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We got funded!

Leen Shami

May 26, 2022

5

We're thrilled to announce that Pluto closed US$6M in Seed funding in February, led by Global Founders Capital.

With GFC being the lead investors, we've had participation from several of the world's leading investment firms and entrepreneurs. Soma Capital, Graph Ventures, Adapt Ventures, Ramp, Thejo Kote (Founder of Airbase), Shaan Puri, and William Hockey (Co-founder of Plaid) were some of the few who participated.

With our Seed round, we aim to get closer to achieving our mission; to streamline company expenses for MENA businesses. 

The problem

Company spending in the MENA region is problematic, time-consuming, and frustrating. Managing company spending in MENA today is difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating, as today, companies only get a single debit or credit card.

OTPs

Today, employees all share one company credit card, which usually leads to an OTP being sent to the CFO, financial leader, or founder of the company. Most bank OTPs last from 2 to 10 minutes before they’re expired. So, if an employee doesn’t get the OTP in time, they won’t be able to complete the transaction.

Overspending

When a company credit card is issued, you cannot control spending. This means there is no way to set limits on the card to avoid being overcharged by recurring subscriptions or employees going over budget.

No visibility

You cannot get real-time visibility or instant reports on business expenses with company credit cards. This makes making informed decisions about allocating resources in real-time more challenging.

Petty cash

Banks have no ideal solution for petty cash management. Companies typically maintain a cash vault at their offices, distribute loose cash to employees, and spend countless hours collecting and matching invoices.

The solution

Introducing Pluto Card: a corporate card & spend management platform that allows MENA companies to simplify and control their business expenses.

With Pluto's software, managers can issue their employees virtual cards with spend and control limits, cards that get canceled after a one-time purchase, and cards with a recurring daily, weekly, or monthly budget.

Employees can request expenses from their managers and submit reimbursement requests by dragging and dropping receipts onto the software. This happens in real-time, where managers can view employee requests as they happen, see what is being spent and where, and gain insight into instantaneous expense reports, helping them make informed decisions.

Pretty straightforward.

Want to see Pluto in action? Sign up and get a private demo here.

Find out how much your business can save with Pluto

Discover your savings with Pluto's Cost Saving Calculator and take control of your expenses. Unlock cost-efficiency now!

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Learn how Pluto is helping Keyper        to eliminate petty cash spending and optimize spend management

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At Pluto Card, our mission is to assist businesses of all scales make well-informed choices. To uphold our standards, we follow editorial guidelines to guarantee that our content consistently aligns with our high-quality benchmarks.

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5
All
Procurement
December 20, 2023

Vlad Falin

Procure-to-Pay Process: What it is, Benefits, and Steps Involved

The procure-to-pay process doesn’t mean the procurement process. It is a subset of procurement that integrates purchasing and accounts payable.

Traditionally, the procurement process is scattered across the business, and the procurement team needs help to gain visibility or control. The employees purchase from different vendors, the approval process is chaotic and delayed, the stakeholders are stuck in email threads to review the expenses, and the procurement team struggles to get an overview of the organization’s needs.

Procuring the best goods and services becomes problematic since the team is left with open information loops. As a result, it spends more time optimizing the procurement cost and improving the bottom line.

What is the Procure-to-Pay Process?

The procure-to-pay process streamlines the scattered procurement parts to combine purchases and payments. Instead of a process spread across different software, the procurement process shifts to a centralized platform.

The employees get a dedicated platform to raise purchase requests and obtain approvals. The platform notifies stakeholders, such as managers, legal teams, finance teams, IT teams, and other relevant decision-makers to review and approve the proposals. As a result, the procurement team seamlessly moves to the vendor evaluation and negotiation stage without worrying about approvals or delays. The finance team efficiently handles accounts payable since the purchase and payment process is integrated.

So, while earlier, the purchases were handled solely by the procurement team and payments solely by the finance teams, the procure-to-pay process gives both teams an overview of the process from start to finish. In this post, we will discuss how this procure-to-pay process helps you optimize your procurement function and improve your bottom line.

Why Do You Need a Procure-to-Pay Process?

