Even with best practices like rolling and driver-based forecasting, managing the budget is a constant uphill battle. 

Especially when expenses are decentralized across departments, the finance teams are left chasing numbers for month-end reports rather than strategically managing them.

To make matters worse, the pressure to improve the bottom line every year without affecting operational efficiency forces them to adopt strategies like freezing discretionary spending, implementing stricter approval processes, or delaying reimbursements—all of which create resentment toward the finance department.

Moreover, these strategies only create more friction, with employees feeling restricted by financial decisions that seem detached from their daily operations.

In this blog post, we will discuss the challenges that finance teams face and how you can take a step ahead to improve budget control without straining internal relationships. 

Challenges of Budget Control

When expenses are decentralized across various teams, the finance team finds itself in a reactive position. 

They depend on department heads and managers to submit expense data, typically at the end of the month, which delays the entire budgeting process and disrupts the flow of information. 

Moreover, the manual approval process—spread across various communication channels like emails or Slack—operates in silos, causing bottlenecks as each department works independently on different timelines.

Without a centralized system to track approvals or real-time expense data, finance teams lack the visibility needed to monitor and control spending effectively. This results in delayed corrective actions and difficulty in ensuring that spending aligns with internal policies and regulatory standards.

Also, the manual filing process increases the risk of errors, incomplete records, and non-compliance, leaving finance teams to resolve issues after the fact.

Thus, finance teams need real-time visibility into spending to spot discrepancies early, monitor spending patterns as they occur, and promptly flag potential problems, ensuring that expenses align with company policies and compliance standards.

How Do You Control Budget Effectively?

Decentralized spending creates resistance to change as teams become accustomed to their independent processes. However, finance teams need real-time visibility and data to manage company spending and budgets effectively.

A dedicated spend management platform addresses the need for real-time visibility and control without burdening other departments. It allows teams to continue their spending processes smoothly while the finance team gets a real-time overview of all expenses, ensuring transparency and better budget control.

Improve Budget Control With Spend Management Platform

With Pluto, employees get a dedicated platform to upload expenses on the go easily, capturing all the data in real time. 

Managers receive notifications to approve these expenses all within a single platform, streamlining the approval process. This eliminates delays and reduces the back-and-forth communication seen with manual approvals.

With everything centralized on a dashboard, finance teams enjoy real-time visibility into spending patterns. This transparency allows them to enforce compliance policies effectively, monitor expenditures, and quickly identify any deviations from budgetary guidelines.

Here is how Pluto simplifies your spend management process for automated financial reporting.

Eliminates Manual Expense Filing

Pluto removes the need for manual filing. Instead of collecting physical receipts and filling out manual forms, employees can easily upload expenses through Pluto’s user-friendly mobile or desktop platform. 

With just a few clicks, employees can submit receipts on the go, ensuring no expenses are missed or delayed.

Pluto’s optical character recognition (OCR) technology captures information from submitted receipts, such as vendor names, amounts, and dates. This automated data extraction eliminates the chance of human error and the need for employees to enter expense details manually. 

As a result, expense filing becomes an effortless task, freeing employees from tedious paperwork and allowing them to focus on their core responsibilities. 

“The beauty in one part that I was amazed about Pluto, in terms of your technology, was your whole integration with WhatsApp and the ease of how easy it was to swipe, make a payment, take a picture, upload it via WhatsApp, and it's there on the platform for approval.”

~ Lee Kersen Mascarenhas, Head of Operations, BloomingBox

Enables Real-Time Expense Tracking

Pluto provides real-time visibility into spending across departments. 

As soon as employees submit expenses, the data is available for review, giving finance teams the ability to track expenses as they happen. This real-time tracking ensures that finance teams proactively monitor budgets, spot trends, and address potential overspending before it spirals out of control. 

Automates Approval Workflows

Pluto automates the entire approval process, streamlining it for both employees and managers. Instead of chasing down approvals through email or other informal methods, Pluto uses automated notifications to alert managers when an expense requires their approval. 

These workflows are customizable based on your company policies and spending limits, ensuring every expense goes through the proper channels. 

For cross-departmental approvals, Pluto manages the complexity by notifying the relevant stakeholders. This reduces delays and miscommunication, making it easier for finance teams to track approvals in real time without endless follow-ups.

Offers Detailed Analytics

Pluto provides detailed analytics on company spending. 

By capturing data from all departments in one place, Pluto generates in-depth reports highlighting spending patterns, trends, and potential areas for cost savings. 

With access to real-time insights, finance teams make informed decisions, improve forecasting accuracy, and pinpoint inefficiencies across the organization. This data-driven approach not only helps optimize current budgets but also helps in long-term financial planning.

Integrates With ERP Systems

Pluto integrates seamlessly with existing ERP systems, ensuring that all financial data is synchronized across platforms. 

Pluto’s integration reduces the need for manual data entry or imports, improving the overall efficiency of the accounting process. By syncing expense data with ERP systems, Pluto ensures that finance teams have a complete view of the company’s financial health in one place, enabling smoother audits, more accurate financial reporting, and better overall budget management.

Secures Records with Role-Based Access and Audit Trails

Pluto provides role-based access controls to ensure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive financial data. 

With Pluto, finance teams can control who can submit, approve, or view expenses based on their organizational role, preventing unnecessary access to financial data. Once expenses are approved, you can lock transactions, ensuring they cannot be altered or tampered with, adding an extra layer of security and accountability.

For auditing purposes, finance teams can create a special version of their financial records that provides view-only access. This ensures that external auditors or bookkeepers can review and analyze the data without the ability to make any changes, protecting the integrity of your financial records. 

Also, Pluto keeps your receipts and supporting documents safe with a 5-year audit log and end-to-end encryption that meets bank-grade security standards, ensuring that your financial data remains secure and easily accessible when needed.

Automate Financial Reporting and Spend Management With Pluto

“Rather than waiting until the end of the week to collect enough receipts, you can actually see the money as it goes.”

~ Christopher Anthony, Global Business Controller, Platinum Heritage

Traditional budget control approaches struggle to align multiple departments with overall financial goals, creating inefficiencies. This is where Pluto comes in, streamlining and enhancing the budget control process.

By automating time-consuming tasks like expense filing and approval workflows, Pluto significantly reduces delays and miscommunication. Managers receive automated notifications to approve or reject expenses, enabling departments to operate in sync and creating a collaborative environment.

This unified approach gives finance teams real-time insights through a centralized dashboard, allowing them to compare budgeted amounts with actual spending easily. With this visibility, discrepancies are identified early, enhancing transparency and ensuring compliance with internal policies.

By addressing the challenges of decentralized spending, Pluto equips finance teams with the necessary tools for effective oversight while enabling departments to work together seamlessly. 

To learn more about how Pluto can help you streamline your spending management process and improve budget control, book a demo today.