The COVID lockdown has been a difficult time for many people and businesses haven’t escaped from the turmoil.
It might seem odd to be thinking about the future right now but we’d argue that this is exactly what you need to do.
In our last blog, we gave you some tips about reflecting on the crisis and what can come of it and in this blog we are going to look at why this is the perfect time for looking at your finance processes and systems and making a change.
- Topic:
- Finance
Change can often be a difficult thing to achieve in many organisations and one of the reasons for this is the almost inbuilt resistance that humans seem to have.
The problem is that if you have something that is going to add real value for the company, or is going to make people’s lives easier, resistance can often be very frustrating.
The question is, then, how do you overcome that resistance when you are looking to implement change?
- Topic:
- Finance
It goes without saying that the past few months have been particularly difficult for many businesses. No one could have predicted the events that led up to a nation in lockdown, with many companies left with no choice but to halt or reduce operations in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For many, business survival lay in quick decision making and, where possible, putting robust measures in place to protect their firm from financial damage.
- Topic:
- Finance
It’s all too familiar – a long-time member of the finance team is due to leave the organisation imminently. The business is busy looking for a suitable replacement. Meanwhile, the outgoing employee is tasked with documenting an array of finance processes for a handover. Not only does this hurried effort bite into time that could have been better spent tying up loose ends, but the quality of such documentation is unlikely to be top-notch and all-encompassing.
- Topic:
- Finance
This is a question that is asked by pretty much everyone who is wondering about buying an expenses system and it’s an interesting one that might not have the answer you’d expect.
To start with let’s look at the options:
- You can have an expenses system that is almost totally manual with people completing printed out sheets, stapling their receipts to it and then getting it physically signed off by their manager.
- You can have a computerised system that lives ‘on-premise’. This has software and storage that lives on your server or on your desktop machine that will have a bit of automation.
- Or the final option is to access a cloud-based expenses system that will have the ability for lots of people to connect, often complete with an automated workflow.
- Topic:
- Finance
Whilst most businesses maintain backups of their important digital data to mitigate risk of unforeseen events nowadays, one medium that holds priceless data is often overlooked – your employees. Never has this been more relevant than the events unfolding across the globe due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its unprecedented effects on businesses. Organisations have had to suddenly take measures that they had never made any contingencies for, including scrambling to establish remote-working capabilities.
Many businesses are struggling due to lack of economic activity and left with no choice but to furlough or even let go of their employees. In many cases, there isn’t enough work to go around or enough revenue to support the pre-pandemic headcount. The remaining employees may have to take up work that they previously had no involvement in. Those businesses that do not rely solely on one employee for a given task are now reaping the awards.
- Topic:
- Finance
Although a new expenses system is a much smaller project than something like a full financial suite or ERP system, it would be a mistake to think that you can take a much more relaxed view about implementation.
Expenses are important to employees and mistakes or delays in payments can really hurt morale.
By implementing your expenses system properly and making sure that the configuration is correct right from the start, you can minimise the chances of issues and ensure that the process is as speedy and problem-free as possible.
In this post, we’re going to look at 8 things that will help your project go smoothly right from the start.
- Topic:
- Finance
Finance, being a support function, is essential to the day-to-day as well as the long-term planning of the business. If the support provided by finance is inadequate, the entire function of core processes and creation of mechanisms to manage its ongoing performance may need an overhaul. This is where Finance Transformation comes in: a process aimed at fashioning a finance function that is effective in driving business value and able to produce business information useful for senior leadership in strategic decision-making.
- Topic:
- Finance
Having an expenses system that is properly configured can save you masses of time and make reporting a simple matter of clicking a button but to get to this point you need to take care of some basics.
In this post, we’ll look at categorising your expenses and give you some tips which will hopefully save you time and effort in the future.
Understanding expense categories
A category is a way of grouping expenses which will make managing and reporting easier later on.
Many people simply use account numbers that correspond to their nominal ledger and forget about categories. If you have a very small company or only process a few claims, this is fine.
But as the number of claims increases you may wish to look at using categories to group expenses automatically.
- Topic:
- Finance
The cost of decisions based on unreliable or false data can be considerable for a business. In the absence of the complete picture, assumptions inevitably have to be made and so may not always be correct. But, such costs can be avoided by improving inter-departmental data cohesion.
Oftentimes, departments store data in different formats with other departments not having any visibility. When the need arises, the different formats need to be collated to form a bigger picture. Even in that case, the possibility of incorrect collation exists due to incompatibility of the formats. This would impact the integrity of the data, rendering the resulting data unfit for purpose.
The best way to defeat the problem is by creating centralised databases that hold data pertinent to all the departments in the organisation. Transparent data-sharing ensures that accurate information is available at any given time and that nobody is left out of the loop. Departments are also more likely to be collaborative if they all have visibility of the same data. This builds trust from the top-to-bottom and across departments.
- Topic:
- Finance
