you notice your team has been having a hard time staying connected while working from home, try some of these fun ideas to strengthen relationships, improve engagement and bring more smiles to the screen.

Learn something new as a team 👫👫

Teamwork doesn’t have to end at 5 o’clock. In place of a team outing, keep everyone together after work hours for a good time with a range of fun activities. 👍🏼

Cocktail Parties 🍸

Hire a mixologist to host a virtual class and teach your team how to create signature cocktails, while learning the tips and tricks of the craft. 🥂

Cooking Classes 👨🏻‍🍳

Learn how to make fresh, authentic pasta 🍝, discover the secret to the perfect sushi roll 🍣  or explore the art of french baking! 🥐

Virtual Games

Does your team love a good challenge? Join a virtual escape room and work together to solve a mystery. 🕵🏻‍♂️  Have you ever wanted to be on a TV Game Show? Host an “Employee Feud” over Zoom for a Thursday game night. 🎲

Get moving, together! 💪🏾

We all know that our productivity at work is directly linked to our mental and physical health. When you find your team is feeling bogged down, introduce new ways to sharpen their minds and improve their well-being. Host a group yoga class 🧘🏻‍♀️ or create an incentive for everyone to get their steps in. Nike Run Club is a great tool teams can use to stay connected, track their fitness and hold themselves accountable on a weekly basis. Stepping out for fresh air or getting a little sweat in is the perfect antidote managers can prescribe for long hours at the desk and all that Zoom fatigue.

Coffee breaks but virtual ☕️

In the corporate world, getting a coffee means more than simply getting a coffee. 😉 It’s a social outing that sparks conversations, creates opportunities to network and actually helps to build relationships with co-workers. Working from home unfortunately eliminates this altogether. Managers can change this by sending employees e-gift cards to their favourite coffee shop or an immediate spend approval for their daily order of a venti almond milk latte! If your team uses virtual cards like ours at Float, thoughtful gestures like these are simple and easy to do – and can make all the difference in your employees’ day. 😊

Whether your organization is working from home indefinitely or taking the hybrid route in 2022, keeping a pulse on everyone’s mental and physical wellness and boosting engagement is a non-negotiable. Creating a culture of collaboration and connectedness with virtual teams doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can be really fun! 🎉

If you and your team explore any of these ideas, let us know! Share your experience on Instagram or LinkedIn and tag Float!

What Is a Decentralized Organizational Structure?

The way we work is changing constantly. Employee expectations are shifting, smarter technology is on the horizon and the needs of our customers are evolving too. More and more companies are transitioning their internal structures to be more decentralized, which is giving greater autonomy and decision-making power to all employees. Let’s explore why we’re seeing a spike in companies moving toward a decentralized structure and how it’s driving stronger growth and innovation.

What is a decentralized organizational structure?

It’s when a company chooses to spread out their decision-making power to all of their departments versus limiting it to just the leadership team. It’s about ditching traditional hierarchies and inviting a more collaborative approach by encouraging every employee to have a say in what goes on. It also makes use of the diverse expertise of employees within every team and invites new perspectives into key decision-making so you’re never stagnant and always innovative. 🙌

It keeps you in the fast lane 🏎

When managers delegate decision-making power to other teams, productivity goes up. ⬆️ A decentralized structure allows managers to make the best use of the talent, expertise and resources available so they can move fast and go-to-market quicker. It’s the perfect detour to avoid the typical bottlenecks that happen in a centralized organization where a chain of command “approves” all decisions. For startups specifically, this decentralized structure not only develops high-powered teams, but it fosters responsiveness and innovation for rapid growth and scalability. 🚀

Let’s say your customer service team receives a complaint about your SaaS product. The customer is upset and needs a response as soon as possible. Instead of placing the customer on a long hold to connect with upper management, a decentralized structure gives your rep the authority to address and resolve the issue on the spot. Not only does this save time and frustration for both parties, but it improves the customer service experience tenfold.

