Guide to a Modern Expense Policy

More often than not, company expense policies have not evolved. Employees will make a business purchase using personal funds, submit the necessary information to get it approved by finance, and later get reimbursed via payroll. That’s a lot of administrative overhead (and delayed financials). That’s why we’ve put together this Guide to a Modern Expense Policy.

With Float, finance teams can modernize their expense policy and become more proactive about their spending. But first…

What is an expense policy?

An expense policy is a set of guidelines that clearly defines:

  • Acceptable and unacceptable business expenses
  • Processes for expense approval and reimbursement

This framework helps finance departments quickly validate expenses and gives employees a clear understanding of permissible spending.

Benefits of having expense policies

Implementing an expense policy offers numerous advantages:

  1. Provides a structured approach to control company-wide spending
  2. Standardizes rules for expense management
  3. Prevents non-compliant expenses
  4. Assists finance teams in efficiently evaluating spend requests
  5. Enables senior management to control costs and forecast spending accurately

With everyone aligned on the company spending guidelines, senior management is better able to control costs more efficiently and calculate spending forecasts.

Types of Expense Policies

Expense policies can vary based on company size and industry. Some businesses opt for a broad, all-encompassing policy, while others create specific policies for:

  • Travel
  • Entertainment
  • Departmental expenses

Key Components of an Expense Policy

A comprehensive expense policy typically includes:

  • Expense Categories: Different types of expenses that employees can incur, like travel, meals, accommodation, or office supplies.
  • Spending Limits: Clear limits for each expense category, specifying the maximum amount employees can spend without additional approvals.
  • Approval Process: The steps employees must follow to obtain approval before incurring expenses, including any documentation required.
  • Documentation Requirements: The supporting documents, such as receipts or invoices, that employees need to submit along with their expense reports.
  • Reimbursement Procedures: How employees should submit expense reports, including the required forms or software systems.
  • Non-Reimbursable Expenses: Expenses that are not eligible for reimbursement, such as personal expenses, fines, or alcohol.
  • Travel and Accommodation Guidelines: Guidelines for booking flights, hotels, and rental cars, including preferred vendors and any travel-related policies.
  • Expense Audit and Compliance: The process of auditing expense reports and the consequences of non-compliance with the policy.

What’s the downside?

While essential, traditional expense policies can lead to challenges.

High administrative overhead

Recent industry research reveals startling figures about corporate expense management:

  • Typical businesses handle over 50,000 expense reports annually
  • The cost of processing these reports can exceed $500,000 per year
  • Companies spend around 3,000 hours yearly fixing errors in expense reports
  • Correcting a single expense report costs an additional $50+ on average

A different US-based research from the Aberdeen Group shared these eye-opening statistics:

  • Nearly one in five expense reports contain errors or missing information
  • For small businesses, the average time to approve an expense report is over a week
  • About a quarter of expense reports don’t comply with company policies
  • Almost half of small businesses lack clear procedures for handling non-compliant expenses

These figures highlight a pressing need for improvement in expense management processes. As a business owner, you’d likely address any other system with such a high failure rate immediately. It’s time to give expense management the same attention and upgrade it for better efficiency and accuracy.

Employee Dissatisfaction and Frustration

Recent research by Allstar Business Solutions reveals alarming trends in employee expense claiming habits.

  1. According to the study, over a third of workers never claim back expenses, with 58% avoiding claims under £5 (SmallBusiness.co.uk, 2018).
  2. The survey of 2,001 British workers uncovered significant gender disparities, with women claiming less than half the amount men do on average.
  3. Furthermore, 25% of employees have postponed or cancelled meetings to avoid out-of-pocket expenses, while 64% describe the claiming process as frustrating.

These findings highlight the urgent need for businesses to streamline their expense management processes, as inefficient systems not only impact employee satisfaction but can also hinder business growth by discouraging necessary expenditures.

