How to Control Cash Flow with Expense Management Automation

Managing cash flow isn’t about magic. It’s about having clear visibility into where money is going. By automating expense and invoice processes, organizations can reduce manual errors, improve accuracy, and make more informed decisions about spending.

Cash flow can make or break a business, but effectively controlling it is a mystery to many. One thing most business leaders can agree on, however, is that managing cash on hand requires visibility into what’s going out the door. To stay ahead, you need real visibility into where money is going, and confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks.

Spend visibility and expense management is more of a challenge than ever; employees have more ways to spend and, consequently, more ways to potentially circumvent your current systems of control. And things like data-entry errors, processing mishaps, late or incorrect payments, and employees’ mistakes and fraud can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Here are a few quick tips to simplify how you manage your cash:

Automate Expense Management for Better Cash Flow Imagine being able to see spend and expenses in near real time, while eliminating manual entry, human error, and compliance blind spots. By automating expense audits and validating invoices against purchase orders, you can control spend before money even leaves your accounts.

Easy, right?

Well, yes, actually. Automating AP, and specifically your T&E and invoice processing, allows you to control every dime with fewer demands on human capital. And with the right solution, you can put your funds back to work and put a system in place that scales with you as your business grows and changes.

Make Simple Tools Do Smarter Work with Expense and Invoice Automation

Moving expense and invoice management to the cloud with SAP Concur allows you to connect spending data directly from suppliers, credit providers and virtually every other source. So no matter where or how spending happens, you can capture it accurately down to the last dollar. SAP Concur solutions also help you:

• Give employees mobile tools that automatically write expense reports on the go, so there are no delays or mistakes, and budgets accrue accurately
• Automatically audit every transaction, so you’re not trying to recoup funds that shouldn’t have been reimbursed
• Automatically apply spending controls and audit rules to every purchase, and keep fraud away from your funds
• Automatically check invoices against goods and services received, so you can catch duplicates before overpaying
• Accurately track mileage (a massive source of fraud and honest overestimation) and automatically add it to expense reports
• Get detailed reports and dashboards to help you spot unusual spending behavior, and you’ll automatically get alerts when spend nears specific thresholds

Gain Real-Time Visibility into Spending to Control Cash Flow

You can’t control what you can’t see, so every solution we design makes spending more visible. And, ultimately, easier to manage.

And if you noticed: Every bullet in the list above contains the word “automatically,” which gives you a sense of how this solution has streamlined processes across the board.

Essentially, it adds up to simple control of your funds. And that takes all the mystery out of cash flow.

Sill curious? Learn more about invoice automation here, and read more about T&E data analysis here.