- Inefficiency comes at a high price. Manual workflows for expense reporting, payables and reconciliation eat into profits.
- Automating finance tasks like expense reporting can dramatically save time for all employees, not just the finance team.
- Increasing spend control with virtual cards is a fast, cost-efficient way to stay on budget and reduce out-of-pocket spending.
The high cost of inefficiency
Did you know that inefficient processes can cost companies up to 30% of their annual revenue? It’s no surprise that one-third of financial teams say mistakes from manual reconciliation processes is their biggest challenge. Some organizations are losing up to $1.3 million a year due to manual financial workflows that are time-intensive and error-prone.
That’s a huge piece of the pie for something that’s preventable. Yet for many scaling businesses, it can be easy to overlook certain inefficiencies amid a fast pace and competing priorities. But are cumbersome reporting processes derailing your profitability?
It may be time to evaluate your corporate card solution. Why? Because it’s at the root of how you manage spending and reconciliation, and not all cards give you the power of finance workflow automation.
Streamline reporting with finance process automation
Are your employees bogged down with manual expense reporting for out-of-pocket and company card spending? Does your accounting team have to track down receipts and manually reconcile reports and invoices?
With randomized card purchases, finance doesn’t know what’s happening until they see the bills, and it may include unapproved spending. Budgets can spiral out of control, and everyone hassles with a long, complicated reporting process at month-end.
That’s a major drain on staff time. Consider that manually processing 1,000 expense reports a year can take 400 hours of work on average. Think of what else your people could do with all the time.
These are common challenges I hear from clients, and automating finance tasks can be a game-changer. In fact, it’s high on the list for many finance leaders. A 2024 Deloitte survey found that 80% of CFOs want to implement finance process automation so employees can focus on higher-impact work.
Having a commercial card with a robust integrated expense management system makes it possible. Here are a few big wins:
- Increase spend control by instantly issuing virtual credit cards with custom policies and limits for any user and use case. It’s a fast, efficient way to provide purchasing power to your employees with real-time visibility all within guidelines.
- Save time and reduce costs by automating finance reporting. With an AI-powered mobile app, employees can submit expenses and receipts in just a few taps. As soon as they spend, the app prompts them to report it, so it’s taken care of quickly.
Finance workflow automation also simplifies work for your accounting staff. Instead of a flood of disparate data at month-end, they receive a steady flow of well-organized, real-time reporting throughout the month. Data can seamlessly sync to your ERP or accounting system, including auto-categorized expenses, to ensure costs post to the right places in your ledger.
To further automate finance processes, with an SVB card solution, you can create customized virtual cards for each vendor, import invoices into the spend management platform, and automate payments and reconciliation. Along with cost-saving efficiency, you might pare down expenses even more by negotiating early-pay discounts or better rates with vendors.
Streamlining critical workflows with finance process automation is a powerful way to cut costs and refocus time on business that matters most.
As the bank for the innovation economy, SVB is committed to helping you succeed. Our commercial card solutions are tailored to help you streamline payment operations as you scale.