No Comments » Published on: September 2nd, 2010 by Alex Cohen
The CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment) Energy Efficiency Scheme deadline is 30th September 2010. You risk a fine from £5,000 to £45,000 if you don’t register in time. Qualification for the scheme is based upon your organisation’s electricity consumption. Alarmingly, survey data reveals that as many as 48% of finance professionals do not know if their organisation qualifies to be regulated under the scheme.
Follow this link to find out how Accountancy Age reports it: http://www.accountancyage.com/accountancyage/news/2268996/uk-finance-professionals
Many businesses will fall below the threshold for qualification to the scheme, however this may not be the case indefinitely; as carbon reduction deadlines get closer, government has no option other than to extend regulatory practices.
One area that regulatory activity is certain to scrutinise is the carbon generated by business travel. Much of the cost of business travel is reimbursed to employees through expenses systems.
The best expenses management solutions like WebExpenses have real time carbon tracking features interwoven into the technology. You can be certain that by using a good expenses management solution now, you are ready for when the regulator comes knocking on your door waving the notice to comply or face a hefty fine.
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No Comments » Published on: August 20th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
To many ordinary people it seemed as if some of the expenses claims at the centre of the MP’s expenses scandal were a joke; I mean just how many of us had even heard the term ‘duck house’, let alone encountered it as a legitimate business expense?
As organisations continue to balance the tricky trinity of investment, sourcing capital and preserving cash, the need for financial efficiency leads many of us back to everyday business basics. Any drive for financial efficiency must include trimming the fat and reducing the margin for inaccuracy from business expenses like travel and entertainment and mileage allowances.
One basic fault with the MP’s expenses system was in the vagueness of guidance. Whether by design or accident, this left the system wide open to interpretation and abuse. Any definition of allowable expenses must be as crystal clear as possible. One of the simplest ways of doing this is to create an expenses policy for your business. Our Expenses Policy Guide and Template document is designed to assist you in producing new or revising existing expenses policies.
If you’re interested in seeing how Parliament has got back to basics you can view the House of Commons policy document ‘The Green Book – A guide to Member’s expenses’ online by following this link: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-finance-office/greenbook.pdf
There’s a lot of detail needed to spell it out to MPs. Our guide for businesses is much more concise and helps with the process and formulation of strong policy.
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No Comments » Published on: August 12th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
At last! Expenses are sexy… or at least the headline writers can now get ‘expenses’ and ‘sex’ on the front page at the same time! Look at what HP boss Mark Hurd got up to by following this link:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/Hewlett-Packard-CEO-Mark-Hurd-Resigns-Over-Harassment-And-Expense-Claims/Article/201008115678708?f=rss
So what makes the head of a multi-billion $ corporation lose control and risk everything in a high stakes personal entanglement that involved falsifying expense reports?
Now the former CEO, Chairman and President of HP, Mark Hurd has a reputation for cost cutting and a track record that speaks for itself having restored the IT giant to a position of market leader. This suggests he is a business leader of sound judgement that understands the need for strong financial control, but he clearly lost his way.
Whatever the circumstances or personal emotions behind employee misconduct, an expense management system is an effective deterrent that can prevent employees from fiddling business expense accounts.
With strong policy reinforcement of allowable expenses, tighter control and auditing and management information that enables trends and inconsistencies to be identified, WebExpenses is a leader in providing organisations with the tools to keep expenses in check. With WebExpenses, when temptation strikes and your employees find their better judgement is compromised, defrauding the business is not an option.
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No Comments » Published on: August 4th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
If you’re a Finance Director or Manager considering the use of an expenses management solution to root out the inefficiency and inaccuracy inherent within manual expenses claims processes, then our paper ‘How to choose and successfully implement an expenses management solution’ is essential reading.
The expenses management solution marketplace is healthy and competitive. By following the trend for business applications to be delivered over the internet, widely known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), many systems involve no up front investment and offer PAYG monthly billing that sits in OPEX.
However, not all solutions are created equal. Our impartial guide ‘How to choose and successfully implement an expenses management solution’ has been created to help organisations take the first steps towards implementing and releasing the full benefits of an expenses management system.
To download the guide and obtain the intelligence to help you objectively evaluate the best expenses management solution for your needs, just click this link.
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No Comments » Published on: July 28th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
Published on the 11th July the inaugural International Track 100, sponsored by The Sunday Times and HSBC, should provide an excellent boost to business confidence. The report reveals that privately owned British firms have managed to sell £231bn of products and services in overseas markets in the 12 months leading up to March 2010.
Analysis in the report provides a clear message, namely that, there is opportunity if you look beyond the Eastern boundary of Europe: “With the eurozone in turmoil and the American economy still fragile, Asia is likely to provide the best growth opportunities in the coming years.”
If you want to see the report and share the optimism first hand then you can access it free of charge by clicking this link: http://www.fasttrack.co.uk/fasttrack/downloads/2010IntTrack100.pdf
Companies operating international sales operations invariably have to be on top of fluctuating foreign exchange rates as they calculate invoices and run profit margin analysis.
Businesses that deploy sales people in overseas markets have to reimburse them for expenses incurred in foreign currency. This can be labour intensive for international sales people and centralised financial managers alike; the problems scale when multiple sales people operate in multiple countries or individual sales people operate in more than one country.
WebExpenses is foreign currency ready, able to process claims in foreign currency and automate exchange rate calculations. This means that expenses claimants and financial managers spend less time worrying about the accuracy and complexity introduced to calculations by foreign exchange rates. Financial managers can make better use of their time on more important management accountancy tasks and international sales people can spend more of their time driving international sales figures.
