Discover The Perfect Expense Policy

“ We generally tell people to spend money like it's their own money and give folks guidelines of what something typically costs. I also believe in policy. I always tell people every interaction is either a positive or negative effect on the culture. So you need to have a good interaction with your employees and we try to make people first policies. We conduct regular surveys to see what people think of our policies and based on feedback, we change things. For example, we had some people that wanted coworking spaces… so what we did was we increased our flexible office set-up budget so that people could use it for coworking or  a nice chair or something else. ” 

JENNY BLOOM

CFO, ZAPIER

“ The difficulty of scaling any growing company is that things that may have been successful two months ago might not work in the future. There are things that need to put in place to ensure that we can grow as a company and be successful… The reality is spending money is fun. But controlling money is not always fun. So even if I have to say no, you don’t get to spend on this, I always explain why or I offer a suggestion of what we’re going to do instead. This is why you need controls in place and you really need to the organization along with you. That’s where it’s fun. Be really understanding of where people are coming from. Everybody can always use more money to spend. Trust is a balance. ” 

BEVAN VAN DER BERG

VP FINANCE, PROCURIFY

“ We have a whole series of disciplines within the company, one of which is called Frugal. And I think that's how we spend our money: frugally. I would not say that we are cheap, but we are spending it in the right fashion. Our employees and managers focus on spending the money like it's their own money. People appreciate it because we were focused in the right areas. We were able to do things that retained people that we couldn't have otherwise done had we gotten out over our skis and started spending too much. So the word frugal is the word that we use in the company around spending money and how we focus on managing our investments. ” 

JIM KELLIHER

CFO, DRIFT

“ We have a hybrid approach. In addition to departmental budgets my mantra is: spend this like it’s your own money. Is this spend going to create value in your workplace or the business as a whole? We have a tight knit group, so I ask them: if this was your money, would you buy it? If they say no, then we pass on it and revisit the purchase at a different time when we have a bit more extra spending cash. ” 

KINGSLEY CHAN

DIRECTOR OF FINANCE, FINN AI

“ Our Spend Culture has evolved a lot. I think in the past we were unrestricted but it was difficult to really manage. We've since implemented more purchase controls with approval workflows, purchase requisitions, and purchase orders. That’s not just to control spending, but to manage all of our different software and tools and to really ensure we have a proactive approach to spending culture. We have more of a collaborative Spend Culture now as opposed to everybody doing their own thing. ” 

PINDER SEKHON

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF FINANCE, UNBOUNCE

“ We are pretty nimble so we're able to make decisions quickly. The other thing is empowerment. As a company scales, there’s still a culture of needing to ask for permission to procure every little thing. And it's not the behavior that I want to drive. We go through a thorough budgeting process at the beginning of each year to determine the allocation of funds to each cost center function that we think is reasonable to achieve their team's goals. Helping people feel empowered to make decisions help them become accountable to their budget and their goals. ” 

CHRIS SANDS

CFO, MINERALTREE

“ We follow a very decentralized model. We empower the functions and the managers to own their vendor relationships. Finance is here to help negative,  execute the payments, and control the cash. We act as more of a check and balance. This approach really works because it empowers our people to really go out there and try to get the best deal because they will be the ones using the tool or service. We also celebrate the wins, so if we renew a contract with a discount, or if we negotiate better deals, we celebrate it as a team and the people are rewarded accordingly. This gives people a lot of empowerment because they feel like they own this process and they were able to save for the company. ” 

WAJDI GHOUSSOUB

DIRECTOR OF FINANCE AND OPRATIONS, PLOOTO

“ We have a transparent Spend Culture. A big part of our budgeting cycle is helping budget leaders understand what's important for the business and what we are trying to accomplish so they can align their spending to it. And in my experience, most often people want to do the right thing. We just need to give them the guidance to make the right decisions.  ” 

CORINNE HUA

CFO, THINKIFIC

“ Drop is an app geared towards consumers saving money so our people also appreciate the value of a dollar. Our people have a sense of pride and ownership in the company. A waste of a dollar at the company feels like a waste of a dollar for them personally. ” 

SHOUVIK ROY

CFO, DROP