It fosters more informed, rapid-fire decision-making 🔥

Your employees are the ones on the playing field. They’re directly communicating with key stakeholders, managing critical operational tasks daily and therefore have access to valuable insights about the business. So, why not invite their perspectives in? In a centralized organizational structure, major business decisions are often made without any input from employees and consideration of how it will impact their work. A decentralized structure, however, invites all perspectives in. 🙋🏾‍♂️ It not only increases the quality of ideas and innovation for projects, but it cultivates a more informed strategy by taking into account real customer pain points that managers wouldn’t always be aware of. Shifting decision-making power to employees also frees up a lot more time for managers so they can focus on leading and other strategic priorities.

It empowers employees and boosts company culture 😃

Expectations in the workplace have shifted. Today, employees are interested in more than just earning a paycheck. They are looking for more purpose in their jobs and given that the majority of their time is spent at work, they want to feel valued and that their input matters. A decentralized structure gives employees and teams the opportunity to be actively involved in key decision making and impact where the company is headed.👍🏼 This type of structure gives employees more autonomy and reinforces that leadership trusts and values their work. When employees feel valued and are encouraged to contribute their ideas, they are more likely to be engaged, productive and do their best work. 🤩

How does Float support a decentralized structure?

Float gives companies what they need to make strategic decisions fast, without any bottlenecks. Our spend management software and corporate credit cards have eliminated expense reports entirely and invited a more efficient way to manage and control spending in your organization.

Unlike your average bank, Float makes it possible for managers to issue corporate cards to employees in 3 days or less and approve purchases in real time. 💸 Employees can easily submit spend requests with the freedom to make timely spending decisions, making it easier to move forward with innovative ideas and projects. 👏🏼

Float fits the mold of a decentralized structure because our software by design drives productivity, gives employees creative and financial autonomy and provides real-time insights to make important decisions faster and with greater accuracy.

Want to learn more about Float? Connect with us today.

Why Virtual Cards Are More Secure Than You Think

Well, they’re the same as the credit card you use every day. The only difference is that you can’t hold it in your hand. A virtual card comes with its own credit card number, an expiry date and even that three digit code on the back. They can easily be used online without exposing your primary credit card information to any wandering eyes. 👀 

As our world evolves to be more digital, the measures companies take to protect sensitive financial and personal information need to change too. With more of what we do living in the cloud, startups need to be extra vigilant about how they handle their financials. 
Now you might think virtual cards are digital – are they safe? Along with a new level of convenience and expediency for businesses, one of their biggest benefits is how secure they are. Here’s why.

The numbers always changing 🔢

Your average physical credit card is assigned a number that always remains active. Virtual cards on the other hand are always changing and generate unique credit card numbers based on a specific timeframe. This makes it a lot harder for them to get compromised. If your employees are constantly making purchases with a virtual company card and a website autosaves this information, it will only be valid for as long as the number is active. 👍🏼

Control the validity and usage 💳

Virtual cards enable finance teams and managers to set expiration dates based on their intended use and spending limits. For example, if a marketing team is headed to New York City for a conference over the weekend, their virtual cards can be validated for that specific timeframe with a hard spending limit that can’t be exceeded. This is a great way to stay on budget, control spending within a specific team and prevent any unauthorized purchases. It also eliminates risk as it relates to cards being compromised during business travel.

Say goodbye to long wait times from the bank 🐌

It’s no secret that hackers have become way more sophisticated in collecting credit information online. If this happens to an employee in your organization, not only do you have to contact your bank, cancel the card and wait 7 to 10 days for a new one, but it can put any other credit cards in your organization at risk. 😨 If there’s only one card floating in your company, then this could throw a wrench in your operations and require you to bring personal credit cards for the time being. No one wants that! Instead, virtual cards like ours at Float can be approved and delivered in a matter of days so you can get back to business in no time. 💳💨

Keep a closer eye on expense fraud 🕵🏻‍♂️

You’re also going to want to ensure transactions made internally are secure too. Virtual cards along with spend control software are the best line of defence against false or inflated expense claims by employees. Financial controllers are able to set category spend controls and instantly notify employees to submit receipts, while automatically matching the transaction with a receipt. This greater oversight allows finance teams to monitor all company transactions to keep tabs on where corporate funds are going and why. 💸

Float introduces a smarter, more secure way to spend

Our virtual cards and automation software were designed to save companies time and money, while providing an efficient, stress-free and more secure spending experience for teams. Easily issue virtual and physical cards to your team, set spending limits and gain better oversight on your company financials. At Float, we’re in the business of making things as fast and simple as possible. That’s why we took it a step further and made it possible to get your team approved for virtual cards in one day and delivered in three. 🙌

Let’s Make Smarter Spending Your 2022 Resolution

A new year is the perfect time to have a clean slate. If you’re leading a startup, it’s a great opportunity to introduce new processes and leave the inefficiencies of the past year behind you. Use this first month of the new year to make business decisions or “resolutions” that will benefit you well beyond the next 12 months. A great place to start is changing the way you manage and control corporate spending with smart spend software. Let us tell you why.

