How Volopay Is Transforming Expense Management With Corporate Cards

“Don’t fix what isn’t broken” is what they all say — but that’s not true for the world of finance. In a sector where millions of dollars are on the line every passing second, while “unbroken” systems continue thriving, their slow pace and complexity make it abundantly clear that money is being lost with every wasted minute and tiny mistake.

Unfortunately, a majority of the world’s businesses still put abundant faith in tried and tested modes of financial management. The most revolutionary thing they’ve adopted happens to be accounting software and traditionally backed corporate cards, which are operated by those trained in the niche. The result? Financial teams waste their talent on manual, repetitive tasks. Loss of productivity and loss of man-hours because businesses are stuck in the same old cycle.

Many would say they still work, even if they’re slow. But sit down with any employee and they’ll tell you the inconvenience of managing business expenses traditionally. In the 21st century, businesses are powered by super-fast internet and strategic decisions are being taken at the speed of a mile a second. Then why should the movement of money and financial records be restricted to slower means?

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This is where Volopay is revolutionizing how businesses manage their expenses. Innovated after Volopay founders struggled with multiple reimbursement errors and payment receipts while on business trips, Volopay was founded to stop employees from suffering under outdated management rules. Three years later, Volopay is present in 4 major APAC economies, solving global business’ financial management problems (from SMEs to enterprises). A single dashboard, accessible to all, that has an easy interface for anyone to use.

What problems is Volopay addressing?

• Manual tasks: Without corporate cards for businesses, financial teams rely on a lot of grunt work. They have to chase employees and vendors for receipts, make line-by-line entries, collect a lot of paperwork, and organize it manually, too.

• Reconciliation errors: When there is so much human effort involved, human error is part of the parcel. Manual data entry and payments leave room for errors that can have a snowball effect on how your business expenses are managed. This also creates trouble for compliance.

• Delayed reimbursements: Employees who rely on reimbursements are paying out of pocket for business expenses. They have to collect paper trails and preserve them for long periods (as do the finance teams they are handed to). A lot of times employees might not even have the means to pay for something temporarily; nor the means to wait for lengthy approval and reimbursement cycles.

• Erroneous expense reports: Expense reporting makes up the bulk of the work that employees do when they access company funds. These reports can be riddled with errors if they are made while relying on faded invoices, lost email receipts, and memory. Making a separate note of all expenses to avoid this is additional work.

• Wasted time: Between all the reporting, data entering, and receipt collection, that is a lot of manual hours wasted by employees. The time that can be spent on strategic decision-making and their actual job, employees are wasting hours doing tasks that negatively impact their productivity and output. It doesn’t help that often all the burden is on the few who have the technical know-how of reporting since most current financial software is bulky and inaccessible through complex UI/UX.

• Fraudulent payments and skimming: Frauds can happen from within the house, or even outside — that’s what happens when you have no capacity to focus on erroneous invoices, a few extra bucks being unreported here and there, or even compromised accounts. It can even take a whole billing cycle for a statement to arrive and fraud to be captured. Skimming, too, can only be caught when someone stops and takes a fine-tooth comb to payment records.

• Vendor management struggles: All these errors and time, vendors are bound to feel frustrated. Delayed payments, repeat payments (which need to reinitiate a reversal), or even lost purchase orders. It is a recipe for harming your vendor relationships.
• SaaS management errors: SaaS in companies is usually managed in silos. Different departments set up the software for employees to use, resulting in only one person controlling the card associated with the payment. The result? Forgotten bill cycles that incur failed payments. Multiple departments paying repeatedly for the same software. Trying to track subscriptions to employees who don’t even work there anymore. And the most common — discarded software whose subscription they forgot to cancel.

What expense management solutions does Volopay offer with corporate cards?

• Automated reconciliation and expense records: Volopay’s corporate cards record transactions as and when they are made. All these expenses make it automatically to your GL (general ledger), so you don’t have to rely on manual, delayed entries or bulk manual reporting. Expense records can be accessed with one click, and data can be filtered for easier reporting or analysis.

• Safe and secure payments: Volopay corporate cards are secure modes of payment. All of them are managed from one place so that you can track transactions in real time. Virtual cards can also be generated, whose data is not linked to any bank account — so in the case of a loss of card, no money can be deducted from your account. Additionally, all cards can be blocked or frozen with a single click from the dashboard.

• Smooth reimbursements: Corporate cards completely eliminate the headache of reimbursements. Employees can be furnished with physical corporate cards or even virtual ones. These cards can be for one-time payments, with customizable expiration dates so that you can assign specific budgets for projects or employees. All payments are linked to departments for easier budget forecasting and expense reporting. Should reimbursements be required, the Volopay dashboard allows an easy mileage and expense claim process. All of it is compliant with your expense policies and follows a maker-checker process for transparency and security.

• Improved vendor management: Happy vendors make happy businesses. Instead of worrying about duplicated payments, lost purchase orders, and invoices, businesses can utilize Volopay to manage their vendors. Payments can be scheduled to avoid duplicate or late payments, and corporate cards can be used for digital payments or POS payments. Invoices are recorded automatically to prevent lost data, wrong money transfers, or unnecessary delays.

• Expense management: Employees shouldn’t become hoarders who collect receipts and enter their data into spreadsheets. With Volopay, they can simply snap a photo of the receipt and upload it — the OCR technology does an automatic entry and attaches it as a supplementary document to the auto-recorded corporate card expenses as well as large money transfers.

• Accounting integrations: Automating your expense management also means automating your accounting. Compliance becomes much quicker with Volopay’s API integrations that allow a two-way, auto-update setup with major accounting software like Netsuite, QuickBooks, Xero, MYOB, Zoho, and more. It also has a Universal CSV option if you have different software, which lets you plug and play all the data instead of poring over line-by-line entries.

• Improved SaaS management: Businesses do not need to worry about wasted money from multiple subscriptions, obsolete plans, and forgotten payment dates. The virtual corporate cards on Volopay allow you to assign a specific card to a specific subscription — top up, block, and freeze with a single click.

• Real-time updates: Since Volopay’s corporate cards are linked to your wallet, all expenses made on the cards are recorded live on the app. Visible through the dashboard, and mobile push notifications, you’re immediately aware of transactions taking place.

Accessible credit line: Volopay does more than help you access your funds. It offers an easy-to-access credit line that can help your business scale and grow. The credit is accessible through corporate cards so that your employees have more room to make smart business expenses.