Five ways to enhance business budget tracking and visibility

Let's be honest: You won't get very far without real-time spend visibility. It's the key to planning future growth and without it, you'll have to make decisions without the right, most up-to-date info. But how did it get to this point? Let's assume you're using multiple systems and you have to aggregate data, collate it, and comb through it — even then, you're likely analysing a snapshot of the past, including delays and inaccuracies, leading to your best guesstimations for even the most important decisions.

If you're planning to scale or want better insight into your corporate spending to plan for the future, we've got you covered. Keep reading to learn more about enhancing business budget tracking and spend visibility.

Five steps to enhance budget data tracking and visibility

Sometimes, you just need a bit of inspiration. Here are five strategies to enhance budget data tracking and visibility.

1. Consolidate all corporate spend into one platform

The cold, hard truth is that you can have the best systems in the world, but if you use too many for too many different things, i.e. different tools to track expenses, invoices, and POs, you'll never have real-time visibility. Disconnected tools also mean lots of manual work and wasted hours switching between screens without getting real insights. This can easily lead to a lot of errors, duplicated spend, a higher risk of fraud and sub-optimal decisions.

2. Implement a comprehensive budget-tracking software

What do we mean by 'comprehensive'? To start, you need a solution that will help you track and analyse all expenses across all your multiple entities and from within the same dashboard. You need a solution like Payhawk with lots of useful budget tracking features, including our new 'built-in budget' tool, real-time data visibility, low fund notifications, and more.

3. Integrate your financial systems for centralised data management

To centralise your data, you’ll need a system that integrates seamlessly with other systems. You want to log into just one platform to access all your accurate spend data. With our solution, there’s no double-checking your figures in alternate tools. At Payhawk, we integrate with market-leading ERPs, accounting software, HRIS, and business travel tools to give you a unified view of your corporate spending.

4. Establish clear approval workflows and guidelines

To monitor spending, you must implement clear tracking protocols, which means creating bespoke approval workflows (which you can do using our Workflow Designer). Whatever your organisational structure, you can build custom approval chains to suit every type of spend — card spend, reimbursements, invoice payments, purchase orders — and set expense limits, e.g., your Head of Department approves spending over £1,000, etc.

It's crucial to find a solution that can be adapted to your specific business needs, as no organisation will truly benefit from a one-size-fits-all solution.

5. Track budget utilisation in real-time and manage forecasts

With real-time budget tracking, you and your finance team can get complete visibility into budget utilisation across departments, creating a collaborative approach with budget owners.

Rather than waiting for month-end reports, teams can access up-to-date insights on spending by department, category, or employee, supporting faster, smarter decision-making. This approach promotes budget discipline and reduces back-and-forth between finance and non-finance teams, freeing up time for more strategic priorities.

As a CFO or finance leader, you can clearly see upcoming spend, how much budget is committed for the months ahead, which months you're overspending and on what. You get unparalleled insight into your corporate spending, meaning no penny is spent without sign-off, so everything stays in policy and in budget.

Why real-time spend visibility and budget tracking matters

Looking to get into the weeds? Here are the biggest benefits of budget tracking in business.

Easily identify cost-saving opportunities

Accurately tracking your budget means you’re now in the best position to identify cost-saving opportunities through budget analysis. Who’s spending the most? Are there trends in overall corporate spending?

Having budget data at your fingertips in an easily digestible format helps you make the right decisions — whether it's reallocating the budget to a new project or renegotiating supplier contracts.

Improved financial oversight

Tracking your budget and gaining granular insight into corporate spending gives you a better understanding of your organisation's financial health.

Unsurprisingly, in a recent report we completed with Raconteur, The CFO agenda: How to unlock growth without compromise, 77% of CFOs agreed that improving forecasting was their top priority.

But how? Accurate budget data empowers all senior leaders to make trusted and vital decisions. It puts a stop to impulsive spending and keeps tight control of the budget while letting them spend within a framework that complies with company spend policies.

Save time and keep your teams on track and in budget

Instead of spending hours fielding repetitive Slack questions like "How much do I have left for the month? Did you account for the Spain event? Is this before or after Jason's request?" decentralising budget ownership takes that burden off you and the rest of the finance team.

Team leads are directly accountable for their own budgets and have real-time access to track and manage spend, meaning you're freed up from constant inquiries. This not only prevents out-of-control expenses but also saves you valuable hours each day from fielding questions instead of focusing on strategic work.

Reduce mismatch between budgeted amount vs actual spend

Without knowledge and oversight, budget owners and spenders will continue to spend without thought, which means creeping into overspending or spending on products or software that doesn’t align with your corporate goals, in fact, this kind of spending sets you even further behind your goals.

Why are organisations getting budget tracking wrong?

If budget tracking is so important to organisations, big or small, how are so many of us getting it wrong? We've got a few ideas…

There’s a lack of real-time data

There's a lack of real-time data (yep, we said it twice, it’s that big a deal). You can only access real-time data by using one platform for all your spend. This platform should be a comprehensive spend control solution with budget tracking features (hello, Payhawk). You won't access this crucial data if your software isn't up to scratch.

You’re relying on inaccurate and incomplete data

If you use multiple systems to manage your data, i.e., different payment providers: a local bank for cards, expense management software, an ERP for bank transfers, another neobank or fintech for more cards, you will have data spread across multiple platforms. That means logging into each platform to update data, which can lead to inconsistencies, wasted time, and, most importantly, you will always use data that is not current or accurate.

It’s difficult to track all multi-entity spend

If you manage multiple entities, for example, how do you keep track of spending in your Spanish entity versus your UK one? Tracking just one area of expenditure doesn't give you the full picture of your corporate spending. You need a solution that enables you to track all spending across all your entities under the same roof.

There’s a lack of data access

Using disparate systems means teams, departments and project managers aren’t accessing the same data. Which inevitably leads to random budget spending and a lack of communication between departments. Your teams shouldn’t have to wait for sporadic team meetings to learn how the budget is being allocated and spent, company budget owners should have real-time access to funds so they can make impactful business decisions based on accurate data.

You don’t embrace standardised expense reporting

As your organisation grows, standardising processes will keep everyone on the same page, which means a more organised way of managing expenses and overall spend. If one department raises purchase orders in a certain way and a different department raises them slightly differently, it becomes significantly harder for finance teams to process expense requests efficiently.

Inefficient processes can lead to payment delays, incorrect supplier details, disparities between purchase requests and receipts, and more.

Psst. You'll be pleased to learn you can manage all of this from within the Payhawk portal. You can have multiple budget owners and set budgets per department, project, or in any way your organisation works. Managers have complete spend visibility, so there's no stopping you from making better and faster decisions.

Budget tracking features are just one string to our bow. Learn how Payhawk customers save anywhere from two hours a day to four days a week with our all-in-one solution — request a personalised demo.