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What is Operating Budget: How to Create & Manage One

Mohammed Ridwan

February 23, 2023

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Businesses have all sort of budgets, such as cash budgets, labor budgets, investments budgets, project budgets, and each has their own particular function. Among those, few are as important as the operating budget.

Your operating budget consists of all your fixed and variable costs, as well as your expenses and it is what your business will use to determine what revenue will look like for a given period of time. But an operating budget isn’t simply about knowing how much you are spending and can make; it can also help you find ways to improve your bottom line. 

In this article, you’ll learn about the importance of having an operating budget, the components that form one, and how you can improve the management of your budget.

What is an operating budget?

An operating budget is a yearly financial plan showing a company's expected income and spending. It's created at the end of each year to plan for the next one. This budget helps companies predict their money flow, manage costs, and make smart financial choices. It's key for businesses to stay on track and grow. Understanding an operating budget is important for anyone running a business or managing finances.

Why do we need an operating budget?

A company's annual operating budget outlines how it intends to spend its money over a specified period. In order to create one, fixed and variable costs, as well as revenue, need to be taken into account.

The purpose of an operating budget is to determine where and when funds should be allocated, make sure all expenditures are covered, and keep things running smoothly for all types of businesses. Without one, your business cannot function efficiently. 

Unlike a capital budget, an operating budget helps businesses plan their daily operations and recurring expenses, whereas a capital budget helps them plan long-term investments.

Its purpose is to prevent cash outflows from exceeding cash inflows. It is necessary for companies to evaluate their incoming revenue and expenditures in order to accomplish this.   

The process of creating an operating budget involves:

  • Examining your costs (fixed costs, variable costs, administrative expenses, etc.)
  • Tallying your list of sources of income.
  • Estimating one-time spends
  • Working out your supplier costs
  • Estimating your revenue
  • Building cash flow projections
  • Monitoring petty-cash and other expense sections
  • Setting spending goals

While a tight operating budget with limited resources can lead to a lot of profit, it can also create inefficiencies for your business. Ideally, you should be looking for this balance when calculating your operating expenses in the current fiscal year, as well as when planning your operating budgets. 

Benefits of having operating budgets for businesses

  • Finance the expansion of your company: If you plan to obtain a business loan or raise funds from investors, you must present a detailed operating budget outlining your income and expenses.
  • Make your business budget clearer so you can plan for the future: Your business budget serves as a financial road map in a number of ways. The financial health of your company can be determined using this report, as well as what needs to be done to achieve future financial goals.
  • Help your company run more efficiently and effectively if you make a budget: Keeping a company budget can also help you stay out of debt by ensuring that the right money is spent in the right places at the right time.
  • Analyze your revenue and costs to determine where you can save money: Budgeting your business can help you identify areas where you can cut costs or increase revenue, increasing profits.
  • Avoiding debt by predicting slow months.
  • Helping you maintain control over your business.
  • Recognizing reinvestment opportunities.
  • Calculate your expected earnings.
  • Analyze the gap between your expectations and reality

What are the components of an operating budget?

Operational budgets become more valuable and relevant the more detailed they are. A budget for operating expenses may include a high-level summary as well as several supporting sub-budgets. When you are developing a budget, you'll typically include the following operating budget components:

1. Revenue

A company's revenue is generated by selling goods and services. The forecast of revenue can be based on a simple year-over-year comparison, but breaking down revenue based on its underlying components can provide more useful information.

It is not a good idea to use projected revenue at this stage. This is not advisable since emotions can lead you to misperceive the company's capabilities. Identify your actual revenue from your financial statements, and don't worry if your expenses are higher than sales revenue. It is common for businesses to lose a certain amount of money each month until they reach profitability.

2. Variable costs

As sales volume increases or decreases, these costs rise or fall accordingly. Costs associated with variable items include direct raw materials and labor, commissions , production supplies, and monthly fees on credit cards. To calculate percentages on variable costs later, you'll need to list the actual costs when you create your operating budget. It is crucial to understand how variable costs will change as you do revenue projections. 

3. Fixed costs

A fixed cost is an expense that remains relatively constant regardless of whether sales rise or fall. Among these fixed expenses are cost factors such as monthly rent, utilities, leases of equipment, and insurance. In order for a company to be profitable, it must have a small, fixed cost and variable cost as a percentage of its revenue. To do that, it's important to understand what those fixed costs are.   

4. Non-cash expenses

Stock-based compensation, deferred income taxes, and depreciation are among the most common non-cash expenses.

5. Non-operating expenses

An organization's main activity is not directly impacted by these costs. Non-operating expenses include interest payments, losses from asset dispositions, and currency exchange costs.

