Should New Year’s Resolutions Include a New Expense Policy?

With the New Year rolling around, companies are looking at ways to make 2013 more profitable and efficient. It’s the time of year when you might be wondering what sort of New Year’s resolutions to make regarding your business.

Have you thought about a new expense policy?

Too often companies forget about updating their expense policies, even though they constantly update their budgetary requirements. The beginning of the year is the perfect time to examine your expense policy, making necessary changes that will allow your business to grow and remain productive.

In order to ring in the New Year right, it’s a good idea to examine the previous year’s expense reports and determine which areas can be reduced and which areas might actually need to be expanded. After all, introducing a new expense policy doesn’t automatically mean that all expenses will get slashed. It can also mean that some expense budgets need to be increased.

One way to reduce expenses in your new policy is to look for ways to use less expensive products or services. Naturally, “less expensive” does not mean that these should be inferior or less efficient. But companies sometimes fail to shop around for values, choosing instead to use a business that they have a history with. If comparison shopping is not an option, see if you can negotiate lower prices on the products and services you use with current vendors.

A key aspect of revising your expense policy is to make sure that all personnel are notified of changes made to previous policies. Nothing is more frustrating to an employee than discovering that items that were reimbursed the previous year are no longer covered. You can schedule department meetings to discuss new policy changes and then pass word of those changes down the line.

One of the best ways to implement a new expense policy as part of a New Year’s resolution is to set up automated expense report software. This allows you to carefully monitor all expenses, create internal business rules and regulations that need to be enforced, and remove confusion. When an employee tries to enter an expense that isn’t covered under the new expense policy, the system simply blocks that expense from being claimed.

You might also consider creating a schedule for monitoring expenses throughout the year. Having a regular review means that you can see which areas are approaching their expense limits and make suitable adjustments as you go.