10 expert tips for effective expenses management from the CIPP

When it comes to keeping tabs on company spending, the team at CIPP has a firm grasp on the best practices.

The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) make it their business to stay at the forefront of the knowledge and skills required for finance professionals.

With more than 9,000 members throughout the UK, their policy and research team pride themselves on providing quality information and advice for today’s finance teams.

It’s for this reason that webexpenses is proud to be a partner of CIPP and to help share some of the knowledge and expertise they have acquired with our users.

With expert tips from CIPP we have created a handy guide on How to Create an Effective Expenses Policy. And to complement this guide, the CIPP team has come up with some of their top tips on expenses management.

Top 10 Tips from the CIPP:

Here are some of the top 10 tips on the best ways to ensure that your organisation is effectively managing its employee expenses:

Good communications

• Make sure the expenses policy is communicated openly and explained clearly to all staff at the company and make it part of the induction process for newly arriving employees.

Keep it simple!

• If your expenses system is overly complex and poorly explained, it’s liable to cause misinterpretation and mistakes when it comes to employee claims. Think, is this causing confusion and how can it be clarified?

Handy Guide

• Why not consider a crib sheet for employees to keep on their desk, listing tips and guidance on the correct expenses processes? A handy reminder can help ensure correct procedures are followed for submitting claims and speed up the process.

Keep it updated

• Be sure to have any changes in information or accompanying documentation handed to the employee before he/she starts in their new role to ensure that they understand the new and updated process for submitting claims

Review and revise

• Don’t be afraid to review procedures and take reactive decisions accordingly. For instance, it might well be that as a company grows in stature the current expenses model may not be suitable for the larger organisation. Consider other procedures or software that might help.

Expert advice

• Always seek guidance from trained payroll and HR professionals before making any alterations to the expenses procedures. Remember, expert advice can save money in the future and not everybody can be an expert in the field. Take guidance from those that are.

Speak up

• If in doubt ask! If something doesn’t look right, then don’t be afraid to escalate up to senior staff and seek a second or in some cases third opinion before processing payments.

Healthy dialogue

• Be sure to maintain a dialogue with other departments in the organisation and see if you can improve the system in your department based on other operations and procedures.

Firm but fair

• Never be afraid to say no. If the claim is extravagant then the employee cannot be expected to be reimbursed for it and be sure to reinforce the policy to staff if something doesn’t look right.

Competitive costs

• Always look for ways to save money where possible. The economy is fluid and prices can vary constantly, whilst the train may have been cheaper one day to take to a meeting, it could be that it is no longer the case and flights are cheaper. How does this impact the current procedures?