Level 2s excel at Excel, relying on spreadsheets as the foundation for expense tracking. If you've mastered the dance known as the Excel Two-Step. First, the check is recorded in the checkbook, then on the spreadsheet. That said, even with great rhythm, the paper build-up can be hard to maintain.
With Excel, there’s no mechanism for matching paper receipts with entries. If thousands of dollars worth of petty cash and expenses are going out of the organization, this can become difficult to keep track of without a firm up-to-the-minute grasp on where it’s all going.
Level 2s often find themselves wasting valuable time matching, recording, and duplicating effort. They need a more efficient way to pay for and keep track of expenses—one that makes payments seamless, provides insightful metrics without having to do numerous data sorts on spreadsheets, and doesn’t chew up time.
Here are two steps Level 2s can take to improve the accounting systems they already have in place and make expense tracking easier.
Let’s get digital
Ditch the cash and go digital. There are several online payment software options on the market for making and tracking payments, including Quickbooks Online. There’s a reason that 7 million businesses use this secure, cloud-based software, and with several plans to choose from, you can determine which one is the right fit for your organization.
Increase your card count
Assign company cards to those who do the most buying, and you get two advantages. First, it’s safer than having your executives loan out their credit cards (whether it’s their personal or corporate card)—even if it is to the most trustworthy employees. And two, when employees use their personal cards to pay for business expenses, reimbursements become an added burden. Using company cards makes reporting and reconciliation significantly easier; you eliminate having to do reimbursements and reduce the number of payment methods.
Customer Story
At the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, the undergraduate student association supports a vast array of clubs and student organizations. The association spent enormous time filling out reimbursement forms, finding receipts, matching receipts, and getting expenses approved by multiple college officials. With PEX pre-paid cards, students no longer lay out their own money and submit paper receipts. The PEX card takes money directly out of the organization’s budget, eliminating the time-consuming reimbursement process and providing greater real-time accuracy.