The procure-to-pay process is not just for your finance team or procurement team. It helps the entire organization to gain resources efficiently. Here are eight ways that demonstrate how moving to a streamlined process benefits you:

1. Visibility

All the relevant stakeholders get visibility into the process and the status. Be it the employee, managers, finance team, legal team, IT team, or procurement team — each one can track the progress without delving into multiple email threads. Additionally, teams get insights that help procurement teams optimize costs with data-driven decision-making.

2. Compliance and Control

You can implement advanced controls, such as customized approval workflows and spending budgets, without micromanaging the teams. You can successfully enforce internal control over financial reporting without creating unnecessary team resentment. 

So, for instance, if any expenses or purchases beyond $50,000 require additional approval from the legal and IT team, you can easily configure those controls within the approval workflow.

3. Streamline Workflows

The traditional process demands the employees to go from one office to another or spend days on email and Slack conversations before the managers give the green signal. At times, approval of a critical stakeholder is missed, causing delays and disrupting the workflow.

With the procure-to-pay process, you can create custom workflows depending on the purchase category, department, amount, etc. This accelerates workflow, and all the relevant stakeholders get notified right away.

4. Centralized Management

The procure-to-pay process integrates purchases and payments to bring all the critical information on a single dashboard. As a result, any discrepancies in the procurement process are identified in minutes. The entire procedure accelerates the real-time visibility of each stage.

5. Reconciliation

A centralized management system makes collecting and storing documents easy; additionally, since it integrates purchases and payments, the information syncs across accounting systems and ERPs.

During the audit season, this becomes a blessing where the finance team doesn’t have to chase teams for complete records. Also, it becomes easier to store and lock all the transactions and share these records with external parties.

6. Risk Management

The procurement operation is prone to financial, operational, and reputational risks. With the procure-to-pay process, teams can efficiently manage the vendors, purchase requests, approvals, and payments on a centralized platform in real time. It reduces the risk of fraud, ensures policy compliance, and provides visibility into spending patterns without burdening any team.

7. Insights

You can easily see the inside out of your procurement process, whether you want to know how much the marketing team spends or which vendor costs you the most. It makes it more convenient to reduce procurement costs and optimize purchases to improve the bottom line. Also, as all the information is centralized, there are no gaps or missing loopholes, providing complete transparency of your expenses.

8. Invoice Management

The procure-to-pay process ensures that all the invoices are captured and extracted into a centralized platform. This facilitates two-way and three-way matching without causing delays. Moreover, the reconciliation process becomes easy as all the records are systematically recorded.

So, whether you receive an invoice via email, WhatsApp, or physical copy, you can easily add it to the system without risking losing an invoice.

What are the Stages in the Procure-to-Pay Process?

The traditional procurement process has over nine steps strewed across different platforms. These include identifying goods and services, purchase requests, vendor selection, negotiation, purchase orders, inspection of the goods received, three-way matching, approvals, and payment and reconciliation.

While the procure-to-pay process doesn’t alter these stages, it integrates them for a streamlined workflow. So, earlier, if the approvals took days or weeks, keeping employees and the procurement team on hold, now it only takes a few minutes or hours. You centralize the procurement process and save money and time.

Here are five key stages in the procure-to-pay process:

1. Purchase Request

Purchase Request

Employees no longer need to travel from one office to another, seeking approvals manually from managers. The streamlined procure-to-pay process gives employees a centralized dashboard to raise requests and specify their needs. It helps the procurement team to understand what the employee needs as well as examine the purchase details. Moreover, the stakeholders can quickly approve or reject the requests from the dedicated platform.

Administrators add customized approval flows to enforce internal policies. They create trigger-based approval workflows based on the expense amount, category, and department to accommodate intricate hierarchies.

For instance, they have the option to create separate workflows for expenses below $5000 and those exceeding a certain budget. Similarly, they can add specific stakeholders to the custom workflows for minimum friction and delay. 

2. Purchase Order

Purchase order

While the vendor evaluation, selection, and negotiation happen on dedicated ERPs, the procure-to-pay process enables you to bring all this information on a consolidated platform. You maintain a synced and consistent database to make purchases faster and more secure.

Pluto integrates with your ERPs and allows you to maintain a centralized vendor database. You can add the vendor directly to the platform and systematically record information. You can add a field in your approval workflow to determine whether the employees are purchasing from a vendor list or a new vendor.

A systematic list helps you consolidate expenses and optimize costs. Moreover, ordering becomes more accessible with a unified platform for raising and approving purchase requests and maintaining an ERP-synced vendor database.