The Future of Expense Policies: Automated Solutions with Float

Enter Float – a revolutionary solution that automates expense policy implementation. With Float, you can:

  • Set spending boundaries directly on company cards
  • Ensure automatic compliance with company guidelines
  • Prompt cardholders to upload receipts and expense information in real-time
  • Issue cards to all team members without worry
  • Gain real-time visibility and control over company-wide spending

Here’s how:

✅ Approve spend before it happens

Multi-level Approval policies based on your company’s organization structure lets employees easily request to make a purchase from managers (with an audit trail).

🤖 Automatically collect receipts and GL codes

Submission Policies let you define the information employees are required to submit with each transaction, like receipts and GL codes, and will pause cards without them.

🛡️ Protect your company from unauthorized spend

Individual card controls like Merchant Controls let you restrict spending at certain merchant categories and custom Recurring and Temporary limits ensure your company doesn’t get overcharged.

📉 Get insights into your cash flow

Float’s Reporting feature provides a real-time overview of company spending with insights into who is spending what.

Conclusion: Revolutionize Your Expense Management

Don’t let outdated expense policies hold your business back. Embrace the future of expense management with automated solutions like Float. By implementing smart, efficient expense policies, you can take control of your company’s spending while fostering growth and innovation.

Want to learn more about Canada’s smartest corporate cards and business spend software? Get our Spend Management Guide at the link below.

Login to Float to implement your company’s expense policies, or Book a demo today to experience simplified business spending.

How Klue Found Its Way to Better Spending

We sat down with Adrian Pape, Klue’s VP of Finance, to discuss the company’s experience with Float over the last year. Klue’s software combines the best of competitive intelligence and revenue enablement — giving their clients a leg up through advanced market and competitive insights. When it came to their finances, Klue needed a change, especially after facing regular issues of fraud, blocked credit cards, unauthorized purchases and more. Here’s what Adrian had to say.

Q1: How did you hear about Float?

I found Float after doing a bit of my own research. Eventually, I met with Shawn and watched some pre-recorded demos of the platform. In terms of customer care and service, the standard Shawn set was a cut above. As it turned out, Float (called Journal at the time) was exactly what we were looking for. Plus, the 1% cashback was definitely something that caught our eye.

Q2: Before Float, what did company spending and expense management look like?

We had roughly 13 corporate credit cards — seven American cards and six Canadian. During that time, our credit cards were constantly being blocked. Employees who didn’t have corporate credit cards were filling out reimbursement forms and uploading receipts. As you can imagine, correctly capturing tax information from those receipts was a headache. There was probably between $10,000 and $20,000 of accumulated GST from old expense reports that fell through the cracks.

Credit cards in our company were scattered everywhere and there was a slew of unidentifiable charges on these cards. Finding out who they were from or what they were for took days, if not weeks.”

There were also a few instances of external fraud. Because all the cards had been compromised at one point or another, 13 new cards had to be issued, with each and every connection having to be re-established using a new credit card number. We had no control over who was adding recurring charges to cards and there was no visibility or accountability. Essentially, no one knew who was spending what because the cards were used so often – it was a significant challenge. 🤯

Q3: What are the biggest pain points that Float solved for your business?

At the time, we didn’t have someone dedicated to looking after payroll – so I had  taken on the responsibility in the interim. On top of my primary responsibilities, I had to review and import expense reports and keep track of 150+ people who needed to be reimbursed. Since implementing Float, the burden is a lot smaller. At Klue, we have established a strong culture of trust and transparency, so it’s been a nice perk to be able to set up virtual cards for employees and give them the freedom to make business-related purchases. Another huge advantage for us is the SMS receipt capture feature. 🤳🏾 ​​It allows our employees to submit their receipts in real-time directly through Float using their smartphone. 

“It gives us greater control because we’re able to monitor company spending, easily approve purchase requests, and Float reminds employees to submit their receipts on time.”