Operational budgets may include other items in some industries or organizations. Typically, capital expenses aren't included in operating budgets since they are long-term costs, while operating budgets are short-term.

How to manage and improve operating budgets?

Creating an operating budget and managing it effectively takes several skills. The goal of budgeting is to improve control and accuracy over time, making your budgets even better. In order to do so, you can take the following approach:

1. Prepare multiple budget types

Spending is guided by budgets, which predict revenue over a certain period of time. Short-term budgets are intended to cover one year or a year and a half, while mid-term budgets are intended for two to three years, and long-term budgets are intended to forecast your business's finances for four to five years. Businesses often create multiple budgets. As part of business operations, they may rely heavily on a short-term budget, while for high-level planning, they may rely more heavily on a long-term budget. There are also overhead budgets, direct materials budgets, production budgets, administrative expenses budgets, direct labor budgets, and many more.

2. Delegation

A senior manager should designate who shall be responsible for updating and maintaining localized budgets. In order for all budget updates to fit together, you'll also need a plan for your delegates to help maintain financial accountability.

3. Monitoring and collaboration

Maintaining a healthy budget requires regular monitoring and collaboration. Overspending or underspending is noted here, adjustments are made, and future predictions are made. Collaboration with your staff is what allows you to find discrepancies between your expectations and the day-to-day business reality. This is ultimately the best way to monitor variable costs, follow cash flow, and catch mistakes.

4. Forecasting

It is important to understand where your business stands today and where it wishes to go in the future before you plan your business strategy. It helps you to understand where you met, exceeded or encountered unexpected difficulties for the entire year based on accurate, up-to-date data from routine budget monitoring. Using your data, you can create a budget that is more tailored to needs at the end of the year.

7 tips to efficiently managing operating budgets

1. Ensure that budget details are set appropriately

A budget can take many forms. Understanding how detailed this particular budget needs to be is the first step toward creating a successful budget. Budgets should be broken down at least by department. In most cases, though, it isn't particularly helpful to get too deep into line items. Often, managers or specific employees are better equipped to keep track of granular details about frequent purchases. In addition, managers should be able to adjust budgets based on their performance. Managing social media campaigns may require flexibility from a marketing manager, for example.

2. Delegate effectively

As a business opens, most spending may be cleared personally by the owners. Businesses grow to a point where they are unable to handle the volume of decisions alone as they grow.

It may be challenging to give someone else control over the company's finances, but as a result of delegation, all purchase decisions won't have to be passed through the owner's desk. A department can respond more nimbly to its needs. In order to continue to improve their skills in budget management, managers should have access to budget management training tools.

3. Engage in collaboration

It is necessary for departments to have a certain amount of control over their own budgets. The importance of encouraging communication between related departments cannot be overstated. Having overlapping objectives between the marketing and sales teams can help each team perform better, for instance:

  • Your finance team can cooperate with IT to find ways to keep systems updated without overspending.
  • Your Human Resources department can consult with the travel management team to lower the cost of recruiting (when it involves traveling.

4. Establish a standard for budget reporting

The budget now spreads across multiple departments if you follow the steps in order. It takes some time for each department to manage its budget independently and some time for them to collaborate with other teams. 

Keeping a centralized "home" for budget management helps executives get a cohesive, high-level view when they need it. It is possible to accomplish this by implementing a central budget system that can be accessed by all budget users. Each department should record expenses according to the same procedure, even if they handle the budget monitoring on their own. It will be easier for you to combine all records into one master budget record this way.

5. Compile accurate, complete data

It is vital to monitor actual business expenses in order to keep your budget on track. A budget without this step is merely a theoretical document that does not have any real power to influence business decisions. Make sure to pay attention to the performance of your budget during each upcoming period by collecting thorough, accurate updates.

Setting clear spend categories and making the expense submission process as convenient as possible are two ways to accomplish this.

It is important to keep context in mind when categorizing. It is possible to classify the same restaurant meal differently depending on the purpose of the trip. Interviewing a potential employee is an expense in human resources. A meal with a client is a sales opportunity. Your travel budget covers the cost of a business traveler's meal. Create an accurate view of your expenses by categorizing them appropriately in your system.

When you submit an expense report in a few minutes, you're more likely to receive complete information. The process can be streamlined by choosing a budget management tool with features such as receipt photo capture and automatic categorization.

6. Schedule appointments for budget updates

We've all experienced situations where it seems like all projects are due at once. An intense workload can lead to a temptation to drop any unimportant task during a crunch period.

Nevertheless, budget management is an essential task if you want to keep your business' finances in order. When you put off a budget review until next week, "when things calm down," the greater the chances of soon having to put out a new fire.