3, Invoice Management

Invoice Management

Traditionally, vendors send invoices to a dedicated email or an address. The employees send them for approval and payment. It takes days to clear the expenses. Additionally, the accounting team spends considerable time and energy on maintaining records.

The procure-to-pay strategy reduces this effort and streamlines the procedure. It captures and extracts the invoice from the emails and attaches to a dedicated purchase request and order. This helps the teams match the purchase order, invoice and goods received note (GRN) without juggling multiple platforms.

It pulls all the information with optical character recognition (OCR) technology, reducing manual data entry. Since this platform syncs with the accounting system, the accounting team spends minimal time on data entry.

4. Payment Processing

Payment Processing

Processing payments becomes a task when the finance team has to chase employees for invoices and wait for approvals and verification. The procure-to-pay technique centralizes the entire process, giving real-time visibility and helping finance teams make timely payments. 

Moreover, with Pluto, you can integrate your procurement software with the payment gateways to ease the payment process further. Also, you get better Forex rates than banks, helping you save more money. Overall, with the approvals and invoices streamlined, payment processing becomes easy.

5. Reconciliation

Reconciliation

Reconciliation is the hardest part, even when you perform the data entry and data sync monthly. You risk losing documentation and creating gaps in the records.

The procure-to-pay process consolidates the entire procurement cycle to bring all the critical information on a single platform. There are minimal gaps; records are up-to-date due to real-time tracking and recording.

With Pluto, you can integrate with platforms like MS Dynamics, Oracle Netsuite, QuickBooks, etc. So, with your ERPs and accounting software synced, you can easily record all the transactions digitally and securely.

Pluto further enables you to lock the transactions to avoid fraud once approved. Moreover, you can create view-only access for your records to simplify auditing for external parties.

Improve Your Bottom Line With the Right Procure-To-Pay Solution

Overall, the procure-to-pay process helps you automate your procurement process without changing your approach too much. You just need to find the right solution that assists your procurement process. 

We discussed more about this in our procure-to-pay solutions post, where you will find what procure-to-pay software does and how to pick the right one.

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Corporate Cards
October 26, 2022

Leen Shami

Corporate Credit Card Policy: What is it & How to Create One

Corporate cards are a great way to manage your spending, control expenses, eliminate petty cash, and, most importantly - give your employees the freedom to focus on their work without any blockages.
But for everything to work smoothly and for everyone to know how to use your corporate cards, you must establish some ground rules.

What is a Corporate Credit Card Policy?

A corporate credit card policy entails the protocols and terms and conditions of use associated with a company credit card issued in an employee's name. A company credit card policy protects businesses and companies from unauthorized payments and inappropriate use by outlining the repercussions and consequences of such actions.

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Why Do You Need a Corporate Credit Card Policy?

In the same way, companies have a travel and expense policy; they have a corporate card policy. A company credit card policy is set in place to ensure all company cards are used for authorized and permitted business purchases.

In a corporate credit card policy, the guidelines, responsibilities of the cardholder, dos and don'ts, and repercussions of misuse are outlined. This ensures that all business finances are regulated.

While it is important to have a corporate credit card policy, Pluto takes the extra step to ensure all transactions and purchases are pre-approved, regulated, and permitted by:

  • Creating Pluto cards that can only be used with specific vendors
  • Setting daily, weekly, or monthly limits on cards
  • Having an approval workflow to make sure the necessary departments are approving all transactions
Credit Card
Creating a corporate card with Pluto

Which Employees are Eligible for a Corporate Credit Card?

It is essential to note which job roles are eligible for a company credit card to protect your business against accusations of favoritism or discrimination.

A company can decide whether all employees, c-suites, or department heads are eligible for corporate credit cards.

Typically, companies only give executives, VP levels, C-suite, and salespeople access to company credit cards. However, there are situations where employees who are not eligible for a company credit card may have to pay for business-related expenses, such as plane tickets. In this case, the employee would ask their manager to pay for such an expense with the corporate credit card, or they will have to pay using their personal credit card or cash and file a reimbursement, which will be reimbursed with the next paycheck.

 With Pluto's expense management platform, a company does not have to worry about corporate credit card eligibility or the hassle of employees filing reimbursements.

