Feature Highlight: Top Spend Dashboard

We are kicking off a new series on the blog: feature highlights! And what better feature to start with than the top spend dashboard? Because we say this often, as it bears repeating: you cannot manage what you cannot measure.

From experience, when potential customers come to us, they often do not know how much they are spending on expenses. What they do know, is that they want to simplify and improve their expense processes and reduce the associated workload. And hopefully save some money along the way. All things we are more than happy to help them with!

Analytics are key to optimising your spending, which is why we have a very clear, high-level reporting dashboard available in our application.

Introducing: the top spend dashboard

With our top spend dashboard, users receive high-level insights into their settled data through the medium of mostly horizontal bar charts.

This dashboard uses settled expense data as it is the most reliable, being that it is synchronised across the company’s entire ecosystem including accounting and payroll.

End users have access to insights on their own settled expenses on dimensions such as expense category, payment method or amounts.

Administrators and Controllers have a wider view on the settled data of the entity. This includes the above topics as well as spend per employee and an overview on total amounts or the highest spend category.

The dashboard provides a static overview on data which can be filtered by set periods, e.g. “last 30 days”, “last 90 days” up to and including “last 365 days”. This date filter is based, as is the rest of the information provided, on the settlement date - meaning the date the payment information was transferred to the customer to proceed with the payment.

This dashboard feature is available to all users on our web application to serve as a helpful view into their own spend or that of the entity.

Advantages of the top spend dashboard

Detect anomalies and improvements areas

With this easy-to-use dashboard, anomalies or areas of improvement can be spotted at a glance.

• Have you received numerous mileage claims during the last lockdown?
• Is one employee being particularly spendy lately?
• What payment method have your employees used the most?

These are all questions that will easily be answered with a look at the dashboard, allowing you to ask the right questions and optimise your policies and company spending.

Because global insights are easy to spot on the dashboard, it is ideal to help you identify trends you may want to drill deeper into with our other reporting functionalities. For example, if you spot a trend towards increased parking spend, you can dive into that spend per period in our advanced reporting to get a better handle on what’s going on.

Identify cost saving opportunities

Cost saving opportunities also become much easier to identify based, for example, on expense category.

• If parking suddenly becomes a large expense, it may be time for you to seek out a P-card partner.
• Or if you notice a large increase in your rail expenses over flights, a discussion with your travel booking partner is probably in the cards.

With the aggregated insights provided by the top spend dashboard, you have all the cards in hand to make the smartest decisions for your business.

Review & improve your expense policy

If you don’t already have an expense policy, start by drafting one. At a loss for where to start? We have some e to help you develop it.

With your expense policy in hand, use the top spend dashboard to assess its effectiveness.

• What is your average accommodation spend?
• Who is your biggest spender (and does their increased spending correlate to increased revenue for the company)?
• At what time of year are your expenses the highest?

An effective expense policy takes into account the behaviours of your workforce while also ensuring the organisation’s financial wellbeing. With a comprehensive view on your spending and knowledge of any sticking points, you can better adjust your policies and explain any changes to your colleagues.

A tool such as the top spend dashboard not only gives you visibility, but it also arms you with the knowledge to make improvements and ultimately increase your bottom line. Whether it’s human error, attempted fraud or lax spenders, you have the power to avoid unnecessary cash out and make the most of your necessary spending.

And because we value our customers’ opinion, we plan to further improve the functionality and look and feel of the dashboard as we process their feedback. So keep an eye out for that and expect more feature highlights in the near future!