We recently celebrated Divvy Day (the last day of each month), and it just so happened to fall on the last day of Q1. This sparked an idea in our minds. Not all companies celebrate Divvy Day, which makes us weep on the inside (we tend to be overly empathetic; it’s a problem). If your company uses manual expensing or “automated expense reporting solutions” you’re most likely still swimming in expense reports, receipts, and/or deadlines at the end of each month.
Try not to panic. We feel your pain. We’ve all been there. Being there actually incited the creators of Divvy to flip the board and go back to the start square. The first spreadsheets burst onto the computer scene in 1979 on the Apple II, then IBM followed suit and added them to their systems in 1982. It has been 30+ years. We have phones in our watches now. Why are we still using spreadsheets to categorize and organize expenses, exactly?
Step away from the spreadsheets
Don’t walk, sprint away from that outdated technology with the focus and drive of an Olympic Gold hopeful. The issue with merely updating existing technology is that business and technology has progressed forward and the previous expense report mold doesn’t offer much space for growth. First, the great giants of business used a ledger book (we’re not going back to caveman times; piling rocks as an accounting method had very negligible ROI). Then, we used manual reporting on spreadsheets, entering expenses cell for cell as a quiet cloud of boredom and monotony slowly suffocated our entrepreneurial spirits. Next, a lot of companies moved to automated systems like Concur and Expensify, a HUGE step forward from the spreadsheets of yesteryear.
Expense reporting solutions, real talk
A lot of the “expense management solutions” out there use buzzwords to promise “Real-Time Reporting” and “One-Click Expensing,” but their systems still function within the framework of compiling and filing expense reports, then reconciling them. The finance types then attempt to redirect spending behavior or budgets according to their findings for the next financial quarter. They have updated the progress so that it requires less effort, like manually adding receipts, etc., but dressing a dog up in a tuxedo doesn’t make him a groom (it makes him adorable). Real-time isn’t waiting for expense reports for any amount of time. One-click isn’t a thing. Filing any expense report requires auditing, approving, and attaching pictures of receipts at the very least. Maybe they’re just accounting for that final click?
It’s time for another leap forward
Our predecessors ditched the ledger book for that newfangled thing called computing. Our more recent predecessors left spreadsheet expense reporting for automated SaaS and cloud solutions. We’ve removed expense reports from the equation. Divvy’s platform also ties it all back to your budgets with Live Reports (think of live reports as really, actually, really real time reporting). Which means, pretty soon, historians will tell the tale of business-minded folks taking one small step for their company that turns out to be a giant leap for business-kind by moving to Divvy. We call that getting Divvy with it. Oh, and it’s free. What’s the ROI on zero dollars?
About Divvy
We dug deep to create the world’s first free, fully-automated budgeting and expense management platform, and it gives you instantaneous visibility into company-wide spend. Born from loathing a truly broken process, Divvy turned that legitimate dislike into the catalyst to reinvent. Not even innovate: burn to the ground, salt the earth, and build something that works on new ground—from scratch.
Divvy is the first free and fully automated spend management platform. Sign up for Divvy today!
