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Australian finance leaders are struggling with a lack of robust spend and expense controls, according to a recent Airwallex report.
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Report flags issues surrounding spend and expense controls
02 October 2024
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Airwallex’s most recent Spend Management Report revealed that 97 per cent of Australian finance leaders struggled with a lack of robust spend controls.
The financial platform’s survey took place across July and August this year and consisted of 500 senior finance leaders, including chief financial officers.
The respondents were from Australian-headquartered companies and provided insight into the most pressing challenges and issues in spend management.
The top challenges distinguished in the report within spend management included a lack of automation and manual reconciliation.
Eighty-eight per cent of respondents said they were facing challenges managing their global spend and expenses, with 63 per cent confirmed they were still managing expenses manually by using spreadsheets.
Airwallex global head of product Shannon Scott said the motivation behind the report was to highlight what financial platforms could do better.
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“We are always looking to understand how we can better support our financial services customers and increase the state of the software that can help them manage those finances,” Scott said.
“What emerged very quickly was that two-thirds of customers are managing their expenses manually and using spreadsheets.”
“This gets worse when customers are dealing with foreign entities or foreign markets as you get even more disparity between your systems and more manual work.”
The data also revealed 74 per cent of respondents said their company’s current systems are inefficient and unreliable which has stunted growth and strained relationships with suppliers and employees.
Fifty-one per cent didn’t believe their current systems provided adequate visibility into cash flow across regions.
Scott noted this “adequate visibility” refers to finance managers and finance teams wanting to understand their cash flow in terms of outgoing and receivables.
To deal with this, finance teams need to look at their options and technology to amplify the systems they already have, Scott said.
“Teams need to look at the market options that are available and really understand what workflows need to be supported,” he said.
“I think businesses are going to be pleasantly surprised when they see what’s available to them.”
“If they have an international presence, it will accept services such as multi-entity management where you can actually manage all of your entities around the world through one single administrative interface.”
Scott also said it was not a matter of adding more employees or resources to a finance team but looking to leverage automation, AI and efficient systems.
The Airwallex report is the first of its kind, however, the company said it has committed to frequently reviewing spend management within finance teams to monitor and highlight the need for more sophisticated solutions.
Scott said legacy systems and an increasingly global workforce were making it more difficult for finance leaders to manage spend and expenses.
“Adopting more sophisticated financial solutions can be a game-changer for Australian businesses as they look to accelerate their growth beyond borders,” he said.
“A spend management platform that can handle cross-border transactions, multi-currency management and integrated vendor spend and employee expense processes can save businesses time, money and effort and be the lever that boosts growth and efficiency.”
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