A few weeks ago, PayStream discussed an innovative strategy companies could use to clean up and prioritize their approval process. This method, assumptive approval, involves restructuring Invoice Workflow Automation systems to pre-approve lower value invoices. This reduces the clutter in approvers’ inboxes, and lightens the symptoms of “approval fatigue” that come from too many invoices at once. Instead, approvers can focus on high-priority documents and ensure greater accuracy, faster payments, and more savings.

PayStream has identified another unique strategy that AP departments can utilize with their approval process. Our research has revealed that many companies experience pains in their purchasing departments related to spend control and employee compliance—specifically with p-cards. P-cards are a useful and widely utilized business tool, but the problems they pose for efficiency and the company bottom line lead many purchasing departments to enforce strict spending policies and required pre-approvals for every purchase.

This method, while seemingly sound on paper, is not efficient for business productivity in reality. Just as approving every single invoice can put too much strain on approvers, requiring each and every purchase to be pre-approved is not practical—it is harmful for both the purchasers and controllers. Sometimes, in order to truly regulate and stabilize purchasing activity, policy makers should loosen the reins.

There are various strategies companies’ can employ to minimize the stress of too much control. Many of these come with the use of an efficient expense reporting system. By leveraging an existing p-card program with a robust management solution, companies gain the benefits of automatic spend limits, approval routing, reporting, and more. These systems take the heavy lifting from the process, creating easier and more transparent tasks for p-card holders and approvers alike.

While automatic spend limits are vital and lighten the workload of purchasing controllers, reporting is an especially important tool in this process. An accurate reporting system relieves the pressure from the front-end of the process by moving the purchasing data and transaction history to the back-end—without sacrificing accuracy and compliance. Instead of using reporting simply to review past spend, AP and purchasing departments can use it to control future compliance.

Another way to optimize the p-card program and speed up approvals is through the use of the P-Card Program Scorecard. This tool consists of six p-card best practices and is designed to break down a company’s specific business structure needs, optimizing their processes’ interaction with p-card use. This Scorecard is free for download for all P2P professionals here.

PayStream encourages our readers to see how these strategies fit with their own purchasing departments. Not only is it easier to relax and reallocate controls to automation software like expense reporting management, it is much more efficient.