Establish a schedule for closing books and updating department heads on any course corrections that need to be made. The early detection of overspending can be achieved by checking on it quarterly or monthly.

7. Keep the future in mind

By comparing actual and planned spending on one budget, you can inform your next budget preparation. By keeping notes from your financial budget reviews, you can create your next budget more easily.

It is possible to discover patterns in your notes that you might not notice on a daily basis. Were you able to make a surplus in some areas but overextended in others? How can you anticipate future spending patterns? The data from your own budget is a great resource for building future plans.

How can Pluto help businesses create and manage an operating budget?

Tracking expenses

Pluto can track all the expenses made by the organization and categorize them according to their purpose. This way, the organization can see where their money is going and identify areas where they can cut costs.

Budget setting

With Pluto, an organization can set a budget for each expense category (under a corporate card or group of cards). This ensures that the organization does not overspend and can stay within its financial limits.

Real-time monitoring

Pluto can provide real-time updates on the organization's spending, allowing them to see how much they have spent, how much they have left, and where they are overspending. This helps the organization make informed decisions about its spending and adjust its budget accordingly.

Detailed reporting

Pluto can generate ad-hoc reports, providing the organization with detailed information on their spending. This can help the organization identify trends and make informed decisions about future spending.

Overall, Pluto can help an organization create and manage an operating budget by providing real-time tracking, automated reporting, and budget-setting features. This allows the organization to stay on top of its spending, make informed decisions, and achieve its financial goals.

Key takeaways

An operating budget isn’t just important, it’s absolutely necessary. While there can be challenges when it comes to building one, such as poor visibility of your expenditure and a lack of expense tracking, these can be overcome with the aid of Pluto.

Properly building and updating your operating budget will help you find opportunities for improvement when it comes to cost-cutting and revenue, as well as generally increase the efficiency of your business.

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5
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Guides
December 1, 2023

Mohammed Ridwan

What is Account Reconciliation? Basics for UAE-Based Companies

Last day of the fiscal year, and you are closing the books. One of the employees writes a check for 50000 AED to a vendor. The internal records show a payment of 50000 AED, but your balance will not match your bank statement due to the time difference in check clearing. 

Account reconciliation addresses these differences and mismatches of records. It helps you identify any gaps in your accounting statement to make adjustments and ensure accuracy. 

In this post, we will discuss account reconciliation and how you can ensure compliance with proper reporting.

What is Account Reconciliation?

Account reconciliation involves comparing your internal financial statements to external and third-party sources, such as bank statements, to ensure the accuracy of financial records.  

What is account reconciliation

The frequency of account reconciliation will depend upon your company's internal policies and industry practices. Generally, companies conduct account reconciliations every month or quarter. 

You can also automate this process and reconcile accounts in real time. The software integrates with your accounting systems and ERPs and facilitates record-keeping. Employees directly upload receipts on the software, and all the transactions are visible on a centralized platform for real-time tracking. Then, the tool automatically categorizes the expenses into different general ledger (GL) accounts and tax codes, making reconciliation simple. 

Why Invest in Account Reconciliation?

Account reconciliation is a standard accounting process. While it seems reasonable to continue using traditional manual systems for record-keeping and reconciling, having a unified accounting platform enables you to close books 10X faster. 

Importance of account reconciliation

Imagine a single tool to manage reimbursement, petty cash, corporate cards, and end-to-end procurement. You eliminate the chances of errors and fraud with more visibility over your money. As a result, you get accurate financial statements, creating a transparent environment for stakeholders. 

How is Account Reconciliation Done?

Account reconciliation involves comparing GL account balances to supporting external sources and records. Here is a complete breakdown of the process: 

1. Identify Accounts for Reconciliation

Identify the accounts that need reconciliation. This depends on the nature of the business, industry regulations, and the company's internal processes. Common accounts include:

  • Bank accounts
  • Accounts payables and receivables
  • VAT
  • Inventory
  • Intercompany transactions
  • Revenue
  • Expenses

2. Gather Relevant Documents

Collect supporting documents for the identified accounts, such as bank statements, invoices, receipts, and other relevant financial records.

3. Verify Opening Balances

Compare the opening balances in the company's records with the corresponding balances in external statements or supporting documentation. This ensures that the starting point for reconciliation is accurate.

