Definitive Guide To Spend Management For Early-Enterprise/IPO Companies

As operations and accounting complexify, you’ll need to make sure that your systems communicate with each other. Your transaction software must not only sync data seamlessly, but also interact with other tools within your ERP.

There are now more people, perhaps internationally dispersed, spending more money within your company. Maintaining visibility at all times, and in real time, is important to manage growing risks.

Handing spending responsibility to departmental management and singular employees is necessary, but needs effective oversight.

Naturally, your company is becoming more complicated, with management structures expanding and potential new entities being established. Your systems will have to address both.

You simply don’t have time to generate one-off specialist reporting. Your analytics operations and the ways you use data are evolving, so you need access to clean, real-time data for an increasing number of purposes.

Compliance and the associated processes are more important than ever. Having the easily retrievable, necessary documentation for your audits will save hours of manual effort to track it down.

The framework for risk management and controls must be extendable to the various legal entities that your company now has.

Adopting consistent processes and workflows company-wide can reduce friction and improve moral.

Maintaining the most efficient operations possible in a large organization requires automation. Any remaining manual tasks should be automated at this stage.

As volumes increase, so too can risk. Automating spend controls and creating a full audit trail of compliance are both necessary.

As FP&A increases, pulling the right data and real-time insights from your systems becomes increasingly valuable.

All operations are accelerating and increasing in scale. Therefore, staying on top of protocol and an efficient close is more important.

With spending taking place across a growing company, visibility can be obscured which leads to wasted spend. Whether this is unnecessary, duplicative, unwanted, fraud, or zombie spend, it is important to control for these risks.

If you have IPO aspirations, everything your finance and accounting teams do will have that focus in mind. Closing gaps, smoothing bumps, and consolidation help prepare a company for this step.

The journey to IPO requires hard work, dedication, and fast-paced deliverables from across the company. Ensuring your employees feel adequately resourced and supported is imperative to the success of your company.

Evidence of compliance must be accessible and adequately prepared for the audits that your company now faces regularly.

From carrying out multi-currency payments to facilitating the amortization of non-USD, your spend management system is with you as you grow.

Automatically send approvals to the appropriate department, and group multiple approvers together depending on the type of spend. Every transaction can have a different approval workflow, based on your spend policy.

OCR technology speeds up personal expense submission, advanced reimbursement approval workflows, reimbursement summaries for Slack, and more.

Automatic calculations of mileage reimbursements streamlines a dreaded process for employees.

Reports can be readily pulled to capture all non-payroll spend on an up-to-the-minute basis. Access to spending is available to all stakeholders who wish to track actual spending by individual or by department.

Employees can link their bank account to the mobile app to speed up reimbursement payments.

Reports can be readily pulled to capture all non-payroll spend on an up-to-the-minute basis. Access to spending is available to all stakeholders who wish to track actual spending by individual or by department.

Vendors can upload W-9s directly via a vendor portal. The system will prepare a year-end report of 1099 reporting data.

Ensuring you choose a spend management system that is SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliant is vital at this stage.

Assisting in the planning and analysis your teams carry out, these automated projections can give fast, real-time insights.

Capture everything that happens as it happens. Even view in-progress GL entries.

Assisting in the planning and analysis your teams carry out, these automated projections can give fast, real-time insights.

QuickBooks Desktop integration, NetSuite native amortization — the list goes on.

Integrations with systems such as Rippling, as well as a general awareness of the need for robust HRIS integrations, means your spend management system works for your people.

Alongside sophisticated SSO settings, advanced settings and control can also be set surrounding who has access to your system — internally and externally.

POs and card transactions are annotated with ledger numbers so that managing multiple ledgers doesn’t mean more manual labor.

With comments enabled on POs, integrated PO workflows, accrual projections, PO editing enabled, and more.

The presence of RFPs, vendor management, and procurement processes are increasingly important and require a comprehensive system.

Every transaction caught in real time — your software system is the audit trail you now need, right since the beginning.

Spend management systems arm your finance teams for hypergrowth, but management and employees across the board can also access the system that records and enables policy aligned spending and reimbursements.

Keeping records correctly filed from start to finish, auto-categorizing them, and scheduling payments where necessary.

Eliminating unnecessary aspects of your tech stack will help drive much needed efficiency. Combining all non-payroll spend into a single platform means that three or four point solutions for approvals, expenses, bill payments, and corporate cards can be consolidated into one system.

Real-time data, adjustable spend budgets, readily available interim reports, and comprehensive reporting across all payment types mean your teams and stakeholders can access the relevant data as they need it.

Airbase has developed features to facilitate travel and mileage reimbursements where relevant, so that reimbursing employees remains uncomplicated.

Airbase supports payments in 145 currencies at a fraction of the cost of other foreign currency payment choices and offers amortization of non-USD. With multi-subsidiary and multi-national capabilities, Airbase is not just for the here-and-now.

Airbase has carefully focused on expanding advanced vendor features so that procurement processes and vendor management functions are detailed and flexible. At early-enterprise stage, the presence of RFPs, vendor management, and procurement processes are increasingly important and require a comprehensive system, such as Airbase.

Airbase has extensive purchase order functionality which handles increased volume with ease. POs can be numbered in correspondence with the GL they’re linked to (if you have more than one), auto-categorized, commented on, requested by employees directly, and so on.

In-transit payments are shown in aging and archived reports on your Airbase platform. In-progress ledger entries are also visible, making sure no transaction is ever missed.

Airbase allows management to set criteria allowing employees to spend where necessary, accelerating operations while keeping control of transactions. Executives can use delegated access so their staff can manage their expenses. Approvers and approval settings are customizable by multi-tier management. You can also set observers who need to be kept in the loop on spending.

Airbase’s modular platform means that you can implement it in parts (bill payments, corporate cards, expense reimbursements) to fit your operational needs and onboarding capacity.

Airbase continues to develop the already deep integrations we have with NetSuite and Sage Intacct. NetSuite native amortization and other integration features can support you at enterprise-level.

Airbase integrates with systems such as Rippling, and is hyperaware of the need for robust HRIS integration, so your Airbase platform works for your people as well as your processes. Automatic provisioning and deprovisioning as employees join or leave the organization keeps your spend management system current.

Airbase integrates with Okta and has SAML Identity Provider support. Alongside sophisticated SSO software, advanced settings and controls can also be applied regarding who accesses your system — internally and externally.

With accrual projection filters, real-time reporting, customizable budgeting filters, and interim reports that capture real-time data, Airbase has an extensive inventory of features to keep you audit-ready and data-informed.

Airbase forms an audit trail of each transaction from approvals, to invoices/receipts, to booking so that documentation is filed at the transaction level. The system has a sophisticated invoice inbox that parses emails, finding relevant correspondence with and about vendors and pulling relevant information snippets into the file. Its vendor portal allows for easy uploading of W-9s.

Airbase offers single sign-on, a mobile app where employees can link their bank account for reimbursements, notification controls, easy receipt submission using OCR technology, and purchase/PO workflows and requests. It’s designed for your people and teams, at any size.

Airbase has an ambitious and reliable roadmap for new features that we will happily share with you so that you can judge for yourself if your organization and ours are moving toward the same direction.