Taking the “Expensive” out of Expenses: The Divvy Solution

22 June 2021 | 13 Shares

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

While an expense account might no longer be the status symbol it once might have been, it still represents a bond of trust between an employer and their employee.

In some industries, daily ad hoc spending is a prerequisite to getting a day’s work done. The ability to quickly source and buy replacement components or materials makes the difference between jobs that take hours to complete and those that might otherwise take days.

Whether your industry sees per diems as a perk or as an essential, tracking expenses – especially when they are small and numerous – can be a major time and resource drain.

There are quite a few solutions out there to help Finance Departments with some of the more demanding tasks around expense tracking, but they often come as part of larger, ERP-style software suites. For companies that just want an expenses platform and facility that can “drop in” and work with existing technologies, the choices are more limited.

Even then, there are still huge overheads and convoluted processes to go through to get an expenses system up and running. Anyone who has tried getting a few dozen credit or debit cards issued from a major bank can attest to slow processes, form-filling at near Olympic levels, and long lead times.

Even after all the paperwork has been done and approved, adding, collating, and managing expense accounts and per diems usually takes dedicated staff many hours to get squared away. Any finance professional will tell you, this task is not one of the office’s most sought-after jobs. As a source of contention, it’s right up there alongside checking the post-box and tallying up monthly Sales Department commissions.

Thankfully, there is a solution to this situation that involves no running around setting up business bank accounts, no burn-down-and-start-again financial software installations, and no need to open new multiple lines of credit.

On the pages of a technology-focused website, you might expect to read the word “disruptor” in the description of Divvy, but the truth is a little more complex.

The Draper, Utah-based company offers a solid and secure, technologically fluent platform that combines traditional payment cards with an advanced expense management software suite. While neither aspect is “disruptive” in its own right, the combination yields significant value for its users. Compared to home-baking, a similar solution from existing banking facilities and finance software, it is disruptive, but only in the sense that it’s made easy by the technology that does the heavy lifting.

Expenses Management

The immediate savings made have already been touched on. By cutting out the traditional wrangling with business banks and removing the need to hand-totalize individual expense accounts, companies save valuable resources in the finance office.

Additionally, the low friction implementation of a cast-iron expenses system means that per diems can now join the roster of employee perks given to trusted employees. As companies expand and new staff come aboard, equipping them with everything they need is simple. Payment cards arrive promptly (or can be fully virtualized), the software for users’ smartphones is a download, and the system validates and accepts the new users. Whether it’s a mandatory tool to get the job done or a way of tracking expenses for the company road warriors, it’s a simple matter.

Employees can categorize their expense spending with just a tap on a phone screen app, and entries are collated centrally for managerial oversight. There’s on-platform dispute resolution that’s easy to use within the software.

The application process with Divvy takes just a few minutes, and for the end-users, there is no overhead or cost – Divvy takes its small percentage from each transaction at the payment gateway level. The software and most facilities are free to use.

With ease of use and simple automated reckonings for multiple payment cards, simplicity, convenience, and cost-savings go together with this solution. But the main take-homes are simplicity, convenience, and security. Businesses get to control spending, organize, scale reimbursements, and gain access to a strong line of credit from Divvy itself.

In another article in a few weeks, we’ll be taking a deeper dive into the details of the Divvy platform. Until then, if your organization would benefit from this solution, start your application directly online, or ask for a personalized demo.