4. Adjust Differences

Identify discrepancies and make adjustments as needed. Based on the types of accounts chosen, you are likely to have the following discrepancies:

  1. Bank: Outstanding checks, deposits in transit, or bank fees
  2. Accounts payable and receivable: For accounts payable, mismatch between the company's records and vendor invoices. On the accounts receivable side, payments not being accurately reflected in the company's records.
  3. Value Added Tax (VAT): Errors in calculating input and output VAT, misclassification of transactions, or discrepancies between recorded and actual tax amounts
  4. Inventory: Errors in recording stock levels, theft, obsolescence, or misclassification of inventory items
  5. Intercompany: Errors in eliminating intercompany transactions, misallocating expenses, or differences in intercompany balances
  6. Revenue: Unrecorded sales, errors in invoicing, or misapplication of revenue recognition principles
  7. Expenses: Unrecorded expenses, duplicate payments, or errors in expense categorization

5. Review and Finalize

Review the reconciled accounts for accuracy and completeness. Obtain necessary approvals from management or relevant stakeholders before making adjustments and finalizing financial decisions.

Finalize the reconciliation process and document the adjustments made. Retain all relevant records for auditing purposes and future reference.

Top 5 Account Reconciliation Errors

Here are the top 5 most common errors that lead to discrepancies in account reconciliation: 

1. Omission

Omission includes missing certain transactions from the accounting records due to oversight. For instance, forgetting to record a payment received results in understating cash and accounts receivable.

Solution: Review transaction documentation, bank statements, and other supporting records to identify and record any omitted transactions.

2. Duplication

Duplication involves recording the same transaction more than once, leading to an overstatement of figures. For instance, recording a sales invoice twice causes excessive revenue figures.

Solution: Review transactions and eliminate any duplicate entries.

3. Timing Difference

Timing differences refer to situations where a transaction is recorded in the books at a different time than when it clears the bank or is recognized for accounting purposes. For instance, writing a check at the end of the month that doesn't clear the bank until the beginning of the following month.

Solution: Regularly compare bank statements with the company's records, adjusting for timing differences.

4. Fraud

Fraudulent activities involve intentionally manipulating financial records to deceive stakeholders and make personal gains. For instance, employees falsify expense receipts to inflate reimbursement claims.

Solution: Implement strong internal controls, conduct regular audits, and promote a culture of ethical behavior.

5. Misclassification

Misclassification occurs when transactions are recorded in the wrong accounts. For instance, adding a purchase of office supplies to the wrong expense account or labeling an incorrect GL code.

Solution: Review transactions to ensure proper coding and provide training to prevent misclassification errors.

Risk of Overlooking Account Reconciliation 

While account reconciliation seems a redundant task of matching accounts’ balances, small defaults can lead to operational, financial, and legal challenges.

You can face hefty fines or penalties imposed by regulatory authorities. You may also encounter disruptions due to legal investigations, audits, or even suspension of business activities. Moreover, failure to adhere to regulations can harm a company's reputation. 

In some cases, it leads to the revocation of licenses or permits, jeopardizing the company's ability to operate within the UAE. 

Here are some challenges you face when you do not pay due attention to account reconciliation: 

1. Manual Errors

The chances of errors are high if you rely on manual processes for account reconciliation. It can distort financial records, impacting decision-making and financial analysis.

Example: An employee records a sales transaction twice, leading to an inaccurate representation of the company's revenue.

2. Fraud

Detecting fraud becomes difficult when you lack real-time visibility or the accounts are not being cross-verified. As a result, fraudulent activities go undetected, causing financial losses and damaging trust.

Example: An employee manipulates expense reports to divert company funds for personal use.

3. Overdrafts

You lose sight of the funds available, leading to bounced checks or potential bank charges. This harms the company's financial stability and relationships with vendors.

Example: The employee wrote a check with insufficient funds, resulting in a bounced check and delayed vendor payment.

4. Inaccurate Reporting

You increase the chances of discrepancies in financial reports, providing stakeholders with misleading information. This undermines the confidence in the company's financial health and performance.

Example: An employee overlooking the balance between revenue and expenses leads to inaccurate profitability figures in financial statements.

5. Tax Issues

You can encounter inaccurate tax calculations or omissions, leading to tax filing errors. This leads to penalties, fines, and increased scrutiny from tax authorities.

Example: An employee's oversight of business expenses, like travel and meals, results in underreported deductions, leading to tax filing inaccuracies.

6. Affect Credit Score

You increase the chances of missed payments or errors that negatively impact the company's credit score. This further affects the ability to secure loans or favorable credit terms.

Example: An employee's oversight in paying a critical supplier invoice on time leads to late fees, strains supplier relations, and affects the company's credit score.

7. Audit Challenges

With incomplete or inaccurate reconciliations, you risk challenges during audits, demanding additional time and resources. This results in increased audit costs and potential legal implications.

Example: An employee fails to reconcile monthly bank statements, leading to missing documentation. The subsequent need for extensive audit adjustments increases audit costs and poses legal risks.

Automate For Ease 

Managing 1000s of expenses and individually categorizing and coding them is a big headache for finance teams. Leaving this to your accounting software will further require oversight during audit season, adding to the workload. Moreover, these software don’t help with record-keeping or real-time visibility, causing you to spend more on account reconciliation. 

