A look to 2024: Getting your business spend in order

A quick look at 2023

2023 has been a challenging year for businesses of all sizes, geographies, and industries. And looking to 2024? There's still a lot of general uncertainty in the markets, which tends to support a more pessimistic outlook for next year.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. At global spend management solution Payhawk, we're gearing up to enhance and innovate throughout 2024 to help even more businesses navigate uncertain times with complete spend control and visibility. But first, a quick rewind of 2023 and how it looked for us and our customers.

Happy birthday to us

This year, we celebrated our fifth anniversary. What a ride! In 2018, we started in a shared office in Sofia with less than ten people. Today, we have nine offices worldwide, more than 300 employees, and growing! Want to be part of a fast-growing spend management revolution? Check out our open positions.

Securing our EMI licence

2023 was also a significant year for us as we obtained an EMI licence. This is another big milestone in our journey that reaffirms our dedication to meeting strict regulatory and security standards. The most exciting bit is that it will let us innovate on a greater scale. This innovation will let us provide more benefits to our customers, such as credit lines, customisable workflows, rules, and custom card controls, among others.

Helping businesses avoid single-thread risk

This year has also allowed us to see first-hand how volatile the financial market can be. The Silicon Valley Bank was decapitalised overnight, and the biggest banking deal ever seen between Credit Suisse and UBS showed how quickly things can change and shake the world's financial system.

We were happy to support UK and US companies through the SVB ripple effect by offering access to credit cards with a fast approval workflow. As I mentioned to the press at the time, one of our debit card customers immediately reached out to diversify with a credit line, saying he realised how important it is to diversify and that he plans to use the Payhawk credit card to manage his SaaS subscription spend and take the pressure off payroll.

Interest rates, capacity planning, and roll-forward forecasting:

The increasing interest rates worldwide make debt more expensive than ever, meaning major readjustment for all economic players and businesses. Nowadays, everything is super dynamic. Being able to adjust and have an agile set-up is critical for success.

At Payhawk, we tend not to think of planning and forecasting as a yearly task. Instead, we build different scenarios and revise them quarterly and monthly using roll-forward forecasting. We engage the Board in this project, reviewing what works and what doesn't and if we are moving in the right direction within the market environment.

Internally, at Payhawk, we have focused on having a better structure and creating and improving internal processes. We've also been more critical in our expansion plans with efficiency-led capacity planning, implementing many new policies, and growing our leadership team.

What’s coming for 2024?

Given the anticipated persistence of economic uncertainty in 2024, maintaining robust financial discipline and a healthy balance sheet is crucial. Leveraging a spend management platform like Payhawk can significantly strengthen your financial position.

How? The answer’s simple: Our solution is built with the finance teams in mind. We focus our efforts on providing them with the features and tools to:

1. Improve visibility of company spend. Real-time spend visibility allows businesses to monitor spending as it occurs, helping identify and promptly address any potential issues.
2. Comply 100% with spend policies. Payhawk's built-in card spend policies ensure that employees consistently adhere to spending guidelines to prevent unnecessary or non-compliant expenditures, contributing to cost control.
3. Reduce errors and maintain financial records up-to-date thanks to seamless integrations with accounting systems and ERPs.
4. Improve reporting and analytics with valuable insights into spending patterns, trends, and areas for potential cost savings. Our platform's multi-entity spend dashboard, which enables you to track and manage spending across all your entities, is one example of how businesses may accomplish this.
5. Reduce manual processes. This efficiency is not only cost-effective but also contributes to timely financial reporting and reduces the risk of financial loss. For example, with our procure-to-pay automation, you can have 2- or 3-way matching directly within our platform.

In 2024, I’m eager to see the outcomes of our EMI licence going fully operational and delivering new and unique features for our customers. By talking frequently to our customers and investors, we understand that we solve many pain points for financial teams and the company as a whole. Our solution is tailored to the CFO office, giving them more valuable time to contribute to the organisation’s strategy.

Finally, the topic of ESG will also be very important for us and all EU companies as per the new directive. Making the EU carbon neutral for 2050 is a massive challenge, and all business leaders should look into how their operations have environmental and social impacts.

Need spend management help for your 2024? Book a demo today to find out how you can save time and control business spend in the new year and beyond.