How to set up efficient expense management

Optimising your expense management will help save you time and money. If you plan to scale your business or expand to multiple locations, having a good expense structure will give you a solid foundation to build on. 

We spoke to Patricia MacCarthy, Senior Financial Planning & Growth Associate at Juni, who shares a step-by-step guide to creating efficient expense management for your digital commerce business. 

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Create a solid policy structure 

Establishing a well-known expense policy within your business is key for good management. A standardised process in a readily available format, like a document, an internal web page or software like Notion, will make it simple for your employees to adhere to. 

In your policy structure, you can list recommended vendors and spend limits for expenses like per diem allowances for business travel. It’s also essential to clarify what is and isn’t acceptable, for example, around first class or business class travel. You should also include information on how employees should pay for expenses and how to get reimbursed if necessary. Whatever’s in your policy, make sure your policy is easy to find, well-known and understandable. 

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Distribute company credit cards 

Giving company cards to employees can reduce the amount of admin finance teams spend on expense management. When employees can simply use the card and upload their own receipts, there’s no need for extra admin around reimbursement, chasing up receipts, or filling in forms. 

Company cards are typically accompanied by the ability to set spending limits and easily activate or deactivate cards, making automated controls much smoother. 

With Juni, you can create as many virtual cards in SEK, GBP, EUR or USD as you need and set controls to monitor, limit, or block media spend at card level. Managers and your finance team will benefit from increased visibility and control of spend. You can get fast and flexible financing with Juni Capital if you need to boost your cash flow. Read more about Juni Capital and see availability for your country here.

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Choose an expense management system with automation 

When choosing an expense management system, ensure it includes automation to help you save time, decrease errors and improve your workflow. Which software you use depends on your business needs. But, when it comes to media spend, Juni is a financial platform that can save you time with automation. 

Juni can collect and scan your Google Ads and Facebook Ads invoices automatically and pre-fill all the payment details with our integrations. We also match your paid invoices to the right transactions, so you don’t have to. You can also benefit from automated insights and real-time data on your ad spend in one smart dashboard. Juni’s wide range of integrations can help streamline managing your expenses. 

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Integrate with your accounting software 

Your expense management tool should integrate with your accounting software. This will cut out the tasks of manually uploading transactions, receipts and other information to create journal entries, saving you lots of time. 

Juni integrates with Xero to automatically sync your bank feed. You can also do seamless exports to software like Netsuite or Fortnox. Soon, we’re launching SIE file exports and other tools to simplify your accounting process so you can save even more precious time. 

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Make sure you’re tracking and reporting 

Regular tracking and reporting in your accounting software, ERP or a financial platform like Juni are vital for effective expense management. Tracking expenses lets you spot trends and make decisions based on them sooner rather than later. 

Regular tracking can actually save you money – if you see spend is too high in a particular area like travel, you can act quickly to reduce it. Or, if you notice expenses are lower than anticipated, perhaps you have money left to invest elsewhere in the business. 

Another benefit of regular tracking is spotting fraud or illegitimate expense claims, which could be harder to catch if you run a large business with many employees. Identifying unusual transactions is easier when you have a centralised, automated system. 

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Work with your stakeholders 

When setting up your expense policy and optimising it over time, engaging with stakeholders across the business is important. Who you speak to will vary from business to business, but here are some examples: 

Commercial or Sales

The head of Commercial or Sales can offer guidelines on reasonable budgets for sales representatives who may need to meet with clients and travel often. They could also provide valuable input from a business development and financial aspect: they will have a good knowledge of historical spend in their department. They should be able to give an informed view of rough costs for different expenses. 

People or HR 

The People or HR team will be able to advise on offsite and team building costs and also benchmark what other firms are doing to attract talent and keep employees engaged. 

Senior leadership and other budget holders 

Senior leadership will have input on which expenses are necessary within their departments. For example, senior marketing leadership can advise on what kind of spend will be needed to attract customers. 

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What to consider if you’re scaling to multiple countries 

When you set up a sound expense management system, most of your work will be transferable to other countries. So, if you grow the business and scale globally, you’ll be in a good position to manage expenses efficiently. However, you need to be aware of your tax implications. 

Know your tax implications 

Business expenses may be deducted from your tax liability. But, how this works will differ between different regions. For example, what constitutes a reasonable amount of money to spend on entertainment, what is acceptable to class as a work expense, and how these expenses are coded in your accounting. 

You need to ensure that the guidance you’re giving to employees as a business aligns across different countries and their regulatory bodies. Tax compliance is an essential aspect of scaling to other countries, so ensure you do your due diligence and clearly understand what is and isn’t acceptable. 

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Regularly review your policy 

Once you’ve created your policy, you’ll need to regularly review it, especially if you’re scaling the business. The good news is that even if you expand to multiple countries, most of your expense management probably won’t need to change - you just need to make sure you’re compliant.