Pluto makes this easier by bringing it all to a centralized platform. By shifting to the Pluto ecosystem, you close books 10x faster and simplify spend management. It is as simple as integrating your accounting software and ERPs and getting visibility over your money from Day one. 

Streamline your financial management with our all-in-one platform, integrating accounts payable software for comprehensive control. Manage categorization, reimbursements, corporate cards, and all aspects of accounts payable seamlessly from a unified dashboard.

The best part is that you can bulk export and import logs and even lock the transactions to avoid changes once approved. Further, with view-only access to external bookkeepers, you ensure transparency and security with no chaos during audit season. 

Reconciliation in Accounting Made Simple

Meeting compliance standards should not be an afterthought during the audit season. 

You must adopt the right processes, standards, and tools to get complete control over your accounts. This will ensure accurate records and build trust amongst stakeholders. Moreover, the teams will have a proper systems to reconcile without rushing at the end time. 

With automation, you make the process easier and more efficient. Pluto assists you with a centralized platform to automate your accounts payables and simplify account reconciliation without having to juggle multiple accounting software

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Spend Management
November 3, 2022

Vlad Falin

Employee Expense Reimbursement Management: Types & Policies

Business expense reimbursement is one area of spend management that business owners do not always give its due. And yet, nearly every organization will have to reimburse employees for their expenses at some point.

Part of the problem is that these expenses can vary significantly, from buying office supplies to traveling or even medical costs. If your business deals with many types of expense reimbursements, you might wonder what you need to cover and how you should handle it.

If you’ve had trouble working out your organization's different business expense reimbursements, or you want to learn more about repayments, you’ve come to the right place.

Today, we’ll take a look at the different types of business expense reimbursements and even share some tips to help you streamline your expense reimbursement process.

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What is expense reimbursement?

A business expense reimbursement is simply the act of paying back an employee for expenses incurred while performing a job for your organization.

Technically, almost any type of expense can qualify as a business expense for the purpose of reimbursement, depending on the reimbursement policies of the business. But to give you a clearer idea, here are some common examples of reimbursable expenses:

  • Business travel costs
  • Meals and entertainment
  • Employee education or training
  • Medical expenses
  • Gas expenses for a company-issued or private vehicle
  • Business supplies or tools
  • And other miscellaneous business-related expenses

You could handle these expense reimbursements individually, meaning you review each expense separately, or you could create a policy for employee expense reimbursement. 

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Do I Need to Have an Expense Reimbursement Policy?

You are not required to have an expense reimbursement policy, and in some cases, reimbursing expenses is not even mandatory to begin with. Though that largely depends on the legal framework of your country.

However, since it is customary in the UAE and the MENA region to reimburse employees for expenses, then it would be wise to create guidelines and policies to help you organize and streamline that process.

Creating a policy for reimbursements helps set the right expectations for employees about what qualifies for repayment and enables you to streamline your expense reimbursement process.

With an expense reimbursement policy, your employees will know precisely what they can be reimbursed for, how to request said reimbursement, and how long it would take to receive the funds.

Whether you have a business reimbursement policy or not, you need to have a clear picture of which expenses your employees might incur for your business and how you would go about reimbursing them.

  • Is the expense tax deductible?
  • Is this a common type of business expense in your industry?
  • Do you have a policy in place for this expense?
  • Are there any types of emergency purchases that an employee might need to make?

Types of expense reimbursements

Traveling and accommodation

One of the most common types of reimbursement requests is for travel expenses. Gas has been a particular pain point for many businesses in the MENA region due to the rising costs of fuel. Other examples of travel expenses include moving to and from an airport or travel terminal, travel tickets, public and private transportation expenses, car rentals, and lodging.

Office supplies and communication

If your organization relies heavily on digital work, you might need to reimburse your employees for supplies like laptops, tablets, software purchases or subscriptions, training materials, and more. 

Also, if your team needs to move around frequently and you need to maintain communication at all times, reimbursing them for their cell phone plans might be necessary. In particular, this applies to teams in sales, marketing, and business development. 

Food and entertainment

Business trips typically cover employee meals as reimbursable expenses. As long as the expenses are incurred in the interest of the business, they’re reimbursable.

Other expenses

Medical expenses, such as health insurance, insurance premiums, and tuition, are another form of employee expense that is often reimbursed by companies. If your business deals with these types of expenses, make sure you have a clear policy for handling them.

8 tips to simplify your expense reimbursements

1. Learn what you need to reimburse

Although the legalities of employee reimbursements vary from country to country, it’s traditionally customary for employers to reimburse their employees for expenses incurred on behalf of the company. 

