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- In this year alone, Pluto's clients have allocated 52.9% of their corporate card spending on Government Services, with the second most significant expense being petty cash, accounting for 12.9% - the need for tech-enabled automation is greater than ever.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Pluto, a leading spend management company, is making headlines with its latest client spending breakdown, which reveals the significance of embracing complete digitalization of finances. The analysis focuses on the allocation of AED spending across various categories, illustrating the challenges faced by companies when managing payments manually. Through multiple methods such as corporate cards, and digitised petty cash and bill payments, companies can increase efficiency within their finance teams to be able to make financially strategic decisions while saving time and money.
Looking at trends from Pluto’s clients, the data showcases a diverse distribution of AED spending along with multiple payment methods, with 52.9% of the total spend going towards government services, followed by 12.9% allocated to petty cash, 10.5% for utilities, and 7% towards advertising and social media platforms. A significant number of companies in the region still use petty cash and excel sheets to manage such spending. In addition, manually keeping track of receipts & invoice management across a large number of corporate spending becomes extremely challenging. This highlights the complexity and difficulty in managing finances efficiently when relying on tiresome and error-prone manual processes.
"The potential loss of both money and time for companies caused by a lack of financial automation is a common concern faced by the CFOs we talk to. While some modern companies may have some level of automated systems in place, the problem is that they have to work with a host of disparate platforms, leading to time wastage in consolidating information. For example, one such company retrofitted a project management tool to manage company expenses, since they couldn’t find a better solution!” said Mohammed Ridwan, Co-Founder and COO of Pluto.
The pressing need for complete digitalization of finances is evident as it offers numerous advantages, such as:
Taking Complete Control: By transitioning to digital financial management systems, companies can gain full control over their finances, ensuring compliance and streamlining expense tracking.
100% Visibility: Real-time insight into spending patterns and trends enables finance teams to make data-driven decisions promptly, enhancing financial planning and budgeting.
Time Savings: Manual management of bill payments, petty cash, invoices, and receipts can be a tedious and error-prone process. Digital solutions offer automation, saving countless hours and reducing the risk of mistakes.
Cost Reduction: Eliminating errors and inefficiencies associated with manual processes can lead to significant cost savings for businesses.
Mitigating Fraud Risk: Dealing with hard cash, reconciliation, duplicate receipts has its own vulnerabilities and poses significant fraud risk for the companies. Using e-money tools and auto-conciliation tools helps mitigating this to a large extent.
Support government efforts on increasing financial inclusion: Cashless transactions can help to increase financial inclusion. This is because digital payments are more accessible to people who do not have bank accounts. By making it easier for people to make payments, receive payments and transact without risk of physical cash.
“With the introduction of corporate tax in the UAE, technology has become even more crucial for businesses operating in the country. Corporate tax compliance demands proper record-keeping and documentation. Technology enables businesses to maintain digital records of transactions, invoices, and expenses, making it easier to provide the necessary documentation during tax audits,” says Saqib Iqbal, Founding Partner, SA Consultants.
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, financial operations transformation has become a crucial factor in enhancing control, enabling accurate reporting, and mitigating errors. By leveraging automated expense management systems, organizations can drive their digital transformation efforts forward. To mitigate these challenges, Pluto emphasizes the importance of implementing robust expense and AP (Account Payables) management systems that prioritize digitization and automation. By leveraging cutting-edge technology, businesses can alleviate the burden of manual receipt management, streamline expense reporting, and improve overall financial control.
"Fortune 500 and other modern companies across North America and many other nations have been using automated tools and expense management software to see the benefit. Our goal is to now empower businesses in the GCC region to overcome the costly hurdles associated with financial operations, by using a single platform that's smart and automated, finance teams can better spend their time concentrating on playing a more strategic role in the company,” add Ridwan, Co-Founder and COO of Pluto.
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About Pluto
Pluto; an end-to-end spend management platform.
Pluto was built to help CFOs and finance teams manage their company spend and visibility. Since launch, hundreds of customers have been using Pluto to streamline their spend management, some of which include Petrocheme, Orient Travel, UDrive, Cafu, Tamara, Media 24x7, SA Consultants. A few of the solutions Pluto offers include unlimited corporate cards with department and budget-based spend control, full account payable and reimbursement solutions, and multi-departmental, multi-organization, and multi-subsidiary OpEx management, so that large mid to upper-market customers and multi-group holdings companies can better manage their finances.