Using Pluto's platform, the business will have access to unlimited corporate cards, meaning any employee can be issued corporate cards with spend limits, approval workflows, and category-specific purchases. This results in no overspending and knowing all transactions are pre-approved and authorized due to the card only being accepted at allocated vendors.

Suppose an expense is made using cash or a personal credit card. In that case, the employee can snap a picture of their receipt and have it approved on the spot with Pluto's Whatsapp reimbursement feature, making it easier for finance teams and employees to sort through reimbursement receipts!

Corporate card message
Pluto's Whatsapp Reimbursements

Components of a Corporate Credit Card Policy

When creating a corporate credit card policy, the credit cards intended to be used, the credit card provider's requirements, and the company's needs should be known.
In most cases, corporate credit card policies include the following points as part of their corporate credit card policy:

1. Employee Credit Card Agreement

When issuing a corporate credit card to employees, an employee credit card agreement must be signed to ensure that employees understand the card belongs to the company, regardless of the employee's name on the card.
The agreement will also state that the company credit cards can only be used for business-related expenses, where the company can investigate charges, if necessary.

2. Permitted Types of Expenses 

The types of transactions that can be made should be stated clearly in the company credit card policy: work-related expenses only. These include, but are not limited to:

  • Meetings with clients
  • Work-related travel (e.g., flight ticket, accommodation)
  • Educational material
  • Software subscriptions
  • Legal document expenses
  • Business meals

While tending to the above is a good way to ensure company credit cards are being used for business-related expenses, Pluto offers cards that can only be used for specific vendors, such as fuel cards, to avoid mishaps or fraud.

Corporate card fuel expense
Vendor-specific purchase cards

With these policies and procedures in place, employees should note that if an instance occurs where the company credit card is used for non-authorized transactions, personal expenses, or cash withdrawals, they will be faced with disciplinary action.

The disciplinary action could result in the following:

  • Cancellation of the company credit card
  • Withdrawal of corporate credit cards privileges
  • Recovery of funds from employee's salary
  • Termination of employee contract

3. Exceptions

In some cases, an employee cardholder may incur an expense that is not usually permitted under the company credit card policy. To be able to do so, the company credit card policy should indicate how the cardholders can apply for an exception and get permission for such expenses.
While doing so, the company should also outline specific transactions that can never be made using the company credit card.

4. Spend Limits

The spending limits on a company credit card usually depend on the employee's job and level of seniority. The company credit card policy should clarify the card's limits when receiving a new card.
In general, businesses can choose to have limits established based on transactions per-item or on a cumulative basis. However, not all employees will have the same spending limits.
With Pluto, you can set spending limits on virtual or physical cards before issuing them to ensure that employee spending stays within their budget.

Corporate card new card creation
Set spend limits on Pluto

5. Temporary and Permanent Limit Increase

To get a limit increase on a company credit card, the cardholder must fill out a form stating why they need a limit increase on their card and whether it is a temporary or permanent limit increase. The form will then have to be signed by the employee's manager and sent to the company credit card provider for processing.
Although it is possible, the process of getting a limit increase on a company credit card may take quite some time. Pluto allows managers, administrators, and finance teams to increase limits on virtual or physical company credit cards in seconds.

Corporate card limit
Edit spend limits on Pluto in seconds

6. Approval Requests

A company credit card policy must show how approval requests work when using a corporate credit card. Usually, approvers are responsible for reviewing all transactions regularly. By doing so, the following is warranted:

  • The transaction or expense adheres to the company credit card policy
  • A receipt is attached to the transaction made
  • The description of the transaction follows the details mentioned above

Pluto takes the extra mile to automate approval workflows and receipt reconciliation. With Pluto, all approval requests will be made through the Pluto platform, and receipts will be collected through Whatsapp as soon as a transaction is made.

Corporate card request
Approval workflows on Pluto

7. Cardholder Responsibilities

Including the cardholder's responsibilities in the company credit card policy is an essential part of the document. The purpose is to describe how employees can ensure they use their cards appropriately.

It's important to include that:

  • Cards cannot be used for personal expenses
  • Cards must only be used by the cardholder to help avoid fraud 
  • Cards and PINs must be stored in a safe place
  • Cards must be reported as stolen and lost as soon as possible
  • Document all expenses and send monthly reports

8. Policy Violations

Employees are expected to comply with the corporate card policy. If the cardholder violates the terms stated, disciplinary action will be taken against the employee.

