Thore Vestergaard, SVP and MD of Allstar Business Solutions
Top tips for small business owners to get a good night's sleep
Small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners are losing precious sleep due to a host of day-to-day challenges. They range from meeting the needs of their customers and employees to securing new business and managing cash flow.
We spoke to 1,000 SMB owners in the UK and the findings hit home the reality. 42% admitted that concerns about business expenses keep them up at night, 52% of respondents said that balancing cash flow is a worry, and 41% say that coping with a long payment pipeline can pile on the pressure, too.
However, there are ways to streamline the expenses process. Here are my top five tips for SMB owners to ease some of the burden and get back to a good night's sleep again.
1) An expense policy
This is the first crucial step to eliminating the expenses issues. It is important to define and get what exactly counts as a business expense and the process employees need to go through to claim the money back in official form.
It's also important to be sensible with your expenses policy as some things will have to be expensed, have trust in your employees to find ways to avoid unnecessary extravagance and critically communicate your policy with your employees. It's no use having one and no one know!
2) Make technology your friend
People lose sleep over expenses due to the resources dedicated to administering them. UK SMBs, according to our report, are spending two full days of staff time per week reconciling expenses. Printing out and manually filling out expenses forms is antiquated and time-consuming for smaller businesses. By investing in expenses software that lets your employees submit their expenses digitally on their desktop or smartphone will simplify and automate the process for reconciliation.
3) Think of your employees!
Our research suggests that over one in four (26%) employees that have had to cover the bill for expenses upfront have gone on to look for other jobs. Employers often overlook this issue but by forcing employees to initially cover business expenses out of their own pocket puts those employees in an uncomfortable position. It can place unnecessary strain and can be avoided through tools such as implementing a charge card system for expenses. This can help alleviate the fear of potentially losing staff if they are bearing the business expense burden themselves.
4) Fuel — manage one of your biggest business expenses
Many SMB owners, surprisingly, consider fuel to be a relatively small expense for their business. However, our research shows these same SMB owners pay out on average of £665 per month on fuel alone. Fuel cards, in which employees can pay for business-related fuel expenses with a prepaid card, can help SMBs reduce and manage these costs, crucial for an organisation operating a fleet. Fuel cards enable staff to seamlessly pay for expenses they incur and give employers complete control of all spending.
5) Maximise discounts and perks from expense card providers
Discounted fuel and interest free purchases for a select period are some of the offers many expenses card providers will offer which could help SMBs cut costs — particularly if they have a fleet of vehicles or employees that travel a lot for business.
Overall, managing expenses is a huge admin burden for many companies. This can have a significant impact on the overall efficiency of a business, however, if you put some of my tips into action, you'll easily reduce some of the expense headaches for you and your employees.