Automate and hit the ground running 🏃🏻‍♂️💨

Smart spend software transforms the entire expense and spend management process by automating everything from invoice processing, spend approvals to recording transactions and issuing physical and virtual corporate cards. It quickly captures and stores all financial data online in real time and eliminates the tedious tasks that come with managing corporate expenses on a daily, monthly and annual basis. By simplifying employee access to corporate cards (no banks required), business purchases can be made easily without ever having to bring personal credit cards into the mix.👏🏼  So, in 2022, your finance team can axe those long hours inputting data and filing receipts and use their time to focus on more important work.

New year, better expense management

‘Tis the season for year-end accounting. If you’re currently in the middle of getting your ducks in a row and aren’t using smart spend software, listen up! 📣  When companies wait until the end of the year to gather receipts and review what they’ve spent, they often find themselves buried in expense reports and dumbfounded by the money they’ve spent. 🤯  With smart spend software, all of this can be put to bed. Expense reports are eliminated altogether, you can track spending in real time, prompt employees to submit receipts and easily review expense requests and approvals without ever having to chase anyone down. 


Tracking expenses on a daily basis gives you greater visibility into how your company is spending all year round, allowing you to establish clear financial policies, develop more strategic budgets and make year-end a happier time for everyone.👍🏼

Create a healthy company spend culture 😊 💵

A healthy spending culture is when an organization has the proper processes in place to manage and track spending.  It empowers companies, especially startups, to get everyone on board in the quest to spend smarter – that includes employees too. Smart spend software enables finance teams to set these foundational financial policies and spend controls that employees can understand and follow on a daily basis. It holds employees accountable to strategic budgets and workflows to keep everything organized for finance teams. Smart spend software also makes it easier for companies to issue physical and virtual corporate cards to employees, empowering them to make spending decisions and act on innovative ideas without a complex chain of command. All this together will evoke a healthy spend culture with improved operational efficiency and happy employees who are given greater autonomy and are more engaged to do their best work. 🤩

The countdown to smarter spending starts with Float 💸

Float gives businesses the power to set smarter spending goals and improve the way they manage their money. Our smart automation spend software and virtual cards bring greater efficiency, accuracy and oversight to your financial operations – all the things you want in your organization for 2022. 🙋🏼‍♂️

To learn more about how Float can help you start 2022 with a bang, connect with us today! 🍾

Upcoming Release: Team Management

Allow us to introduce to you Team Management! ⭐ An entirely new feature that allows organizations to create departments and assign specific managers within Float to empower smarter spending within teams. Team Management takes the load off your finance team by giving managers more responsibility to control budgets, while keeping financial data exclusive to administrators and finance controllers for review. 👀

When teams don’t have control over their spending, enforcing financial policies is difficult, tracking expenses is a total nightmare and overspending is much more likely. Our new Team Management feature is the solution to all of this. 👏🏼

A closer look at Team Management 🔎

Manager Permissions 🙋🏼‍♂️

Team management gives managers greater control and visibility over team spending with the authority to set predefined budgets, distribute corporate cards, approve spend requests in seconds and empower teams to make responsible spending decisions! 💸

Team Management 👫 👫

You can now assign multiple managers and spenders to various teams with added functionality like auto-tags to clearly define each employee’s role and spending authority. Easily distribute corporate cards to departments and/or team members with customized limits based on expense type or project budget.