The disciplinary action can include:

  • Face a written warning for violating the corporate credit card policy
  • Pay for the expenses yourself if you've used the card for any inappropriate use
  • Lose the right to have a corporate credit card if you lose a receipt or violate the policy
  • Suspension or termination of employment if you give the company credit card to unauthorized people or abuse the expense limits
  • Loss of company card privileges if expenses are not submitted on time
  • Legal action and termination can be imposed if prohibited purchases are made using the company credit card

How Can a Corporate Card Policy Prevent Fraud?

Globalization and remote work have increased the risks of card fraud and identity theft. A proper corporate credit card policy will minimize these risks and ensure that your corporate funds are safe.

1. Flexible limits

With Pluto, it is effortless to set card limits in real-time, so decreasing the spending limit when needed can be done in a matter of seconds. This ensures that a card is not over-exposed. If the card details were compromised, the perpetrator would not be able to withdraw any big sums.

2. Limited users

You can see all the cardholders from your Pluto dashboard and create additional cards if needed. This prevents sharing card details between the employees, as it is simply not needed anymore. The cards are used by authorized personnel, who are aware of the proper use and policies - further preventing any potential fraud and leaks.

3. Vendor-specific cards

Pluto allows you to create a card for a particular transaction, purpose, or project. This will enable you to allocate a certain amount of money that can be spent on the card, meaning the risks of any authorized charges, re-bills, or other online scams are non-existent.

4. No petty-cash

In a bigger organization, petty cash can be an issue as it is easy to defraud. Even when used properly, it is a pain to keep track of. Petty cash is no longer a problem with Pluto corporate cards, particularly when you can issue as many corporate p cards as you need with Pluto seconds (specifically 9 seconds).

The Value of a Corporate Credit Card Policy

Company card policies control employee spending, ensure compliance, and minimize fraud risk. It's even easier to maximize your results by integrating it with Pluto's expense management software.

By integrating with Pluto, you can:

  • Issue unlimited corporate cards
  • Digitize receipt reconciliation
  • Reimburse in seconds
  • Review all transactions in real-time
  • Approve expenses in an instant
  • Minimize the risk of employee fraud

Key Takeaways

A corporate card policy will help you to establish ground rules that will keep things running smoothly but, at the same time, will not limit your employees in their day-to-day work.

Ensure everyone who will have the card is aware of the rules. The great thing about using Pluto is that you can make your corporate card policy very simple, as Pluto has all the tools to manage your spending and keep everything under control.

5
All
Spend Management
January 12, 2023

Vlad Falin

How To Manage Your Company Spending In 2024?

When it comes to growing a business, many executives focus on increasing profits and growing revenue as the way to achieve their goals. 

However, one aspect of growth that is sometimes overlooked is the expense management of your organization, and how to make it more efficient.

Without proper spend management strategies, your efforts to grow the company revenue could be easily sabotaged by overstuffed budgets, inefficient spending, and a lack of expense tracking that hurts your bottom-line when tax season comes around.

That’s why this article will discuss the importance of managing your company spending, and how to do it efficiently!

The Importance Of Company Spending Management

Business spend management is a combination of strategies and business tools used to track, analyze, and manage business spending, in particular in regard to supplier relationships. 

When companies are unable to track and control their spending in real-time, they may expose themselves to financial leaks and lose revenue in the long run. 

The majority of a company's costs come from external expenditures, which account for 40-80% of its total costs. A lack of efficient spend management can have disastrous effects on your business; the statistics speak for themselves.

As a result, businesses that understand and wish to mitigate this risk need to use spend management software to do the heavy lifting. Not only does the software offer cost-saving opportunities, but it also prevents overspending.

A spend management solution becomes particularly crucial when it comes to tax reporting, as the expense documenting process simplifies the tax reporting, which makes it easier to receive tax breaks and avoid hefty penalties.

For the United Arab Emirates region, corporate income tax (or CT for short) will be applied to business activities starting on the 1st of June 2023. You’ll be charged 9% for taxable income exceeding AED 375,000, but 0% if your annual taxable income falls below that threshold. As such, keeping track of your expenses and managing spending will be even more important than ever.