It is important to note, however, that your employees cannot claim reimbursements for every purchase made, only those that are specifically tied to your business in some form.

While the specific type of expenses you have to reimburse will vary from industry to industry, you should have a general idea of what costs an employee might have to cover out of pocket in the process of working for you.

  • Do they need to travel around in their own vehicle?
  • Do you need them to be communicated at all times?
  • What kind of equipment do they require?
  • Are there any health risks associated with their job?

These types of questions can help you figure out which expenses you will have to deal with. Clear guidelines about what is and isn’t reimbursable will help reduce instances of fraudulent reimbursement requests.

2. Use a spend management platform

With the right expense management software, you would be able to automate and optimize end-to-end workflows throughout your process. 

For instance, with a spend management platform like Pluto, employees can use a mobile app to record expenses as they incur them.

In this way, your employees no longer have to save receipts or wait before entering their expenses. Plus, Pluto can automatically assign reports to the right reviewer, making the review and approval process more efficient.

Not only that, but Pluto can also tag the receipt so the categorization of the expense is much easier and reporting is real-time.

In addition to providing digital copies of relevant documents, Pluto can notify your finance team of approvals and deadlines.

Spend management platform for expense reimbursement
Pluto Spend Management Platform

3. Spend management platforms enhance collaboration

Pluto’s expense management solutions come with an employee portal so that your finance team can collaborate seamlessly with your employees. 

This allows you to save time when you need to discuss any irregularities with their expense reports. Additionally, your employees can use Pluto to check the status of their reimbursement requests.

The finance team can also use Pluto  to manage costs more efficiently due to its analytical capabilities, real-time reporting and instantaneous spend limit settings.   

4. Create a Thorough Expense Reimbursement Policy

When creating your reimbursement policy, you’ll want to make sure that it covers as many angles as possible. 

One way to do so is to invite stakeholders from multiple different departments, such as HR, finance, legal, and procurement, to a brainstorming session, as their knowledge will make it easier to draft the policy.

5. Crafting your reimbursement policy

It’s also critical to consider the following when drafting your expense reimbursement policy:

  • The specific type of expenses that can be reimbursed
  • The process your employees need to follow to submit their expenses, including any proof and supporting documentation
  • Whether any allowances will be given for expenses, and how to manage any excess
  • The specific time an employee has to submit their expense report
  • How the approval process will be handled
  • When and how your employees are reimbursed

6. Promote the adoption of the policy

One way to help employees adopt the policy more quickly is by making it readily available to them. The policy should be emailed to your employees or posted on your internal networks.

Employees should be informed when they will receive their payment from the company. You should set up a transparent and clear process to communicate what can be expected in terms of expense reimbursement. 

7. Be extra clear about deadlines and payments.

Be sure to let them know how they will receive the payment, such as via direct deposit or check, as well as how they will receive recorded confirmation of the payment made (such as a statement on their paycheque). You can complete this step easily with the help of an online payroll solution.

It is important to keep things running smoothly when it comes to paying employees. By processing reimbursements timely and reliably, you can easily prevent frustration caused by late payments. 

Having your employees pay out of their own pockets and not receiving payment back sooner rather than later can cause unnecessary ill feelings toward your company. When you handle reimbursements well, it reflects back on you as a respectable and considerate employer who cares about employees.

8. Make sure your employees follow the deadlines you set

You need to provide employees with deadlines for submitting expense reports, such as one week before their next pay date, so they can be reimbursed and get approval for their claims. 

Make sure the expense reports comply with the policy guidelines by giving yourself enough time to review them. By doing so, you can consult with the employee if there are any discrepancies, missing or incomplete documentation, or expenses that do not fall within the policy.

It’s important to submit expense reports on time since certain business expenses are tax deductible. 

Optimize your expense reimbursement management process

It’s not enough to know what your expenses are and to create a policy for their reimbursement. 

You also need to make sure that your reimbursement process is organized and efficient.

Otherwise, you run the risk of creating bottlenecks if you get slammed by more requests than you can handle. You can avoid this by optimizing the process used to submit reports and their attachments, ensuring all reports are reviewed in a timely manner and processing reimbursements as quickly as possible.

Having put all of this in place, it’s now time for the audit. The importance of audits is particularly important for enterprises and mid-size firms where employees incur large expenses. Auditing your expense reports also helps you identify loopholes in your policy and reduce instances of fraudulent claims.

You can also use audits to analyze your business expenses and identify areas for reduction.

Ensure there is an organized system for expense reimbursement requests

You should ensure that the system your employees need to use to submit their expense reports is easy to use and understand. 

