Who says lowering business expenses has to involve painful budget cuts? There are plenty of ways to free up existing capital by optimising spend to lower your business’s overall expenses without holding back on key investments or putting your operations at risk.
We’ll show you five powerful ways to lower costs while improving your operations by boosting efficiency and some best practices from Protein, a fast-growing natural supplement brand that uses Juni to optimise its operations and achieve major cost reductions.
As your company grows, expenses become scattered across different departments, platforms and even countries. Without a clear view of where your company’s money is going, it’s difficult to identify areas where you can optimise spend.
As a fast-growing, international brand, Protein is a perfect example of this. The company expanded across Europe within just a few years. But, rapid expansion made it increasingly difficult to manage their finances. With multiple subscriptions, marketing platforms and employee expenses across different markets, tracking their spend became a major challenge.
By adopting a centralised expense management strategy, Protein was able to consolidate all their financial data and company credit card accounts onto one platform, giving them full visibility over their spend. This centralised view allows them to spot inefficiencies quickly, cut unnecessary costs and make informed decisions.
As businesses grow, managing employee expenses becomes more complex. Traditional methods like company credit cards or manual reimbursements are prone to errors, and fragmented spend often leads to overspending. Delays in approval processes can also cause cash flow issues, making it harder for your finance team to maintain control over its budget.
Many companies, including Protein, find that using virtual cards for employee expenses helps streamline their financial processes. Juni enables you to issue virtual cards tied to specific employees or departments, and to set clear spending limits and track expenses in real-time. This keeps employee spend within budget while also simplifying your expense process.
Juni cards offer flexibility for businesses looking to scale efficiently, as they can be created or frozen instantly without the need for manual intervention. This makes it easier to control team expenses, reduce the risk of overspending, and avoid fraud.
How many hours does your team spend on tracking and reconciling expenses each month? Manually uploading receipts, filling out expense reports and chasing down missing documentation can cause delays and introduce errors into your financial records. This can lead to inaccurate reporting and slow down your month-end closing process.
By automating expense tracking, you and your team can save valuable time and reduce the risk of errors. For example, automated receipt matching technology like Juni Match pairs receipts with the correct transactions, eliminating the need for manual data entry. For businesses like Protein, automating this process significantly reduces the administrative burden on their finance teams, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks rather than tedious paperwork.
Integrating expense management with your existing accounting software further streamlines the process by automatically syncing transactions and ensuring that all records are accurate and up-to-date. This helps you prepare financial statements efficiently, without the risk of human error.
Subscriptions to software tools and services can quickly pile up, leading to unnecessary costs if not managed properly. Many businesses struggle with keeping track of these recurring payments, often paying for services they no longer need, or owning multiple, redundant subscriptions for the same type of service.
An easy way to manage subscriptions and avoid wasteful spending is to assign a virtual card to each subscription. This enables your finance team to monitor all subscriptions in one place, so you only pay for subscriptions you really need, and you can easily identify any redundant subscriptions.
Protein, for example, uses virtual cards and Juni spend management solution to maintain a clear overview of their subscription costs. This allows them to easily identify and cancel services they don’t need.
Cash flow management is a critical aspect of maintaining financial health, especially for businesses that deal with high inventory costs or fluctuating expenses. Delayed payments from customers, large upfront investments in stock and irregular cash inflows all put pressure on a company’s liquidity. Without proper cash flow management, businesses can find themselves in financial trouble even if they are profitable on paper.
To avoid this, you can try extending payment terms with your suppliers or negotiating early payment discounts. But this only works if you have real-time insight into your cash flow. To optimise your cash, try automating your accounts payable process to make sure your invoices are paid on time. This lowers your costs by reducing the risk of late fees. It also helps improve relationships with your suppliers.
Businesses with significant inventory expenses, like Protein, use inventory financing as an effective way to free up working capital. Juni’s Invoice Credit, for example, offers you extended payment terms of up to 120 days on your invoices, so your company can maintain liquidity while stocking up on essential inventory. This allows you to invest in growth without running into cash flow problems.
Reducing costs is a lot easier when your Finance team has the right tools in place. Yet it’s also important to focus on creating a company culture that values efficiency and cost-effectiveness. That means training your employees to understand the importance of cost control and empowering them to make informed decisions, so they contribute to your company’s overall financial health.
A few important features of a cost-conscious company culture include:
By fostering a cost-conscious mindset, your Finance team can help reduce unnecessary spending and optimise your company’s resources for long-term growth. This helps you achieve short-term savings while also creating a sustainable financial basis to support your company’s growth.
Reducing business expenses doesn’t have to involve cutting back on essential investments. Before looking for places to make deep cuts, start by looking at how you’re currently spending. You’re almost certain to find opportunities to optimise and lower costs.
By gaining control and increasing visibility, managing employee expenses in real-time, automating expense tracking, keeping subscription costs in check and improving cash flow, you can significantly reduce unnecessary costs without compromising your business’s growth.
Managing expenses is a never-ending task, but with the right tools in place – such as automated spend management platforms – your team is better positioned to keep costs under control and invest in your company’s continual growth.
Ready to start streamlining your spend management? Contact Juni to learn more and get started today.
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