Expert CFO tips: Nine ways to maximise your financial team efficiency

You've probably heard the phrase 'digital transformation' so often that you've started to roll your eyes. But really, it is a genuine game-changer, as by leveraging digital transformation, you can save time and money on all company expenses.

In The CFO Agenda: Unlocking growth without compromise, 64% of business leaders said CFOs are generally considered highly valued strategic leaders and have a strong presence in the boardroom. However, there are still big challenges, including nearly 60% saying it's extremely challenging to get complete, centralised control and visibility of project/department spend and expenses across global or multi-entity business.

So, how can you tackle this and other challenges? Here are nine top tips from Konstantin Dzhengozov, Payhawk's CFO.

1. Automate collection and reconciliation of receipts and invoices

Manually reconciling spend has got to be one of the most time-consuming tasks known to finance. But, by using expense management software that seamlessly integrates with your ERP, you can automate it all.

For example, equipped with machine learning and AI technology, our expense management mobile app can automatically extract important receipt or invoice information. This means your cardholders aren’t relying on their eyesight, great lighting, or good-quality receipts to transfer information. Snap a picture, watch as the data is extracted using OCR technology, and finish off your expense submission — easy.

These features speed up the expense process immediately, and even helped German Automotive giant, ATU, save over €2m in VAT reclaims. Mathias Goetz, Senior Project Manager at ATU, says:

We no longer have to chase receipts. Managers must simply take a picture of their receipt and enter it into the automated finance system. In the first year, this change resulted in ATU recouping €2 million from the tax office that would have otherwise been lost.

2. Control spend better: workflows and automated approval flows

Total card control may sound like just a dream to finance teams, but with our solution, you can enjoy highly customisable card controls while giving cardholders the freedom to spend within a framework (in real life!). With advanced card controls, you can set limits and controls for individual employees and decide whether you want their card to access:

• Online payments
• ATM withdrawals
• Daily limit
• Single transaction limit
• Country & Region
• Day and time (e.g. just in business hours)
• Merchant

You can even use the Auto-blocking cards feature if they don’t upload their receipts or invoices on time.

Our Workflow Designer allows you to customise your automated approval workflows to suit your specific business structure, and set them for expenses, invoices, and purchase orders.

3. Integrate your expense management with your HR system

When employees leave your company, you need a reliable HRIS integration to help prevent unauthorised spending. At Payhawk, it looks like this: as soon as an employee leaves, the HRIS flags it to us via the integration. We automatically block their cards and revoke platform access, keeping funds safe from any outsider activity.

With the integration, it’s just as easy to set up new employees, too. You can securely and immediately onboard new starters and grant them access to company funds so they can get started from day one. There are no unnecessary delays here.

4. Automate the accounts payable process

Reducing manual work is the fastest way to improve efficiency in your finance team. By automating accounts payable, you reduce manual data entry errors, streamline workflows, improve processing time (pay invoices in just one click), and improve supplier relationships — all while gaining better financial visibility and spend control. We’d call that a win.

By the way, we support SEPA, BISERA, Faster Payment System, ACH and international payments.

5. Optimise the full procure-to-pay process

If you haven't used tech to standardise your procurement process, you will lose visibility across the value chain. Preferred suppliers will be ignored, and the process will become a hassle, particularly if you're managing more than one entity.

But at Payhawk, you can manage the entire process, from purchase order requests to paying the final invoice, on the same platform. This makes it even easier to forecast spending and gain visibility into every past and upcoming expense.

With our three-way matching technology, your purchase orders, invoices and goods received notes are all matched to ensure no discrepancies in either pricing or quantity of items received. So you can have full confidence there are no errors before making payment.

6. Get full visibility and control of subscription spend

By monitoring underutilised subscriptions, you can prevent subscription fraud or simply stop unnecessary spending. Let's say you have an active LinkedIn subscription but notice you're paying for more than one; with the help of Payhawk subscription spend management, you can cancel this subscription and cut costs.

You can also schedule your forthcoming payments one at a time or in bulk and choose to pay on the due date or a different date to automate your payment run and reduce errors.

7. Integrate budgets with spend management

Managing financial planning and analysis (FP&A) manually can be tedious, but by integrating your budgets with spend management, you can save countless hours of exports and manual work, making your team more efficient.

Having access to all company spend, across multiple entities right in front of you means you can view your company’s financial health in real-time. Access to accurate financial data helps you plan and budget for long-term success. Make business decisions confidently and keep stakeholders informed at all times with custom data exports.

8. Establish global oversight across all your entities

If you’re used to logging into multiple systems to access entity financial data, there’s a better way with us. Add all your entities in one place to track and analyse global spend.

With our Group Dashboard, your finance team can examine all of your group's spending in one location. You may check top spenders by team and entity without switching tabs from bank expenses and reimbursements to invoices and subscriptions.

The dashboard also allows you to compare existing money to upcoming spending, which helps you better manage cash flow at the group level. To help you take quick action when funds run low, you can receive low balance alerts for all entities and currencies.

9. Automate your ESG reporting

Your organisation must be as transparent as possible about its environmental impact, but it can be overwhelming to work out how much CO2 is produced by every business activity. Indirect impact on the environment can be very challenging to determine, but with Payhawk Green, you can track carbon emissions automatically on all your card spend, making Scope 3 emission reporting easier.

We partner with Lune to provide accurate carbon emission calculations to help ensure you remain ESG compliant with all UK and EU regulations, including CSDR.

Back to The CFO Agenda report again, this time looking at the fact that eighty-two percent of CFOs said expense management was crucial for controlling costs.

Make sure you're not part of the 18% not realising the benefits; see smart spend management in action: Request a demo with a Payhawk expert today.