Pluto allows the employee to submit all necessary supporting documentation, such as their receipt, the total amount of the purchase, a description of the goods or services purchased, and the date of the transaction.

Use a corporate card or direct deposits to remove the need for reimbursements

A corporate p card is a great way to prevent employees from paying out-of-pocket for business expenses.

You can track your expenses more efficiently and effectively with corporate cards, which provide spending limits that prevent employees from abusing their privileges.

Consider issuing corporate cards only to your regular travelers, or try direct deposits if you’re concerned about the cost. 

Alternatively, you can also use direct deposits of reimbursement funds to eliminate the reimbursement process. 

Two benefits result from this: One great perk of following either process is that your finance teams will have better visibility into the reimbursement process, making auditing employee expenses easier.

Key Takeaways

  • The best way to deal with business expense reimbursements is to have a rock-solid reimbursement policy in place. This way, you can reimburse employees for their costs on your terms.
  • Another great way to manage your expenses is to make use of a corporate card to eliminate the reimbursement process altogether, though this might not be feasible for all cases.
  • As in many situations, your best option will most likely come in the form of digitization. Using a spend management platform like Pluto, will not only give you much better visibility over your employee spending but also streamline the reimbursement process for you.

5
All
Guides
October 30, 2023

Mohammed Ridwan

A Guide to Improve Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

Internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) refers to the legal obligation of a company to provide accurate financial statements. It requires you to adopt policies and processes that show the true picture of the company's finances. This involves:

  • Avoiding errors, fraud, or omissions 
  • Meeting deadlines 
  • Reviewing statements regularly.

An example of ICFR is inventory control, which involves maintaining accurate records of the company's goods. This requires adopting practices such as:

  • Maintaining documents, such as receipts, shipments, and adjustments
  • Segregating duties to different individuals or teams for handling, recording, and verifying inventory
  • Matching physical inventory counts with recorded inventory levels
  • Valuing inventory in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) principles, such as FIFO, LIFO, or the weighted average method.

These practices minimize the risk of inventory discrepancies and enhance the accuracy of financial statements.

What is the Purpose of ICFR?

ICFR is mandatory as per the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002.

FCPA requires public companies to establish and maintain accounting controls. This reasonably ensures that financial statements comply with GAAP.

SOX takes this a step ahead and mandates public companies to assess the effectiveness of ICFR efforts and share the results with the public. Additionally, it demands large companies to get independent auditors for the evaluation.

Why is Internal Control Over Financial Reporting Important?

ICFR’s purpose is not restricted to being a statutory obligation. Here are five reasons why ICFR should be on your priority list:   

Accurate Financial Statements

ICFR ensures accurate financial statements that reflect the company's financial position and performance. Such reports enable investors, creditors, and internal management to make informed decisions.

Error Reduction

ICFR emphasizes the use of automation, standardized procedures, and clear documentation. This reduces the risk of errors due to human oversight, saving time and resources.

Preventing Fraud and Misconduct

ICFR employs strategies such as segregation of duties, multiple approvals, and regular audits. This reduces the chances of oversight and ensures employees do not engage in fraudulent activities.

Reliability

Stakeholders (including investors and creditors) rely on financial reports to assess a company's performance. Effective ICFR policies build confidence in the company's financial reports. 

Avoiding Costly Errors

ICFR detects errors and discrepancies before they can escalate into expensive matters. This saves significant expenses and protects its long-term viability. For example, identifying accounting errors eliminates the need for financial restatements.

What are the Components of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting? 

There are five main components of internal control over financial reporting. These are defined by the Committee on Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) of the Treadway Commission. 

These five components are also known as the COSO framework.

Control Environment 

The control environment includes the organization's standards, processes, structures, and values. It comprises:

  • Ethical values of the organization
  • Organizational structure and authority workflow
  • Processes to build a competent team
  • Focus on performance measurement, incentives and rewards.

These elements create an environment that fosters internal control in the organization.

Risk Assessment 

Risk assessment is an agile process for identifying and assessing risks. It involves:

  • Identification of potential risks that impact the ICFR efforts. This includes both internal and external risks.
  • Evaluation of the potential impact of identified risks. Some risks have a higher likelihood and a greater impact than others.

For instance, an internal risk could be employees intentionally inflating their expense reports to receive higher reimbursements. The potential impact will be financial misstatements if the risk goes undetected. 

Control Activities 

Control activities refer to the plan of action to address the risks identified during risk assessment. This requires establishing specific policies and procedures, such as:

  • Segregation of duties to prevent fraud and collusion
  • Controls in information security, application development, and system maintenance
  • Implementation of entity-level controls, such as reviewing differences between planned budget and expenditure
  • Employing preventive control, such as limited access to IT systems and automated approvals
  • Using detective control to identify misstatements via reconciliations and management review controls

One such example would be accounts payable automation to eliminate manual data entry. For instance, an OCR-based automation tool will improve receipt retrieval if there are recurring manual errors.