Benefits of Expense Management

The importance of spending management is not limited to enterprises with large expenses, but also to small and medium-sized businesses looking to improve profitability, scalability, and sustainability. 

There are several benefits to spend management automation, regardless of your business size. These benefits include:

An in-depth analysis of all spending

Saving money for your business requires analyzing all aspects of it in order to find cost-cutting opportunities or other areas of improvement. 

Pluto gives you a general overview of your operations in terms of costs, as well as an in-depth analysis of your spending, making it much easier to find what you are looking for.

Maintaining an efficient budget

When it comes to proper spend management, your budget is crucial. But building a proper budget requires that you have both an eagle-eye view of your business, as well as attention to the smaller details. This is made much easier through the use of spend management software.

Control over company spending in real time

It’s much harder to make efficient decisions about your spending when you are basing them on data that is already outdated. 

With Pluto, you’ll be working with real-time data to ensure your decisions are based on current information.

An easier time identifying and eliminating out-of-policy and fraudulent expenditures

It’s harder to reduce out-of-policy spending when you can’t track it effectively. Pluto will help you automatically detect fraudulent and out-of-policy employee expenses and alert you to them.

Payables can be tracked and processed easily

If you are managing your expenses properly and using the right account payable software to do so, you won’t have an issue keeping track of your payables, as well as have a better overview of your spending.

Better negotiations with your suppliers

You can make better decisions when it comes to your supply contracts and purchases when you have real-time data of your expenses.

Using Pluto's unified spend management dashboard, finance teams can always see where money flows. Pluto's procurement software enhances the visibility of financial transactions, enabling more informed decision-making for procurement and sourcing processes.

Budgeting is the key to delivering on your promises, growing your team, enhancing your product offerings, and weathering inevitable economic downturns.

The Problem with a Manual Spend Management Process

Trying to manage business spending without proper oversight and strategies in place is like putting all your home expenses on a credit card without checking the statement every month. You might not know what you are facing until it’s too late. 

If you don't implement intentional spend controls, you may still be profitable, but you won't know when your situation will change or how close you are to the edge. 

The importance of spend control becomes more obvious to companies, especially growing ones, after they face a tight situation or a disruption to their business. As a result of these problems, businesses can experience budget overruns, erratic cash flows, supply chain management issues, and deteriorating customer relations. 

But traditional spend management techniques are limited, which is where the aid of software comes into place. If you limit yourself to manual spend management strategies, you might face the following issues:

  • Outdated spending reports: Traditional methods of managing spend tend to produce spending data that is at least a month old. As a result, finance teams have difficulty identifying and correcting unnecessary spending before the damage is done. 
  • Overspending: Overspending and budget noncompliance are a consequence of finance teams being unable to track real-time spend. Costs like these can quickly add up to cause trouble for tax authorities as well as overspending. 
  • Inefficient strategies due to lack of real-time data: If you lack real-time data and work only based on reports that are outdated, you might be missing the forest for the trees. This could have the effect of optimizing your spending rather than improving your overall business process efficiency. In order to cut costs and optimize operations, real-time spend data is essential. 
  • Manual entry errors: Data entry errors skyrocket if your finance team has to move data between multiple software programs and map employee spending manually. As a result, financial reporting could be delayed. 
  • Issues with remote working and compliance: Employees who work remotely need to pay for other business expenses quickly and in accordance with compliance requirements. The traditional spend management system, with its shared corporate cards and lengthy approval processes, simply cannot keep up.
  • Strained resources: It takes finance teams a long time to manually align expenditures to budgets after the expenditures have been made. This takes up many productive hours and, of course, can lead to errors when entering data. 

How To Manage Company Spending

Managing your company spending is both a science and an art, but much more the former than the latter. 

Each business will have its own unique challenges to overcome when it comes to spending, but there’s still general strategies you can adopt that will fit most situations.

Create a Budget that Accounts for the Future

When it comes to budgeting, you shouldn’t just think about the expenses in front of you, you also have to consider potential unexpected expenses. 

If you limit yourself to budgeting for the present, you’ll have a hard time dealing with expenses that can pop up out of nowhere.

Your budget should be realistic, but also reviewed frequently to ensure it is still appropriate for your business as it grows and evolves. 

Creating a good budget will require that you examine your current and past expenses, take a look at your spending habits, and consider your potential expenses as your business grows. 

