In today’s dynamic business landscape, every penny counts. While we often focus on winning new clients and optimising operations, one area that can significantly impact your bottom line – and often gets overlooked or mishandled – is expense management. It’s far more than just tidying receipts; it’s an all-encompassing process of tracking, analysing, reporting, and controlling expenses to ensure robust cash flow control and enhance profitability.
Are you still wrestling with mountains of paper receipts, manual spreadsheets, and the nagging worry of forgotten claims or miscategorised costs? At BORIS Software, we understand that these inefficiencies don’t just create headaches; they can actively drain your profits and even expose you to compliance risks.
Why Accurate Expense Management is Non-Negotiable
For any business, from a fledgling start-up to a well-established enterprise, understanding expense management is integral to fiscal responsibility and efficiency. Here’s why getting it right is so crucial:
• Financial Control & Profitability: A well-structured expense management system provides clear visibility, consistency, and compliance in handling all types of business expenses. This allows you to anticipate and respond to changes, minimising financial risks and maximising profitability.
• Strategic Decision-Making: Analysing and reporting expenses are pivotal for ensuring financial control and driving business growth. Detailed expense analysis offers insights into spending patterns, helping you identify opportunities for cost savings, assist in budget planning, and even optimise purchasing decisions. Crucially, it can also help to identify fraudulent activities.
• Compliance and Reduced Errors: Streamlined expense approval workflows are crucial for efficient operations. By implementing well-defined workflows, companies can ensure compliance with internal policies and regulatory requirements, while significantly reducing errors and inconsistencies. This is especially vital given the strict reporting requirements in the UK.
Navigating UK Expense Reporting with HMRC
In the UK, HMRC sets clear guidelines for how businesses must report expenses and benefits provided to employees. You must report taxable expenses or benefits to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), either through your payroll or online at the end of the tax year. Additionally, you need to report and pay any Class 1A National Insurance owed on these expenses and benefits.
For businesses, this means choosing between ‘payrolling’ expenses (reporting and paying tax on them throughout the year via payroll software) or submitting P11D forms for each employee with taxable benefits not payrolled, along with a P11D(b) form for Class 1A National Insurance, at the end of the tax year. It’s important to note that paper forms will not be accepted for submission.
The stakes are high: you may have to pay a penalty if you carelessly or deliberately provide inaccurate information in your tax return that results in not paying enough tax or over-claiming tax reliefs. This underscores the absolute necessity of accurate, traceable expense reporting.
How BORIS Software Revolutionises Your Expense System
At BORIS, we understand that lost paperwork and wasting hours on manual processes are major pain points for businesses. Our Workforce Management solution is specifically designed to cut through this chaos, helping you run your business smarter.
Here’s how BORIS simplifies and strengthens your expense management:
• Effortless Digital Submission: BORIS allows you to manage timesheets, expenses, holidays, and clock-ins effortlessly with streamlined tools. Our system uses digital forms, which are instantly uploaded to a host portal for review in the office. This means no more lost receipts or delays in processing, enabling your field workers to submit claims directly via the app.
• Significant Time & Cost Savings: By automating processes and eliminating manual paperwork, BORIS cuts through the chaos, saving you over 10 hours a week and reducing costs by over 20%. This efficiency gain directly translates to better profitability.
• Enhanced Compliance: BORIS includes robust compliance tracking and reporting tools to ensure your business meets industry regulations. Features like real-time data capture, photo capture, GPS tagging, and date stamping provide undeniable evidence for every expense, crucial for HMRC audits and internal reviews. You can even utilise bespoke app templates for timesheets & expenses.
• Accessible Anytime, Anywhere: Whether your team is in the office or out in the field, BORIS is accessible on iOS, Android, and web browsers for seamless use anytime, anywhere. This empowers your entire workforce to manage expenses responsibly.
• Designed for All Roles: From Operations Managers overseeing costs to HR Professionals managing employee data and Field Workers submitting claims, BORIS is designed for every role in business operations to contribute to an accurate expense system.
Just as Bradford Royal Infirmary NHS experienced a dramatic improvement in fire risk assessment time, reducing a 5-day task to just 1 day with BORIS, imagine the time and resources you could reclaim by streamlining your expense management.
Take Control of Your Finances with BORIS
Don’t let inefficient expense management erode your business’s profitability or expose you to compliance risks. With BORIS Software, you can achieve seamless operations, gain unparalleled visibility into your spending, and ensure your expense processes are accurate, compliant, and efficient.
Ready to transform your operations and take control of your finances? You can book a free demo today to see how BORIS can streamline every step of your expense management and beyond.
