When you swipe your credit card, that needs to make it into your accounting software too! Also, tracking receipts is required by the IRS if you want to deduct it as a business expense....
When to find a solution
When you and your employees start spending money, it's time to get a system to manage and record that spend. Making sure you select an expense management solution that simplifies how you track spending, while also automating bookkeeping expenses correctly, will be critical. Setting up expense management before signing your FDD and paying franchise fees is strongly recommended.
What is expense management?
Expense management refers to the systems deployed by a business to process, pay, and audit employee-initiated expenses. These costs can be anything and include things like office equipment, inventory orders, subscriptions, vendor payments, SaaS products, travel and entertainment, and meals/snacks. Most franchisees will want to adopt a tool to help manage the expense claims, authorization, audit, and repayment process as that is definitely not something you should be spending your valuable time doing personally!
This tool will integrate with your chosen credit card and allow your employees to easily attach receipts to their expenses, categorize them and submit them to you for approval. All of this will automatically flow into your accounting system.
Pro-Tip: Being able to reimburse employees for spending their own money out of pocket and process reporting from spend on company cards in a single software will save you time and energy in the long run.