From saving on supply costs to renegotiating your rent, these simple steps can help you reduce small business expenses and build up your bottom line.
By FINSYNC
What small business couldn’t use a bit more cushion in their bank account? Improving your cash flow isn’t just about increasing sales. There are several small steps you can take to lower your business expenses and keep more cash in your account.
Chances are, you don’t even realize all of the places where your business could save a few bucks, and even the smallest changes add up over time. Start considering every dollar that goes out, and get ready to find money you never even knew you had.
Here are 10 ways you can reduce your business expenses to boost your cash flow:
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Minimize Nonessentials
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Review Recurring Expenses
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Lower Supply Costs
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Hire Contractors
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Downsize or Sublet
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Work From Home
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Negotiate Rent
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Consolidate Your Online Tools
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Barter
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Go Green
Learn best practices for how small businesses can manage reimbursements, and how to create efficient processes for employees and accountants to limit time spent managing expenses.
By FINSYNC
If you ask an administrator what part of their job they enjoy the least, there’s a good chance they’ll say managing expense reimbursements.
What could be more tedious and time-consuming than sorting through piles of paper receipts, cutting checks and tracking payment processing? What about reimbursement disputes or the difficulty of simply getting sales reps to properly file an expense report?
We’re here to help. In this article, we’ll show you how to manage reimbursement efficiently and how to keep track of expense reports. You’ll also learn expense management best practices and the best way to deal with expense reimbursements.
What is Expense Reimbursement Management?
Expense reimbursement management is the process in which an organization reimburses or “pays back” an employee. This includes out-of-pocket business-related expenses. For example, treating a client to dinner, or the cost of airfare to a business convention. Expense reimbursement, though simple in principle, is seldom easy. It’s a complicated process that can be as difficult to track as it is to define. Every company has a different expense reimbursement policy with varying criteria for what is considered a business expense. For example, most travel related expenses like flights, hotels and meals are considered business-related. Therefore eligible for reimbursement. However, only if incurred while performing duties on behalf of the company. For this reason it is incredibly important that companies not only clearly define their expense management policy, but also implement a method to efficiently manage expense reimbursements.How to Keep Track of Work Expenses?
The majority of businesses track work expenses via an internal system which employees use to report their expenses for reimbursement. For example, an employee who travels from New York to Chicago to meet a client may submit his travel expenses for reimbursement by filing specific paperwork. Then, submit his original receipts with the HR/finance department for review. This is an archaic process that’s plagued by human error and generates mountains of paperwork that someone has to get paid to process. Thankfully, there are several ways to efficiently manage expense reimbursement.Expense Management Best Practices
To manage expense reimbursement efficiently, a business must ensure a seamless expense management process via a precise and timely reporting system. In other words, you need to make it as easy as possible for your employees to submit their expenses for reimbursement. Here are the best practices for efficient reimbursement management. You can implement these to improve the process and minimize unwanted costs.-
Clearly Define Your Expense Management Policy
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Make it Easy to Submit Expense Reports
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Implement an On-Time Payment Mechanism
What’s the Best Way to Manage Expense Reimbursements?
The best way to manage expense reimbursements is by streamlining the expense reporting system all together. The more roadblocks you remove from the reporting process, the easier it will be for your employees to accurately report their expenses. Integrated expense tracking software can simplify the task of expense reporting and eliminate the time-consuming task of data entry. Besides saving time and money, expense tracking software improves efficiency and enables your business to effectively manage expenditure according to your company’s reimbursement policy. FINSYNC bill pay makes it easy to track business-related expenses and automates what your employees once had to do manually. The software integrates with your back office, providing your team with a portal to tag expenses to specific projects, track time and submit expenses for reimbursement all from the same place. Since everything is handled in a single portal, it’s much easier to get employees to submit reimbursements on time. FINSYNC’s suite of software tools is designed to free up your time. That way you can get back to growing your business. The platform streamlines your back-office operations to help you manage your business better and with less effort. Our automated online expense management software is not just cost-effective. It's a convenient solution for an inefficient process that also integrates with our other cash flow management tools. Ready to increase the efficiency of your expense reimbursement process? Take FINSYNC for a test drive with a free week-long trial.Services | FinSync | Quickbooks | Bill.com | Gusto | Expensify | TSheets | Harvest |
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Payments | |||||||
Bill Pay | |||||||
Invoicing | |||||||
Accounting | |||||||
Payroll | |||||||
Expense Reimbursement | |||||||
Time Clock | |||||||
Time Sheets | |||||||
Projects | |||||||
Cash Flow Management |