New Report Exposes Corporate Spend Challenges: Companies Lose An Average of $85,000 a Year on Misaligned Spend Policies

Additionally, companies pay out an average of $32,210/month in expenses floated on employees’ personal credit cards, among other hurdles

NEW YORK, July 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Teampay, the leading distributed spend management platform, today announced a new research report in conjunction with Kelton Global, a Material Company. The report, “Beyond the Balance Sheet: The Top Challenges Facing Finance Teams,” comes at a crucial time as employees return to work in hybrid, distributed environments that pose new challenges for finance teams.

Teampay and Kelton Global teamed up to survey 500 corporate finance professionals in order to better understand how changes to business purchasing have impacted finance processes, reporting, and the team members themselves. The results shed a light on longstanding challenges in the field which were exacerbated by the pandemic, including a lack of clarity around crucial month-end close metrics and consistent losses from misaligned spend policies.

Several challenges also extended into the day-to-day work of finance professionals, highlighting the need for more digital, automated tools. Importantly, the report identified a host of possible solutions to major pain points. These insights will give leadership teams a path forward as they navigate the return to work and make improvements to the employee experience.

Some key findings from the report are included below:

Spending Outside of Company Policy Has a Significant Impact

• Respondents report that, on average, their companies lose $84,980 per year on purchases that are made outside of policy. 13% admit their companies lose more than $200,000 per year on out-of-policy spend.
• For larger companies with between 1,000 and 5,000 employees, the average loss rises to $113,250 per year.
• 78% of respondents assert that many company employees are unaware of the entire company spend policy.
• 70% of finance professionals contend senior-level executives poorly manage their expense reports, and 65% claim that they knowingly ignore policy.

Finance Teams Feel the Pressure

• 36% of respondents state that they aren’t confident that month-end close is accurate.
• Almost 3 out of 4 finance pros (72%), report that processing expense reports is one of the most frustrating parts of their jobs.
• Finance teams end up paying out an average of $32,210/month in expenses made on employees’ personal credit cards, adding complexity to verifying expenses and increasing the pressure to reimburse quickly.
• Finance professionals spend nearly 55 hours each month dealing with reconciliation, record keeping, expense report management, and business expense fraud monitoring alone.

COVID-19 Has Presented Additional Challenges for Finance Teams to Manage

• 90% of finance professionals report that their companies have allowed employees to expense new things due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among those respondents who reported that their policies have changed, many new allowances are permitted to make the home office more comfortable, including:
  • 52% report their employees can now expense basic office supplies.
  • 42% connectivity upgrades.
  • 34% utilities.
  • 30% wellness/fitness.
• 31% of finance professionals say that more employees are submitting expenses than they were pre-pandemic, leading to additional pressure and headaches for the finance team.
• 31% report that there are more inaccuracies in expense reports.

Finance Pros Seek New Solutions

• 93% want to implement a good infrastructure around real-time tracking and reporting of expenditures.
• 90% wish to support employees with a robust software-backed program that reduces manual processes.
• 86% want to automate existing spend management processes for better visibility and control over all non-payroll spend.

“Customers have approached Teampay for years to help them run their businesses more efficiently. This report has revealed just how dramatic the challenges are,” said Andrew Hoag, CEO of Teampay. “By automating processes and workflows, organizations can better support employees, reduce the busywork that finance teams face, and save a lot of money.”

The full report with additional insights presented by Teampay and Kelton Global is available for download at https://www.teampay.co/beyond-the-balance-sheet/

About Teampay
Teampay’s distributed spend management platform gives high-growth companies total control and real-time visibility over purchasing, while empowering employees with smart, policy-driven access to company spend. Teampay’s patented technology (U.S. Pat. No. 10,755,339, and other patents pending) delivers a user-friendly workflow that aligns spenders and finance, collects critical data, integrates it into legacy systems, and provides safe, intelligent payments. As such, the platform solves the common problems of policy misalignment, lack of transparency, and unpredictable spending. Teampay was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in New York City.

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