Account payable automation to eliminate manual data entry

Information and Communication 

Information and communication ensure that key stakeholders know their roles and responsibilities. It involves:

  • Defining expectations from each stakeholder in the financial reporting process
  • Educating employees on ICFR policies, procedures, and compliance requirements
  • Providing channels for reporting concerns and issues related to ICFR.

An example would be communicating reimbursement policies to manage company spending. These rules set clear limits and expectations for employees. 

Hence, if the policy says entry-level employees can't claim travel expenses, they should not submit such expenses for reimbursement.

Monitoring Activities

Monitoring activities involve regular review of financial controls and processes to identify and rectify issues. It includes the following steps:

  • Review expense reports, receipts, and other data to verify the accuracy.
  • Test sample data to ensure that controls are operating as intended.
  • Detect unusual patterns or anomalies in the data.
  • Verify that employees are following established policies and procedures.

One such example would be reviewing travel expense reports as a part of expense management. It involves verifying receipts and approval compliance. Any detected exceptions trigger investigations and corrective actions.

A Better Way to Manage Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

Setting effective policies for ICFR requires financial data visibility and proper reconciliation processes. Hence, achieving this demands more than policies and procedures. 

You need software to support operational efficiency transformation. Here is how Pluto offers a helping hand to get better control over your ICFR efforts: 

Seamless Financial Reporting 

Real time financial reporting with Pluto

Pluto generates detailed financial reports, providing more accurate and effective financial reporting. You can automate the process of data entry with OCR-based receipt capture. This reduces the manual errors and ensures accuracy. 

A multi-layer approval workflow ensures that financial transactions are reviewed and authorized on time. This helps you comply with company policies, enhancing control and accuracy.

The seamless integration with accounting software provides real-time data sync. This keeps the data up-to-date, enabling faster report generation.  

Simplify Financial Audit 

Simplify financial audit with Pluto

Pluto centralizes financial data, enhancing auditing capabilities.

Document management becomes simple with the easy uploading and retrieving of financial records. You can bulk download all audit logs and supporting files in a single click. This eliminates the time-consuming task of searching for and gathering individual paperwork. 

Pluto's automated systems keep expense records for all financial transactions. As a result, auditors can trace every step of the transaction, ensuring transparency and accuracy.

With end-to-end encryption, Pluto meets bank-grade security standards to safeguard sensitive financial information. This ensures the safety and easy accessibility of financial data. 

Accounts Payable Automations 

Automate your accounts payable

Pluto automates the accounts payable (AP) process to simplify procurement and payments. From purchase request (PR) to goods received notes (GRN) matching, you can streamline the entire AP process. 

Multi-layer approval workflows accelerate purchase requests and approvals. The purchase order (PO) process becomes faster with custom workflows and ERP integration. 

Pluto automates the entire invoice management process. OCR technology makes it easy to capture and auto-fill invoice details, ensuring accuracy and speed.

Pluto's cash flow management features provide alerts for upcoming payments. This enables you to schedule payments and avoid penalties. 

Budget Control 

Advanced budget control with Pluto

Pluto enables budget control by facilitating spending limits and approval workflows. 

Not only can you decide the limit for corporate cards, but also reject an expense if it goes against company policies. In contrast, you can also approve the spending limit for legitimate expenses.  

This ensures that employees adhere to predefined budgets. Moreover, this gives your finance teams immediate visibility into spending against budgeted amounts. 

ERP Integration  

Integrate your ERP with Pluto

Pluto's ERP integration streamlines vendor management and fosters an efficient control environment.

It imports vendor lists from your ERP and exports them back. This reduces data discrepancies and duplicates, leading to data consistency.  

Pluto's dashboard further makes tracking invoices and payments straightforward. This simplifies the payment and reconciliation process, preventing any errors. 

Expense Management  

Expense management with Pluto

Pluto automates and simplifies expense management processes. 

Each expense prompts a WhatsApp notification for employees to upload receipts. Administrators and managers also receive notifications to approve expenses. Approved expenses get reimbursed immediately to employees' bank accounts.

This seamless approval workflow ensures proper control and accurate financial reporting. 

Go Beyond Statutory Obligations

ICFR is not just a legal compliance. It is a practice to ensure financial visibility and control. While implementing policies and procedures is the main focus, finding the right tools to support your journey will make the process easier.

Pluto automates your financial processes to reduce manual errors and accelerate reconciliation. You close books 10X faster with more confidence. 

Book a demo today, and see how Pluto gives you better control and visibility from day one!