Nitin Mittal Senior Manager, Assurance and Risk Advisory at Perfect Accounting .and shared services Pvt. Ltd. Read more…
The retail industry has come a long way in the last decade and the metamorphosis it witnessed has been truly exhausting. Right from eliminating the need of physical stores to reaching out to the global customer, the growth has been one of a marvel. There is no denying the fact that with the development, tricky challenges trickled in. But as always necessity is always the mother of invention. As a result, technological innovation in the likes of expense management software has continued to mitigate productivity challenges.
In retail, some of these tricky challenges revolve around constantly improving the customer experience and managing the cash flow both in and out of the organization.
Managing Cash: The Pain Point
Whether its e-commerce or a brick and mortar store, the challenges of cash management have increasingly become overwhelming. The first and foremost reason being the continuous involvement of the physical cash in spite of the presence of the digital payment options. Cash transactions specifically lead to three other challenges such as:
- The absence of clear visibility on how much physical cash does a store need on a day to day basis
- Manually managing receipts and balancing cash drawers with increased chances of errors
- An enormous amount of time spent on managing cash transactions and maintaining a record
- Lowering the costs involved in cash management such as labor costs, bank charges, and CIT fees
Expense Management: The Holistic Cash Management Solution
The role of online expense management software extends much beyond just maintaining a record of cash transactions. Modern expense management technology is the revolution in itself as it delivers multifarious benefits such as:
- Elimination of tedious and error-prone process of cash balancing
Paper-intensive cash management processes are extremely time-consuming and replete with chances of error. Lengthy spreadsheets with multiple stakeholders working, reviewing and monitoring the submissions have chances of compliance errors. This delays the cash balancing process and creates a discrepancy. Online expense management software completely automates the process of expense management and offers features for easy review and change incorporation. With superior accessibility features, there is no room for delays.
- Driving organizational efficiency through thorough automation of cash management
The expense management software suite offers multifarious features that enable managers to handle cash transactions with dexterity and in compliance with company policies. This offers them with the much-required bandwidth to focus on business critical functions.
- Regulation of unwarranted expenses through policy enforcement
The paper-intensive process of cash management often fails to adhere to expense capping guidelines and policy frameworks. This often leads to expenditures that go unnoticed and thereby, adding to unnecessary cost to the company. But cash management systems work in tandem with enterprise compliance with the features for immediate reporting of non-compliance cases.
- Offering visibility into the latest trends through superior analytics
The automated cash management systems support enterprises with smart analytics that help them inefficient forecasting and investment decisions. With multiple features and apps to support the review of cash spend and access to newer trends, the enterprise derives tremendous value inappropriately channelizing their monetary resources.
- Ensuring speedy reimbursements
Expense management software effectively bridges the gap between the submission of the invoice and the release of the reimbursements. Lesser turnaround time in the release of reimbursements promotes employee satisfaction in the long run thereby, boosting their productivity. the fact that the system can be accessed through multiple devices makes it easier for the submission of the expenses and getting approval on the go.
What Retailers Derive?
Technically with the implementation of expense management tracking software at an enterprise level, retailers basically reassume their charge on the entire process of cash management. The modern expense management solution offers the retailers with value propositions such as:
- Offering complete control over the cash by digitizing it in the form of cash cards that can be used for transaction and also digitally recharged.
- Simplifying the reporting process for petty cash by enabling employees to submit invoices and receive approvals on the go.
- Delivering smart analytics for well-informed decision making and financial forecasting.
- Capping unnecessary spends by quickly recognizing the loopholes.
- Delivering capabilities for managing multiple vendor payments and maintaining a record of each transaction.