Float also saves our employees time since the last thing they want to do at the end of the month or year is dig out and submit hundreds of receipts. Instead, it gets it done in the moment and is off their plate, which many of them appreciate.

Q4: What features were the most useful to you and your team?

“Float’s Quickbooks integration allows us to seamlessly connect to our chart of accounts and retrieve and update our tax codes – no problem!” 

With the QB feature, we no longer have to waste time producing expense reports. It’s as easy as reviewing the tax figures, allocating the expense, and clicking Export to Quickbooks – then Float takes care of the rest! 🤩I would also say that being able to give non-managers and non-finance employees access to an individual corporate credit card with a pre-approved limit has been great for our team. 💳  It’s eliminated a lot of the complication and mess we were previously experiencing with unauthorized purchases and poor spend visibility.

Q5: How did your finance and operations team respond to implementing Float?

The crew was ecstatic that it all worked out. 👏🏼 Buying software is always a little frightening but after a couple of demos, and working with the Float team, we were up and running pretty quick. We also have a Float x Klue Slack channel where Float employees can read our threads and listen to what’s going on. Every now and then, we will tag their team and share any key concerns and the team is incredibly responsive and helpful. 

Q6: What advice would you give to other companies considering Float?

Don’t hesitate and get started right away. 🙌🏽  It’s quick, saves a lot of time, and the onboarding process is straightforward and easy. And the best part is that the Float team is right there with you at every step. They’re always taking our ideas and needs into account and continually looking for ways to better support us. 

About Klue

Klue provides a lens into your competitor’s world, continuously updating and connecting the dots to help you win more business. It’s a new way to capture, manage, and communicate market insights from the web and across the company, in the platforms you already use.

Dynamic Duo: Submission and Approval Policies

Fact: Expense policies aren’t always the easiest for employees to understand or follow. From chasing people down for receipts to reconciling transactions for days on end, it’s no wonder the finance team limits corporate spending to a select few.

Plot twist. Float’s about to change the game.

Float allows you to set boundaries for corporate spending directly on Float Cards themselves, with automated rules for transactions that reflect your company’s expense guidelines.

Our new Submission Policies feature lets you create custom policies by expense type and select which transaction information employees are required to submit after a purchase is made, like receipts and accounting codes.

Paired with Float’s multi-level Approval Policies, that allow you to automatically route spend requests to dynamic manager roles and individuals, this unstoppable duo automates and digitizes your company’s expense policies.

Available to Professional users, Admins can create unlimited Submission and Approval Policies that reflect internal company guidelines around corporate spending – such as travel, work from home benefits and entertainment policies. Or, keep things simple with a single Default policy to apply company-wide.

How It Works

Employees request to make a purchase directly in Float, either as a Temporary limit increase for a purchase on an existing card or a new virtual card for a vendor or one-time purchase. Managers are then alerted via email or Slack to approve, edit, or deny the request. If approved, the Spender is notified immediately of their new card details.

When a cardholder makes a purchase on their Float Card, they will be instantly reminded via text, Slack, or email, to upload their receipt along with the information your company requires, like vendors, GL codes, or purchase descriptions. Event better? You can limit the information each cardholder sees when submitting their expense so it’s easy for them to code it themselves.

Float’s new Submission Policies paired with our Approval Policies’ multi-level approval flows make managing team spending a breeze by:

💳 Empowering employees to comply with spending policies

Float allows you to set boundaries for corporate spending with automated rules for transactions that reflect your company’s expense guidelines. You can also define what information is required under specific policies, including receipts and accounting codes. 

🙌🏻 Making month-end a breeze for your finance team 

Float lets you apply specific GL codes to transactions, while encouraging spenders to categorize their transactions so your finance team doesn’t have to. Finance teams no longer have to chase employees down or search for missing information for hundreds of expenses.

If you’re interested in learning more about Float’s complete business spend management solution, check out our Guide to Spend Management.

Excited to see how this new feature works? Login to create your Submission Policies or book a demo with us today!