4 tips to prepare for the next financial year

Preparation is essential for ensuring an efficient, secure, viable, and visible inflow and outflow of money into an organization. Being prepared as a finance team — including planning and using appropriate tools — can save you enormous amounts of time and money. Preparation also supports a stress-free way of working, as you can work with other teams in the business to align their objectives with the company's strategic goals.

Similarly, financial departments can use learnings from other teams within the company and implement them as they develop plans, support budget control, and design processes.

We collected several tips on preparing for the next fiscal year and selected our top four to share. Some of these tips will take a little time to consider, but they can be invaluable for your teams' long-term efficiency.

Keep track of legislative changes that could affect your company

If your company operates in multiple countries, it's committed to following specific lawful obligations in each one. These obligations can change from time to time, so it's essential to monitor relevant legislation and plan accordingly.

Legislative changes may include an increase in the minimum wage or the way employees pay social security contributions. Likewise, you should closely follow any law adjustments regarding business taxes to take advantage of financial reliefs or avoid missing altered deadlines.

Take the time to research future legislative changes to ensure your budget is thoroughly thought-through and effective.

Design the right budget

Crafting a budget for next year is hands down one of the most challenging tasks, yet perhaps the most important one when planning. Preparing the budget translates assumptions and overall company objectives into tangible numbers and underlines what the business is trying to accomplish. Setting an accurate, realistic, and flexible budget can help companies boost profitability and ensure enough capital to keep running during the year. Budget planning should also influence the company's investment plans, such as recognizing opportunities to hire new talent or enhancing product development.

Obviously, huddling with other departments before mapping out the budget is essential. For example, getting feedback from the sales team could be invaluable in determining future revenue. While, receiving insight from the people operations team could help your budget meets the company's strategic goals, like expanding to new offices or increasing headcount.

Gain competitive advantage through digitalization

Businesses that have successfully digitized their transactions can experience the benefits of automation and transparency. Fintech SaaS solutions that enable companies to go cashless and give visibility over business spend are crucial for organizations that want to accelerate growth.

By implementing Payhawk's corporate cards and expense management software, for example, you can automate the whole business spend and remove 95% of manual data entry. This implementation means that the accounting team can focus on high-priority tasks that grow the business instead of chasing people for receipts and invoices.

Digitization through software-based solutions is especially suitable for startups and scaleups that wish to reduce wage costs through automation. Yet, with numerous SaaS solutions out there, it's hard to know which one fits your company needs best. Click here to get a practical guide on how to go about selecting the right tool.

Ensure everyone is on board with the yearly plan

In order to hit strategic business goals, finance teams must gain insights from other teams and apply them in their own processes and planning. Still, feedback from the accounting team is also vital. Poorly designed systems and ancient processes create significant pain points for other departments; i.e. imagine having to keep all your invoices from a business trip every time. Communication is vital to getting people on your side to help digitally transform out-of-date processes.

So, as you prepare for the new fiscal year, take the time to update other teams on what you plan to change regarding expense management, for example, and be explicit in how it will benefit their productivity.

Ready to prepare your finance team to tackle any challenges in 2022? Book a demo with us to discover how Payhawk can save you time, money and let you focus on accelerating growth.