Long-term business success depends on money management.
Many companies fail at this. Their feast-and-famine cycle causes reckless spending that depletes their finances.
This continues until a company’s finances tip. Many companies cut expenditures to survive the downturn. Lack of fundamental change restarts uncontrolled spending.
Well-managed companies recognise the cash cycle is their lifeblood. The key to growth is spending wisely and making money.
This meticulous money management is termed spend control.
Spend control requires time and effort, but it improves every part of the firm.
The basics of better spend control:
- What is Spend control?
- Why firms require spending control
- Ignoring uncontrolled spending has implications
- Key expenditure control elements
- Technology enables greater spend control.
What is Spend control?
Spend control is how you manage your business’s cash flow. Though certain expenditure control methods reduce costs, they are not the same as cost-cutting.
Spend control is an organization’s strategic cash deployment. Spend management includes rules, methods, and instruments that help companies maximise capital utilisation. Rules and practices for spend control urge stakeholders to comply.
To implement spend control, organisations must address key expenditure questions:
- Who can spend money?
- How much may stakeholders spend?
- How are spending requests approved?
- How is spending monitored?
- Budget allocation: how?
Do firms need spend control strategies?
Many companies feel their expenditure rules insulate them from spending risks. However, firms seeking financial improvement and growth must settle for “good enough”.
Spend control saves organisations from overspending and improves Finance and Operations.
Spend control benefits
Companies with spend controls do better financially and are more agile in shifting markets. Spending control enhances financial accounts and options.
More capital reserves: You keep more capital when you have less. Increasing budgetary controls lets companies save more. Strategic cash use helps the business grow or weather economic downturns.
Better forecasting: Spending visibility improves budgeting and forecasting. Detailing your spending habits helps you understand how expenditures effect financial performance.
Better contract performance: Knowing everything should cost makes future contract negotiations easier. Good bargaining is key to controlling spending. It guarantees the best vendor prices and terms.
Faster growth: Spend control savings can fuel growth, R&D, business operations, and value. Stronger financial performance provides new funding options for growth.
Uncontrolled spending consequences
Uncontrolled spending has victims. Though organisations might get by with a weak purchasing procedure or budgetary restrictions, unrestrained spending has consequences.
Blown budgets: Without company expenditure data, the budget is useless. Without controls, stakeholders and teams spend as needed to complete tasks. This method often ignores budget, cost savings, supply chain relationships, and total costs. At reporting period conclusion, cost performance decreases and budget overruns become common.
Financial weakness: Overspending damages your company’s finances, making financing difficult. Investors avoid companies with weak financial statements. Spending too much or having a high debt ratio restricts growth funding.
Increased risk: Uncontrolled and unrecorded expenditure increases danger of accidental or purposeful losses. Without spend visibility from well-managed controls, purchasing and payment problems increase. Procurement fraud is easier to commit and harder to detect in organisations without processes.
5 tips for managing company expenses
While software is the best way to control costs, following best practices simplify deployment and improve procurement.
1. Establish a method
Visibility is key to cash flow management. Visibility and control start with creating and documenting your buying process. Process documentation helps stakeholders and accounts payable teams:
- Purchase requisition intake forms
- Obtain necessary spending approvals
- Purchase orders for approved purchases
- Confirm and pay for purchases
- Manage suppliers and analyse spending
2. Find expensive expenditures.
Organisations spend most of your money in these areas:
Software
In the previous decade, subscription-based software has drastically boosted organisational IT stack spending. Software costs over $15M for the average 4,000-person company, according to Gartner.
Importantly, 30% of software spending is wasted or underutilised. This includes:
- Shelfware—abandoned tools
- Not used features or services
- Auto-renewing software
- Similar or redundant tools
- Contracts for identical tools
Due to the many ways firms overpay on software, budgetary controls are crucial.
Tail spend
Small-dollar indirect procurement, sometimes known as “tail spend,” is not related to a project or product. This “everything else” category accounts for up to 80% of a company’s purchasing activity, making indirect procurement one of the biggest financial leaks found during spend control.
Travel
Travel is a significant expense for corporations due to growing inflation and gasoline expenses. Budgetary limitations in travel expenditures help control costs, even while sales and trade show marketing travel promotes sales and revenue.
Examples of trip budget control:
- Travel policies, strategies, and business cases should be established.
- List trip expenses, including meal stipends, lodging prices, airfare, and permissible expenses.
- Choose preferred ground transportation, hotel, and auto rental companies.
- Describe virtual meeting policies to replace travel.
3. Limit card spending.
Many companies provide staff buying cards. Senior executives, department managers, and field workers like sales, marketing, and remote workers often do this.
Corporate cards: Traditional corporate credit cards are used for card-based spending. The physical cards function like credit cards without expense reports or reimbursements. Corporate cards are good expense management tools, but not proactive. Corporate cards can cause mismanagement and cash leaks without clear budgets.
Procurement cards: These physical or virtual cards (sometimes called p-cards) give corporate card convenience with greater controls. Procurement cards allow stakeholders to buy supplies within policies without a purchase order, improving financial management. Purchase cards have automated spending restrictions, category-based regulations, manager approval workflows, etc. Though imperfect, procurement cards increase spending controls and enable self-service purchase.
4. Collect and analyse data
Effective spending decisions demand full transparency into money flows and reasons. Data collection and organisation enable spend analysis. Spend analysis examines spending habits and trends to provide data-driven decisions like:
- Finding cost-saving opportunities
- Improving cash flow and reserves
- Financial planning and forecasting
By centralising spend data using software, organisations can make better decisions and plans.
5. Manage spending automatically
Manual processes make spend controls difficult or impossible for developing companies. Costs rise with the company. Spend data maintenance, organisation, verification, and updating are ongoing goals.
Technology reduces these constraints and saves money. By automating manual operations, firms save money, eliminate errors, boost efficiency, and boost finance and accounting productivity.
