EXPENSE MANAGEMENT
5 TECH TOOLS YOUR FINANCE STACK CAN’T AFFORD TO MISS With the drive for ever-increasing efficiency, finance departments are having to find new ways to work, and the adoption of cutting-edge tools is a way to achieve this. We look at some types of tech that you really need to be included in your finance tech stack and why they make sense in today’s uncertain world. Management Reporting One of the key areas that finance can really add value to the business is in up to the minute, insightful management reporting but as finance leaders so often note, this can end up turning into a cottage industry of staff producing reports just because that’s what they always have done. A key plank of any strategy to improve technology for finance has to be the adoption of excellent automated and ondemand reporting tools. Automation means that reports are designed and then produced efficiently with as little manual intervention as possible meaning that the process has efficiency built in. On-demand means that managers in the wider business can access the reports they need, when they need them, wherever they are in the world. With the advent of Software as a Service (SaaS) online
systems, there really is no reason why companies don’t make the move to one of the most useful tech tools you can have in your finance stack. Travel & Expenses The plain truth is that paying employee expenses isn’t an area that gains you a lot of kudos in the business when done right but can cause a huge amount of upset when you get it wrong! Employees expect that if they use their own money to pay for business expenses then they should have that reimbursed quickly and efficiently and if it doesn’t happen then that can hit morale significantly. It makes sense that people within the business should be able to book their travel and accommodation easily and know that it will be at the best price and within company policy. Using old systems or manual methods to make expense payments is also incredibly
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time-consuming and inefficient and with the advent of SaaS systems, it simply doesn’t make sense. Implementing an online method of managing expenses and travel like Rydoo makes sense from an employee happiness point of view but also when we are looking at the efficiency of our finance team. Payment Processing A very early beneficiary of the development of technology for finance, payment processing systems have come a long way in the last few years. The advent of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning mean that invoices sent into an accounts payable inbox can be processed, correctly coded and enter the payment processing stream in a matter of seconds with no manual intervention. Paying staff to open envelopes and sift through
