Proactive Workforce Spend Management

Cut Costs and Streamline Operations with a New Approach to Corporate Card Expensing

You can’t run a serious construction business without empowering employees to spend. If every bag of nails, tank of gas, or flat tire repair had to go through procurement, every job would come to a standstill.

To facilitate that spending, many construction companies issue corporate cards.

However, every use of a corporate card triggers a complex web of activity. Cardholders save receipts and compile expense reports. Supervisors and project managers approve spending retroactively. Finance teams review, allocate and reconcile each line item on the report.

Trying to enforce policies on the backend is like closing the barn door after the horse escapes.

Shifting to a Proactive Workforce Spend Management

Typical corporate card policies and processes are reactive. The receipts, expense reports, approvals, and reviews are there to account for money that’s already been spent.

Your company’s other spending processes are generally proactive. You aim to squeeze value from every dollar you spend before it leaves the company’s coffers. These spend management processes encompass budgeting, forecasting, procurement, vendor selection, cost analysis, and risk management.

If you can bring these disciplines into corporate card spending without compromising the flexibility you need to keep your workforce productive and your jobs on schedule, you’ve hit the jackpot.

That’s what Proactive Workforce Spend Management delivers.

5 Pillars Of Workforce Spending

1. Program Design Flexibility Gives organizations the tools to issue cards and program policies into card functionality

2. Automated Policy Enforcement Blocks transactions that violate rules without the need for manual oversight

3. Real-Time Spend Visibility and Control Enables finance teams to monitor spending and, if needed, modify rules on the fly

4. Intuitive, Cloud-Based Workflows Receipts and other user-provided data syncs up with system data for review

5. Financial System Integration Uploads transactions to accounting and other systems without manual data entry

How Proactive Workforce Spend Management Works

The 5 pillars above topline the key requirements, strategic and technological, for Proactive Workforce Spend Management. They represent a remarkably robust, yet simple, platform that companies have used to manage thousands of individual cards with up to 93% more efficiency.

1. Program Design Flexibility

One-size-fits-all corporate cards will never work if you’re trying to get out in front of widely diverse budgets and spending needs. Proactive Workforce Spend Management platforms give your organization the ability to:

• Issue Cards Immediately: Proactive Workforce Spend Management platforms eliminate the need for employees to apply for a card, get approved, receive the card, and activate it. Rather, administrators create accounts through a dashboard and cardholders can store them in digital wallets. The process takes less than two minutes.
• Program Policies Into Card Functionality: Modern corporate card platforms let you create spending rules to govern how cards are used, including total spending, transaction amounts, merchant categories (gas, hardware, building supplies), and specific merchants.
• Create Role-based Policies: Drivers, project managers, salespeople — they all need corporate cards, but they don’t make the same purchases. Proactive Workforce Spend Management lets you create card groups with unique rules. Assigning rules to an employee is as easy as moving their card into a group.
• Create Virtual Cards for secure payments: recurring or one-time bills: Since each card exists for a single purpose, you can set extremely tight rules. Ideal for recurring payments (subscriptions), one-time payments, and large purchases (when vendors won’t extend credit but will take a card.)

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2. Automated Policy Enforcement

Proactive Workforce Spend Management platforms eliminate the need for manual oversight.

• Automatically Reject Non-Compliant Purchases: An operator’s gasoline purchase will be approved, but not beers. A salesperson can buy beers but only spend up to a certain amount. They’re not buying rounds for the whole bar on your tab.
• Alert Administrators to Attempted Violations: If anyone attempts to use a card outside of policies, the platform denies the charge and immediately alerts the administrator. Maybe it’s an honest mistake. Maybe a card’s been compromised. Either way, you can look into it.

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3. Real-time Visibility and Control

If you’ve ever checked corporate card activity, you know that there’s often a delay between a purchase and its posting to your account. A Proactive Workforce Spend Management platform can’t allow that delay to spill over into your spending and operations. These platforms have to work in real-time to:

• Track Spending: Real-time spending data is a huge advantage when you manage budgets, check expenses, estimate, and forecast
• Allow Exceptions: The project manager sends a worker to Home Depot for a $200 part. However, that worker’s card caps transactions at $50. An administrator should be able to log into the platform, change the rule, and provide purchasing power — all in real time. The change takes effect immediately. After the purchase, the card can revert back to the old rules.
• Easy Access to the Platform: Proactive Workforce Spend Management platforms give administrators a full-feature dashboard through a website or mobile app. They can create cards, change rules, and check budgets 24/7, whether they’re in the office or on the go.

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4. Intuitive Cloud-Based Workflows

Underlying Proactive Workforce Spend Management technologies can benefit cardholders, supervisors, and finance staff alike.

• Built-in Receipt Capture: Proactive Workforce Spend Management platforms provide cardholders with a mobile app. They can use this to photograph and submit receipts right from the point of purchase.
• Simplified Purchase Reporting: The mobile app keeps a system record of each purchase. The users add a note to a transaction report and choose a general ledger code from a dropdown menu before submitting it. It queues up the transaction for review—no expense report is needed.
• Purchase Document Storage: Along with receipts, the spend management software should support the storage of a wide range of purchase documents, including requisitions, purchase orders, invoices, packing slips, and more.
• Automated Allocations: Proactive Workforce Spend Management work in real-time. As soon as the cardholder submits the transaction, the system queues it up for review. When finance team members review the transaction, it’s already allocated to the approved job or budget.

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5. Financial System Integration

Proactive Workforce Spend Management platforms readily integrate with major solutions, including QuickBooks, SAP Concur, Procore, CMiC, and Sage. There is no need for manual data entry. Once they’ve approved a transaction, your finance team can feed it into your financial system with one click.

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Benefits of Proactive Workforce Spend Management

• Lower costs
• Streamlined operations
• Automated policy enforcement
• Reduced fraud and misuse
• Real-time reporting and tracking
• Enhanced security
• Fewer errors
• Secure receipt and document storage
• Instant account creation
• No cost or downtime to install
• Intuitive interface
• 15X more efficient than reactive expense management
• Starts delivering ROI almost immediately

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No Cost to Install, a Minimal Learning Curve, and You See ROI Almost Immediately

PEX is a leading provider of corporate card and expense management solutions. We offer a range of corporate prepaid and charge card solutions, all running on a platform built from the ground up to enable proactive workforce spend management.

More than 10,000 customers have issued over 10,000,000 cards on our platform. PEX is proven to deliver massive improvements in productivity and efficiency. Learn more with a free demo.