Float Report Shows How Remote Work Can Complicate Expense Management – But Doesn’t Have To

Float has released its 2022 Expense Reporting Survey.

The Canadian fintech startup says its survey reveals how Canadian business owners and finance decision makers at companies deal with the inefficiencies of corporate spending while exposing the multiple pain points they experience through expense reporting.

The theme of the report is that the shift to hybrid and remote work has created turbulence in the expenses department of many businesses. More than half of businesses with 150-plus employees shifted most or all employees to remote work during COVID-19, the report shows, and some have failed to adapt in all ways necessary.

For example, 80% of businesses with remote employees have staff who incur company expenses on their personal credit cards, which is a major pain point, says Float. Half of all businesses with most or all employees shifting to remote work say receipt tracking has become more complicated, while a third of employees find sharing a corporate card more difficult now than before the Pandemic.

Overall, many businesses are not content with their current expense management setup. And according to Float’s report, neither are their staff.

Three-quarters of employees say they could spend less time on expense reporting, says Float. Moreover, 61% say expense reporting is one of the most tedious jobs in their organization.

Float believes this should not be the case and was founded to address these concerns.

The company’s solution is a smart corporate card linked to spend-management software that automates the painful manual processes involved in managing card-linked spending, such as issuing cards for employees, tracking down receipts, and reconciling expenses at the end of the month. Under Float’s prepaid model, clients fund an account upfront then create and control any number of physical or virtual credit cards.

“Companies today are paying extra attention to controlling expenses and having real time visibility over spend,” said Rob Khazzam, CEO and Co-Founder of Float. “Our technology makes it much easier to track spend and instill responsible controls while still enabling their employees to incur corporate expenses and move the business forward without bottlenecks.”

The Toronto startup’s solution helped ease a major pain point for Vancouver-based Klue, a market-intelligence platform. Their finance team found itself spending untold hours tracking down and matching receipts, filing expense reports, and processing payments. With Float, Klue’s employees can now make purchases with a virtual card and upload receipts via Slack. Based on individual employees’ role or use case, the finance team can set different spend limits, with real-time visibility into each transaction.

Float was founded by Rob Khazzam, Griffin Keglevich, and Ruslan Nikolaev secured a USD $30 million Series A funding round led by Tiger Global in 2021.