This is the story of two employees, Jessica and James, attempting to make claim reimbursements in their respective companies. Try and put yourself in their shoes, and think about how you might feel. Does one of their situations seem familiar to you?
Read on to find out more.
Employee Jessica
Meet Jessica.
Jessica is a marketing intern at Company ABC. She needs to print a bunch of posters and purchase extension sockets for a company event happening in a few days.
Since she was not given any company funds by her supervisor previously, she decided to use her money to pay these expenses upfront. She has also taken a cab down to the mall to make those purchases, which her supervisor permitted. These expenses amounted to $520, where she proceeds to use her debit card to make the payments.
Besides her internship, Jessica is also a full-time university student who has to pay for her school fees on top of her monthly subscriptions to applications she uses daily. Unfortunately, she is now short of cash and is facing a slight strain on her finances due to this recent hefty purchase.
As Jessica looks through Company ABC’s lengthy expense reimbursement policy, she decides to submit a claim request for the purchases she made and run it through her supervisor for approval. However, her supervisor’s schedule is packed to the brim for the week– leaving no time to review the claim report.
The following week, Jessica’s supervisor had returned with her claim request unapproved. To her dismay, she realises that she has forgotten to attach one of her receipts. She is left scrambling to find the missing receipt, which she only manages to find and submit two days later.
Once the claim report has been approved, her supervisor sends it off to ABC’s finance department to process the claim and run it through accounting reconciliation. Given the large volume of claims the finance team has to process, it will likely take about two weeks or more before she can get her money back.
This situation further exacerbates the financial burden she is facing, where she has no idea when her claims will be credited to reduce her cash flow issue. In the end, she feels frustrated and resentful during this entire claim reimbursement process.
Employee James
Now, meet James.
James is also a marketing intern, but in Company XYZ. Unlike Company ABC, XYZ integrates the use of Spenmo’s smart cards into their accounting and finance workflows.
Like Jessica, James is also tasked with purchasing a few items for an upcoming company event. Knowing that he would be making these purchases within the next few days, his supervisor had issued him a physical Spenmo corporate card, which was previously topped up with some funds for this event.
With peace of mind, he proceeds to make these purchases with ease. Every transaction he makes gets logged into the Spenmo dashboard in real-time, which his supervisor can easily access anywhere and anytime via desktop or mobile app. He can also check how much is left on the card should he need to make additional purchases.
Suddenly, James receives an incoming message from another supervisor to purchase an additional item for the event. Knowing that there are now insufficient funds left on his card to make the purchase, he requests for a top-up which appears as a task card in the “Pending Actions” section on his supervisor’s dashboard.
His supervisor gets notified about the request and immediately makes the top-up through Spenmo. Yet another smooth purchase, James returns happily to work and focuses on his daily tasks– not worrying about when his claim request will be approved or when he will get his money back if he pays out-of-pocket.
Suppose James was not issued a physical Spenmo card initially. He pays first using his own money, but he does not need to worry about reading through lengthy expense reimbursement policies like Jessica! That’s because all he has to do is to submit a claim reimbursement through the Spenmo app or desktop.
With Spenmo’s receipt capture feature, he efficiently takes pictures of his receipts, logs the expense under his team “Marketing”, and classifies the expenses accordingly. Once his supervisor is notified of this request, he makes the approval with the click of a button. The payment would then be processed within 1-2 working days and automatically paid to James’s account via Paynow.
Either way, James is not stuck feeling annoyed or facing any financial stress on his finances!
Which employee would you rather be – James or Jessica?
Here’s the most important question – would you rather feel carefree like James, or would you rather be left feeling lost and frustrated like Jessica?
Well, the answer is pretty obvious. Any employee would rather be like James – experiencing a seamless and convenient workflow, removing redundancies altogether!
Corporate cards and seamless claim reimbursements for everyone
With Spenmo’s physical and virtual corporate cards, employees like Jessica can save more time and divert their focus to meaningful tasks without having to deal with the pain of manual expense management. Every dollar that an employee spends can be easily tied back to a team or an individual for accountability and be tracked in real-time.
These cards can also be created for various purposes with set spending limits, preventing all instances of overspending and paving the way for efficient budget management. Moreover, there is no need to memorise lengthy expense reimbursement policies any longer, leaving your employees to rest easy knowing that their claims will be seamlessly reimbursed in a timely manner.
Consider using Spenmo as the alternative way to manage your employees’ expenses. Our vision is to help you gain visibility, comfort, and control over how, when, and why money is leaving your organisation. Talk to us to learn more!