Team Management Feature

Multi-Level Approvals ✅

Float gives you the means to decentralize spending with an easy and efficient approval process within our platform. You can create multi-level approvals for each team and define approval levels based on the spending amount for any request. Whether it’s a $200 or $20,000 request, the correct individual will be prompted (via Slack or email) to approve it, with an e-paper trail that you can always depend on. 🤝

What are the perks? 🤩

Greater accuracy and control 👍🏼

Managers now have a better view of where capital is going, how it’s being spent and who is spending it. Team management also enables a clearly defined structure for employees to make spending decisions aligned with the team’s budget and the company’s overall spending strategy.

Save time and increase operational efficiency ⏱

You can expect a simple spend approval process where expense management is a breeze, employees can make transactions quicker and finance teams are given more time to focus on important tasks.

Promote a decentralized structure 🙌🏾

Managers gain greater authority to track and manage team spending with team management, while employees have the flexibility to make business purchases on demand without a series of management approvals. 

At Float, we saw that fast-growing teams were looking for a more effective way to delegate and empower their employees.💪 So, we took matters into our own hands and created Team Management! Interested in learning more? Book a demo with Float today!

Say Goodbye to Year-End Headaches With Automated Expense Software

It’s that time of year again! Everyone’s getting in the festive spirit, with no shortage of holiday office parties, dinners and team activities. 🎄 Then comes year-end ruining all the fun. 😑 It’s no secret that closing the fiscal year is always a hectic time for finance and accounting teams. And it doesn’t help that most companies are leading with outdated and inefficient processes that only cause further delays and headaches. 

Luckily, things don’t have to go on this way. Think of automated expense software as the Tylenol to your year-end headaches. 💊 It simplifies your year-end by eliminating expense reports, automating reconciliation, tracking purchases and receipts in real-time, streamlining spending approvals and requests and more. It also gives financial teams quick access to financial reporting for better business planning and decision-making. ✅

Leave manual reports in 2021 👋

Manual expense reports are a waste of valuable time and money, especially this time of year. They’re prone to human error and can potentially compromise the accuracy of critical financial data in your annual reporting. These outdated processes not only take long but they can impact your credibility with key stakeholders like investors or your board of directors.

Automating year-end processes not only reduces these risks, but it eliminates expense reports altogether. Finance and accounting teams can verify data, record and manage invoices and receipts and generate real-time reporting with speed and accuracy. It also minimizes all of the back and forth with employees and teams, cutting all those long hours and late nights at your desktop. 😴

Stay organized all year round 🗓

With the holidays coming close and employees likely taking time off, year end is not the time to be chasing people down for receipts. Automated expense software helps companies better control and manage spending 24-7-365 so that year-end isn’t a massive pile of paperwork and receipts. It introduces a more proactive approach to corporate spending with features that streamline key processes on your year-end to-do list:

  • Reconcile your books in a flash ⚡️
  • Track business purchases in real time 💸
  • Create simple financial policies for all employees to follow 🙌🏾
  • Instantly notify employees to submit receipts when they spend 🧾
  • Set spending limits and approve spend requests in seconds 👍🏼
  • Collect and review key financial data all in one place 👀

This keeps internal teams, financial controllers and management all aligned and organized at any point of the financial year, with no guesswork and zero stress. 

Separate business and personal with virtual cards 👏

Blurring the lines between personal and business expenses is a common mistake many businesses make – with the consequences often creeping in at annual close. 🤯 When employees use their personal credit cards for business purchases, this can make it 10x harder to track and control spending. We know that your average Canadian bank makes it even more difficult to issue corporate cards, which is why so many of us turn to our personal cards to make purchases. Good news, we have a loophole! 😉

Fully integrated with your automated expense software, virtual cards like ours at Float make it easier for businesses to issue credit cards to employees in less than a week, removing personal credit from the equation entirely. With access to virtual cards, employees have greater autonomy and more power to make responsive decisions for the business without jumping through various hoops for approval. 

End the year strong with Float 🤩

If you’re still doing things the old-fashioned way, it’s likely that your finance and accounting teams are approaching year-end feeling overworked. Well guess what, Float can help! Our automated expense software and virtual cards make it a whole lot easier to close the year without your finance team burning out. 

Float fosters a strategic partnership between finance teams and the rest of the organization by making it easy to create and follow financial policies and stay organized daily so that year-end headaches are a thing of the past. 

To learn more about how Float can help you close the year, book a demo today!

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!