Regardless as to the nature of your business, the bottom line is that you need to be as efficient as possible if you’re to be profitable. This is especially true in small to medium-sized businesses where resources come at a premium compared to large multinationals. In today’s competitive market, that means having a workforce that is productive, motivated and at the very top of their game.
So managers who can get the very best out of their staff and optimum results from limited cash flow and company spending are the most likely to be successful in the longer-term.
It’s well known that keeping employees to a rigid timetable, no matter what their role, is terrible for morale and impacts a company’s productivity levels. So if you enable flexible working hours, you’ll see not only an increase in productivity but happier workers who are more loyal and prepared to go the extra mile for you and the business. This also extends to allowing some of the workforce to work from home. According to a study by IBM conducted in 2010, home workers actually put in more hours and suffer less stress than office workers.
So you’ve given them flexible working, but now you have to limit their internet access. While the internet is a necessity in most businesses, allowing your staff, unrestricted access can lead to time wasting with the potential for more time to be spent on Facebook and Twitter than actually getting on with work. Blocking some of the most popular sites is a proven way around this problem.
Encouraging more comfortable working through an intelligent digital network can improve efficiency in many ways. The technology automates tasks that are typically time-consuming, enabling employees to work on activities that need human attention. The use of unified communications and video conferencing allows for faster collaboration between colleagues and clients, while specialised applications such as interactive calendaring make scheduling meetings much faster. By using tools such as these, companies can improve productivity while reducing business expenses.
This can be a really cost-effective way of allowing you to focus on the things you do best as a company while outsourcing the elements you’re not so good at. However, before choosing to outsource logistics, accounting or public relations, for example, it’s important to know what core functions drive profits and what non-core functions raise your costs and impact on your productivity.
Tracking employee spending and managing expenses is a tricky business. There are a few traditional ways of doing it. The use of petty cash; employee expenses coming directly out of their own pocket to be reimbursed later; or the use of business credit cards. In today’s fast-paced world none of these are ideal, with employees feeling out of pocket and lost receipts causing all kinds of problems. This is not to mention the additional bookkeeping and runaway spending, lack of control and the arduous process of reconciliation when it comes to a company card.
This is where Soldo’s prepaid business card comes in handy. The card starts off at zero and can be topped up via an integrated dashboard with limits and spending rules imposed remotely. Our prepaid company card gives finance teams control over which transactions are approved and which are not.
Alongside the prepaid card, companies should consider developing an employee expense policy to make staff aware of what is and isn’t appropriate company spending. Administrators can see in real time transactions that are being made and top up individual cards as and when needed.
They can also filter data by department and expense type and then export all the data to see how and where the money is being spent, leading to better expense reporting, future forecasting, and control. The dashboard also works with all the major expense management software including Xero, Safe, Quickbooks and more.
Our prepaid business debit cards are part of Soldo’s comprehensive spending management solution, helping your company gain control over company-wide spending.