This will give you an opportunity to review your existing processes, expense policies, and track expenses that you might not be thinking about.

Use Zero-Based Budgeting

It’s not uncommon for organizations to focus on past expenses and budgets when creating a new one. 

However, businesses and the environments around them change, and so budgets need to change as well. 

That is where zero-based budgeting comes in. This technique creates a new budget from scratch for each budgeting period. The budget is then compared to past budgets and weighed against current expenses.

In a company, zero-based budgeting can be used to keep your expenses under control. Your budget needs to be a living breathing element of your operation, and as such you need to constantly evaluate it to find realistic cost-cutting opportunities and areas that can be made more efficient when it comes to expenses.

Report and Track Your Expenses

Any expenses incurred should be documented and filed as soon as possible. This way, your business expenses are accounted for when filing its tax return. This is one area where the use of spend management software becomes crucial, as it dramatically simplifies the process of reporting and tracking your expenses. Pluto helps to categorize said expenditure, further assisting you when it comes to tax season.

Use a Spend Management Platform to Automate Processes and Digitize Expenses

As your business grows, you’ll find that using a spend management tool to track your expenses saves you a lot of time and money. In addition to tracking expenses, it tends to offer many other features, such as the ability to track invoices, payments, and credits all in one place. 

Furthermore, Pluto gives you the ability to assess your expenses on the go, thanks to mobile apps and online dashboards.

It is easier to keep track of your expenses and receipts by digitizing them. Employees can do this by taking pictures of their receipts as soon as they receive them. These images can then be uploaded and tracked through Pluto.

Automating your approval workflows and processes will help to reduce, if not outright eliminate, human error.

Key Spend Management Software Features

Using spend management software is almost mandatory if you want to make your spend tracking and reporting as efficient as possible. 

When looking to choose a platform, consider the following features:

Complete Control Over Spending Data 

If your finance teams don’t have complete control over spending, real-time data cannot be of much use to your business. 

Pluto allows your business finance managers to streamline and automate processes with superior customizability and control over workflows. 

This freedom allows admins to change or optimize workflows as business/processes scale. 

Real-time and in-depth spend analytics

Managing company funds efficiently is the essence of spend management. In order to do that, you need to keep track of your employee expenses as they occur. 

Pluto records employee expenditures in real time and provides you with a reliable picture of what they are spending. 

You can control expenses by using real-time expense tracking without restricting your employees’ work.

Additionally, Pluto provides your finance team with insights and analytics based on all the data it gets. A feature like this is crucial for proper management, especially if your goal is to cut costs and optimize spending through automation. 

Your finance team will struggle to drive meaningful change without detailed analytics, requiring them to go through reams of data and make sense of it. 

Reports on expenses provide an overview of your expense history, making it easier to track down individual purchases. Maintaining accurate records, limiting expenditures, and avoiding fraud are all made easier with this functionality.

Easy to Use

The most advanced software in the world is worthless if no one wants to use it. Simplicity and ease of use of essential business software, such as spend management, should therefore be a priority. 

You might find, for instance, that employees don't use your spend management software if they find it clunky and difficult to use. This can result in a manual spend reporting process that is time-consuming and error-prone. 

A lot of time is spent by businesses storing and processing invoices, receipts, and purchase orders. 

Pluto makes it easy to retrieve and keep track of essential documents, including matching documents to authenticate transactions, for record keeping and due diligence.

An all-in-one platform

Your spend management platform should be a centralized solution for all your spending needs. Keeping all company spending in one place, in real time, is more efficient (and more secure) than using multiple smaller tools. 

Pluto has it all: 

- Unlimited virtual cards

- Efficient reimbursements

- Spend management platform

- Real-time analytics

- Real-time spend control

Essentially, anything that will allow you not only manage your expenses, but really take you spending under control and make sure that everything is at it's maximal eff

Key Takeaways

Managing your company spending is a crucial aspect of company growth that is sometimes overlooked. Proper spending management strategies can help you find cost-cutting opportunities, gain a better overview of the health of your business, and simplify your tax reporting to avoid penalties.

When it comes to developing effective spending management strategies, you should focus on creating a budget that can evolve with your organization, reporting and tracking your expenses in real time, and using a spend management platform to automate and simplify your expense tracking and reporting.