At ClearSpend, we’re business owners, too. Our team of financial experts and platform developers are deeply committed to helping small businesses better manage and understand their business expenses and gain tighter control over company spend.
As we worked to create a fast, free, and exceedingly functional automated tool, we talked to hundreds of business owners, including accounting firms like yours. In those discussions, we learned about how we could build not only a better spend control and expense management platform, but also a tool that could help improve entire businesses.
Based on our research, control and transparency over employee spending and business expenses are key pain points. However, at the heart of these challenges are also the workforce issues that are becoming increasingly problematic as the demographics and dynamics of the workforce rapidly change. This trend will continue to demand a response from every organization as the need to hire and manage remote teams, work virtually with individuals of varying levels of digital skills, and changing employee expectations around access to employer-provided technology become increasingly urgent priorities.
You may be experiencing these issues in your own practice and you can bet that your clients are too. Consider these excerpts from our interviews with the business owners we talked to about how an automated expense management platform like ClearSpend can help them better manage their workforce challenges.
Streamlining employee expense management with an advanced digital spend management tool
“If all of our employee expenses and documentation tracking were all in one place, that would make my life easier. It would be easier for budgeting and forecasting.” This speaks to the overarching benefit of advising your clients on how to better manage the facilitation, tracking, and management of employee spending—including receipt management and integrating this data with your accounting platform.
ClearSpend offers this, and more! As one business owner we spoke with said, “The receipt management tool would be very beneficial because I wouldn't have to be concerned that employees would lose their receipts. It’s a bit of a hassle to have them turn everything in correctly, so [having these capabilities] would remove that problem.”
Controlling spending authority and approvals with virtual spending cards
Providing a mutually beneficial means for employees to make approved purchases and for employers to manage them—especially for remote teams—came up multiple times. “I would be comfortable with [a process like that] because employees wouldn't be able to use the card for something not approved or unauthorized.”
ClearSpend offers a solution to this prevalent pain point with ClearSpend Go Cards. Go Cards are Visa business debit cards that enable a high level of spend control with capabilities to restrict purchases based on merchant categories and daily, monthly, or per transaction limits. Businesses can issue an unlimited amount of virtual Go Cards and turn them on and off in real time. The cards are also integrated with Quickbooks accounting software. Unlike other card issuing and expense management platforms, ClearSpend is free to use—with no hidden fees.
Another business owner who provided feedback on ClearSpend agreed this was something that they would be interested in for their own team: “I like the idea of the virtual cards, and I like the idea of allocating different buckets for each department because that allows us to budget things more precisely. So that's important for me.”
Reducing risk when employees exit the organization
Virtual cards for employee expenses are not just a convenient tool – they help protect your business when you have employees exiting and are concerned about access to accounts or unauthorized expenses.
“I like the idea of the virtual cards because if there's a technician who is terminated, I could just cancel the virtual card and they don't have a physical card. If the employee knows he'll be terminated and he still has access to the card for one or two days or so, that could be a problem. So, your solution would remove that problem,” said a plumbing business owner we interviewed.
These research interview highlights are just a handful of the important insights on what your clients want surrounding the services your firm provides. They can help you build more value for your clients with both outsourced financial management and advisory services.
By understanding the most pressing challenges facing your clients and helping them implement solutions to ineffective expense management methods, you’ll foster stronger relationships and create potential to expand your revenue streams. Most importantly, you’ll be helping to solve major expense management headaches so your clients can focus more on doing what they love.
Nate Meadows is the Head of Marketing at ClearSpend. He's passionate about helping small business owners and bookkeepers clear out the piles of receipts and expense reports taking over their dining room table by using automated tools. Nate also loves burritos and coffee, but not necessarily together—oh, not to mention his dog.