Top Tips To Improve Your Business Expense Management

While many large businesses have dedicated accounting departments, we know that small businesses often don’t have the same facilities. That’s why expense management is so important for small businesses to get right, as it provides easy savings that will make a big difference in the long run.

1. Stay Up To Date On Your Expenses

Whether you’re a freelancer or a small business, staying up-to-date is a key part of not being overwhelmed by unnecessary administrative burdens when year-end comes along. Updating your expenses once a week, can help you to quickly catch expenses that are spiralling out of control before they become a problem.

2. Assign Someone To Monitor Expenses

Business owners don’t have time to constantly be checking and double-checking existing contracts with suppliers. But if your business deals heavily with suppliers, this might be a crucial expense that you need to re-evaluate financially. 

Assigning someone on your team to monitor your expenses and ensure that you are always receiving the best value for your money with suppliers, business expenses, etc. can save you a lot of money in the long run. Alternatively, you can hire an external accountant to provide you with a financial forecast and reasonable budget for any expenses.

3. Keep Track Of Your Receipts

Receipts are a hassle – and keeping all of your loose receipts in your wallet may not be the best filing system for your business. Oftentimes things get misplaced and this leads to lost deductibles on your tax return.

In this day of electronic receipts and invoices from multiple sources, proper digital filing can be a useful solution. By saving every receipt and bill in a central digital folder, sorted by date, you will easily be able to track down any expenses that you need for a future date.

4. Invest In Simple Accounting Software

There are numerous online book-keeping softwares out there, but the struggle is finding the right one for your company. The software also gives you a central place to store all the records for your business and allows you to stay on top of your accounting and expenses.

5. Implement An Expense Policy

Implementing a company expense policy can help manage any employee expenses which may be a drain on your business. A simple expense policy to apply is that the company will not reimburse any expenses to employees that have not been priorly approved. Obviously, in the case of exceptional circumstances, expenses can be approved on a case-by-case basis, however, implementing an overall policy can help to deter any unnecessary spending. 

For more accounting tips and advice, get in touch!