Follow this link to see how WebExpenses can help you with your foreign currency expenses claims.
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No Comments » Published on: July 21st, 2010 by Alex Cohen
The story that did so much to tarnish what should have been the impeccable reputation of parliament shows no sign of fading quietly away. The infamous legend of MPs expenses has added yet another unsavoury chapter, despite the fact that the page was meant to have been turned as the coalition government ushered in ‘the new politics’.
Citing security and cost effectiveness issues, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has developed its own expenses management system rather than opting to procure an existing system, tested and proven, from a healthy and competitive commercial marketplace.
Three weeks ago MPs strongly criticised IPSA before a Speaker’s committee and one comment was that the new system is “clunky, difficult to use and time-consuming”. http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/mps-attack-shambolic-ipsa/
Next, the Prime Minister waded in during PMQs last week as he pitched in with his view on cost and bureaucracy. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10633231
On Saturday the chair of IPSA went on the offensive, insisting that MPs must co-operate in making the system work. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/7896483/MPs-expenses-chief-Sir-Ian-Kennedy-hits-back-at-critics.html
And so the farce continues.
However, there really is no need for businesses or government to commission costly in-house development projects for expenses management systems that are difficult for users to use and administrators to manage. Taxpayers’ money could be used far more efficiently by the use of a commercial product like WebExpenses.
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No Comments » Published on: July 14th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
WebExpenses Petty Cash Management solution now offers the ability for businesses to root out a key source of inefficiency.
Many businesses run petty cash accounts to oil the wheels of daily operations. The experience of many finance departments is that paper based petty cash management systems are at best time consuming and inaccurate; rather more uncomfortably they are open to wilful criminal abuse by inviting fraud and theft.
Well the game has changed. The WebExpenses Petty Cash Management solution provides the opportunity to tighten processes and improve financial efficiency and control within mid-sized and large businesses.
Packed with comprehensive features and benefits, the Petty Cash Management solution helps finance managers to feel more at ease with the petty cash account. For more information follow this link to the product page on this website.
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No Comments » Published on: July 9th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
The very real spectre of a second credit crunch reared its head last week as the Bank of England published the results and analysis of its Credit Conditions Survey 2010 Q2. No doubt this will have the doomsayers forecasting a double dip recession cackling with glee.
You can download the publication as a PDF file from the Bank of England (free of charge – no you did not misread that!) by clicking this link: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/other/monetary/creditconditionssurvey100701.pdf
The underlying problem potentially creating a squeeze on credit is that the banks need to refinance £800bn in the wholesale markets before 2012. This means the need to refinance about £25bn for every one of the next 30 months. Unfortunately they are currently only managing about £12bn. It is this gap that could once more precipitate an extensive credit drought.
The survey reported that the demand of large businesses for credit had fallen unexpectedly, whereas small business credit requirements rose. These trends are expected to continue through Q3. One analysis here is that this may indicate uncertainty and the suspension of investment plans within large businesses. However, small businesses look like they are answering the call to invest, create jobs and trade the economy out of the recession.
The prospect of increasing levels of uncertainty and credit drying up again places a renewed emphasis on finance directors to preserve cash and seek out efficiency within their business systems. Many will find that migrating from labour intensive paper based expenses claims systems and taking control with efficient, effective and inexpensive web based software like WebExpenses is an easy win.
Additional analysis is located – unfortunately, not for free – on The Times website at:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article2583783.ece
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No Comments » Published on: June 29th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
SimCorp, a highly specialised asset management system for leading fund and investment management organisations, implemented WebExpenses in the UK in 2009.
Here’s what Birthe Marie Pedersen, the Financial Controller for SimCorp UK said in a recent presentation about WebExpenses:
“During last year we (SimCorp UK) successfully implemented WebExpenses. I’m convinced Web Expenses can help you minimise the effort in getting expenses recorded and processed.
Listed below are some highlights of the system:
- For 130 users, processing expenses used to be a full time job, now it’s down to a few days.
- Ease of reporting and can check which stage a particular expense is in. Full transparency and history stored.
- Fully integrated with outlook – you will be prompted for submission/approval of expenses.
- The data port for uploading from Web Expenses to Navision is already in place therefore no significant extra cost.
- Seamless integration from your credit card supplier (most likely available) to WebExpenses.”
A glowing testimonial from just one of our happy customers. Click here to read more case studies or to read some testimonials.
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No Comments » Published on: June 29th, 2010 by Alex Cohen
Top Track reported last week that sales of the top 100 private UK companies are down 1% but have increased their Ebitda by 8%. So, in the lull between the banking crisis and the onset of massive public sector cost cutting, it would seem that it’s not all been doom and gloom.
The report in The Sunday Times on 20th June based on performance over the past year attributed this business improvement to delivering efficiencies. You can access the report by clicking this link:
http://www.fasttrack.co.uk/fasttrack/downloads/2010toptrack100.pdf
An excellent way of creating efficiency in the cost base of business is to implement a strong policy driven expenses management solution. There are a number of policy areas where an expenses management system creates efficiency:
- Financial efficiency – control and reduce the cost of employee expense claims accumulated during the course of doing business
- Carbon efficiency – control and reduce the carbon footprint of the travel that employees undertake during the course of doing business
WebExpenses is an expenses management system which provides efficiency in these areas. It also adds value by playing an important role supporting compliance in a number of areas:
- Improves tax compliance with auditable process for expenses accounting and approval
- Credit card interface complies with best practice security procedures
- Postcode based mileage verification prevent erroneous claims
- Carbon audit supports accreditation to the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System
- Supports a legal defence against corporate charges that may result from employee behaviour that contravenes the Bribery Act 2010
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