Spend control is a group of policies and processes a company uses to monitor and manage spending. Viewed holistically, it’s a measure of how well a business handles its costs: a high level of spend control gives companies maximum visibility over what’s spent, and lets them adjust quickly when necessary. A low degree of spend control describes companies that have little idea where money goes, and struggle to make changes when required.
More tangibly, spend controls are the limits and oversight placed on individual employee expenses. This requires a balance between overly restricting spend and offering too much leeway. If only a few select managers can spend, they become a bottleneck for the whole company. If everyone can spend with no controls, they can accidentally (or intentionally) expose the company to financial risks.
The goal is to give relative freedom to team members to spend where necessary, without losing control.
Great spend management systems combine all your key payment methods and give you one source of truth. This is crucial - you can’t rely on controlling invoice payments only, when huge chunks of spending also happen through credit cards.
The payment methods themselves aren’t important - it’s who spends, why, where, and on what that really count.
Spendesk manages non-payroll spending through the following:
Prepaid corporate cards. Every employee can have one, which means no more shared credit cards or relying on employees’ own money.
Virtual cards. These are the safest, fastest, and easiest way to pay for anything online. They can be single-use or recurring, perfect for SaaS subscriptions.
Invoices. Upload and pay any invoice through Spendesk, so you don’t need to create a whole different procurement process to confuse your teams.
Expense reports. On the odd occasion where employees use their own money, they can claim reimbursement instantly with just a photo of their receipt.
Again, the crucial thing is that the process and approval workflow is the same for all methods. Employees only need one set of rules and have one process to learn. As a result, you have almost no human error.