Cutting Small Business Costs with Expense Management

As the economy continues to take a plunge and unemployment keeps on growing, businesses everywhere are looking to cut costs to remain profitable.

However, when starting this process, businesses are always faced with the most obvious question; "What do we cut?"

After all, how do you trim the fat, when you don't where the fat is? This is where expense management comes in. Most businesses rely on their monthly credit card reports to let them know where their money is going, but often times, just looking at this report doesn't truly give the business an idea at how much money is being wasted.

That's why business managers should look into implementing some expense management software. With proper expense management, you'll be able to see where and how you're spending all of your money and what you can do to cut costs.

Expenses should be labeled by expense category, the employee incurring the expense and how the expense was paid for. This way, managers can make extremely informed decisions when it comes to deciding policies on what expenses should be reimbursed by the business. If you don't yet have an expense tracker, these are some things your new expense tracking solution must have:

This is most important if you're ever going to be audited. Of course, if you don't think you'll ever be audited, then you most definitely will, so prepare! Having digital copies of your receipts cuts down on time spent searching the expense, increases organization, as well as saves physical space. When the IRS comes knocking at your door, or the Fortune 500 that finally wants to buy out your company wants to take a look at your books, providing the copies of all of your expense receipts will show the caliber of business' financial organization and will give the auditor confidence that your numbers are true.

Once your expenses are recorded, you need them to easily flow into your accounting system so your books are up to date. This may not seem like that important of a step, but if all of your numbers aren't in one place, you won't be getting a complete picture during when you sit down to look at your books.

Make sure your expense management software easily integrates with whatever accounting system you have so it's not a hassle to move your expenditures into your balance sheet.

Whether you like them or not, expense management is an important part of business-so you might as well make it easier on yourself by making sure you're equipped with the proper tools.