Your company is growing, and so is your team - congratulations! However, this brings with it new constraints, including managing your team's expenses. Poor management can have a serious impact on employees' day-to-day lives, and on the general working atmosphere. To adopt the right approach, you don't necessarily need to install expense management software, which is often costly and cumbersome to maintain. Some solutions make it easier to manage your team's expenses.
Practices to forget
Making species available
It may seem perfectly absurd to some, but it does exist in some very small organizations. Even if you work with people you know well, making cash available to your employees is undoubtedly the worst solution you can implement. Apart from the risk of money disappearing on a regular basis, without you even realizing it, you also make it much harder to keep track of expenses, since there's no traceability. In the event of disagreement, it's your word against your colleague's, which can quickly lead to tension or conflict, and affect the working atmosphere.
Circulate the company card
Lending your employees their business bank card is not a good solution either. Passing a business card from hand to hand is the best way to end up not knowing where it is. This increases the risk of it being lost, misused or even hacked. You then find yourself without a business bank card, and you have to cancel it with your bank. In the event of fraud, your role is to lodge a complaint. This situation can quickly become critical for your company if you don't act quickly enough. Add to this the fact that, in order to get their hands on the company card, everyone blames each other, and your teams become divided. As a result, the working atmosphere deteriorates sharply and quickly becomes unbearable.
Having employees pay in advance: a solution to be avoided
Many companies choose to have their employees pay company expenses in advance, and to have them fill in an expense form for reimbursement. While this is a common practice, it does have its drawbacks.
- The employee has to draw on his or her personal resources to meet the expenses, which can be a source of tension.
- Expense management is both time-consuming and cumbersome.
- To avoid tax adjustments linked to expense claims, you need to be very vigilant.
- To avoid wasting too much time and limit the risk of errors, it's essential to adopt an expense management software package.
If the expenses envisaged are too high to be borne by the employee, companies often set up an advance on professional expenses. This solution may be feasible, but even if it has the disadvantage of requiring the employee to advance the expenses, it has no impact on the rest of the process. In fact, the employee must still fill out expense forms. These must then be compared with the advance paid, so that the excess can be reimbursed if necessary.
What solution can help you manage your team's expense accounts?
New technologies have brought their share of solutions to make everyday business life easier. Among them, online financial institutions such as Anytime offer a complete solution, with an account, business payment cards and a dedicated management application that's intuitive and easy to use.
The online account: how does it work?
The online account is similar in every way to a traditional current account, except that its balance cannot be negative. With this account, you benefit fromphysical and virtualpayment cards . These payment cards can be managed from the dedicated mobile application. Referrers can manage card limits, as well as blocking or unblocking cards in the event of loss, fraud or inappropriate or unreasonable spending.
As soon as a cardholder makes an expenditure, the contact person is notified in real time. The employee, for his part, can immediately associate the payment receipt by taking a photo of it with his smartphone.
The manager can validate or refuse an expense with a simple click in the application. Data can also be transferred to accounting software, along with dematerialized supporting documents.
Why is this the best solution for managing team expenses?
Managing team expenses via an online account is both simple and secure. It allows you to give your employees freedom of action, while controlling their expenses remotely. And, of course, you put an end to the tensions generated by the need for employees to advance expenses, since all expenses are settled from the company account.
Using a mobile application is also a strong point, because your employees on the move can insert their receipts immediately, so they don't get lost or forgotten.
In terms of management, there's no need to have expense claims filled out, as everything is centralized in the application. This saves everyone precious time, especially when you consider that the average employee spends 20 minutes filling in an expense claim, and that the average time spent processing an expense claim is 50 minutes. The accountant also saves time, as he no longer has to rummage through a pile of papers to find the receipts.
By opting for the best solution, managing team expenses becomes much easier. You free up time for tasks that add real value to the company, and limit the risk of tension caused by transaction problems. Everything is simple, clear and easily accessible.
