Building a Strong Foundation for Future Growth
Cloud-based spend automation applications provide several benefits to SMBs, setting a strong foundation for future growth.
Get ahead of your cash flow
For SMBs managing liquidity gaps and working capital shortages can be challenging. Access to funding may not always be readily available. However, spend automation solutions like Zaggle offer immediate credit facilities, such as credit cards, that provide interest-free credit for up to 50 days. This allows SMBs to meet their payment obligations without incurring late payment penalties and helps bridge cash flow gaps, ensuring a steady flow of funds.
By implementing spend automation solutions, businesses can define spend budgets and expense policies across different dimensions, including department, cost centre, employee band, project, and location. The controls enable businesses to prevent cost overruns and ensure that expenses align with their budgets. Additionally, the automation system can automatically capture, and process supplier and employee spend, which helps identify inaccuracies and duplicate invoices early on, reducing the risk of financial errors.
Optimizing payment terms and processes is another critical factor in improving cash flow. Spend automation systems provide end-to-end visibility into expenses, allowing businesses to have a comprehensive view of their spending. With this visibility, businesses can negotiate better payment terms with suppliers, take advantage of early payment discounts, and avoid unnecessary expenses associated with late payments. These practices have a positive impact on the company's bottom line and contribute to healthier cash flow and improved liquidity.
Strengthen compliance
Spend automation solutions play a crucial role in maintaining compliance with internal control policies and external audit requirements. and mitigating risks within organizations.
BSM software provides up-to-date visibility into suppliers' financial performance and credibility ensuring that businesses engage with reputable and compliant suppliers, reducing the risk of fraud, financial loss, or reputational damage. Automated processes help streamline purchase orders and reduce non-PO spend, ensuring that expenses are aligned with approved budgets and comply with financial regulations. The automation system can monitor transactions, flagging any potential non-compliant activities and reducing the risk of overpayments or inaccuracies.
By adopting BSM, businesses can establish consistent policies and processes, enabling employees to submit expense reports promptly and in compliance with company guidelines. This proactive approach ensures that controllers have real-time visibility into spending activities, allowing them to identify and address any potential compliance violations promptly. Additionally, providing employees with prepaid travel and expense cards promotes compliance with spending policies. These cards allow employees to access funds conveniently and within authorized limits. Finance teams can have real-time visibility into spending across the organization, enabling them to track expenses and ensure adherence to budgets for various activities. This visibility and control help identify any potential compliance issues, such as unauthorized expenses or overspending, allowing for prompt action to rectify the situation. The automation and accuracy provided by spend automation solutions enhance financial management and accountability, fostering a culture of compliance throughout the organization.
Strengthen employee and supplier relationships
To remain competitive and meet the expectations of their workforce, top employers recognize the importance of offering intuitive and timesaving spend automation tools. to free up time for employees, supervisors, and the accounting team to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.
Automated systems, coupled with mobile apps, simplify processes, expedite tasks, and enhance transparency, benefiting employees, supervisors, accounting teams, and suppliers alike. The apps guides employees in making compliant spending decisions and simplifies expense filing and tracking. With the ability to capture pictures of receipts or process expense reports on the go, employees can expedite the submission of their reports, leading to faster processing and reimbursement. The convenience and efficiency offered by mobile apps not only save time but also enhance employee satisfaction.
Furthermore, digital-first processes can benefit suppliers as well. Suppliers can use a dedicated mobile app to receive purchase order information, send goods received notes, capture, and submit invoices, and track the status of their invoices. This streamlined and transparent process enables smoother interactions between suppliers and businesses, improving the timeliness of payments and reducing potential friction.
Better insight into spend
Business Spend Automation solutions empower businesses with better visibility into spends as they’re incurred. By leveraging these insights, SMBs can develop growth plans, improve business performance, and make strategic decisions.
Visibility into spending patterns enables businesses to identify areas of excessive spending, exercise better control over their expenses, and implement strategies to manage expenditures effectively. In addition, SMBs can take proactive steps to maintain a healthy cash flow, enabling them to address timing issues with payables and optimize working capital to ensure a smooth flow of funds within the business. Furthermore, analysing spending data aids in detecting potentially fraudulent activities and mitigating financial risks. By monitoring for unusual spending patterns, duplicate payments, or unauthorized transactions, SMBs can identify irregularities and strengthen their internal controls.
