The controller’s guide to automating compliance.
Change is continuous. Here’s why that’s a good thing.
Compliance is everyone’s job, but ultimately it falls to the controller to ensure that everyone in the company is spending within policy. In order to maintain compliance, controllers typically oversee the accounting teams responsible for data reconciliation. But with so many people, systems, and geographies, it’s unsustainable for controllers to manually execute the processes required to meet compliance mandates.
“One of the biggest challenges is just the continuous change that is happening in business,” says Gary Meisner, Principal Value Management Consultant at NetSuite. “So, how do you maintain an environment where everybody is even aware of all the compliance requirements, the regulations, and the approved business processes?”
Change begets challenges. But the good news is that change also gives rise to new tech that can help — and those technologies already exist. With spend management platforms built for global teams, the prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI), and robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrations, automation and reconciliation are easier (and faster) than ever.
Meet our subject matter expert.
Gary Meisner
Principal Value Management Consultant at NetSuite
Gary Meisner is a former CPA, CFO, and controller with 30 years of experience in executive finance roles. He has an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Why (and when) to automate compliance.
Automating spend management compliance involves implementing systems and processes that streamline the oversight of expenses; ensure adherence to regulatory requirements and internal policies; and minimize the risk of non-compliance.
But why go through the process if many of these tasks are already being done by humans? According to Meisner, “Companies should be looking for tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to human error — tasks where there's great risk and little value being added. As you look across all the different initiatives you manage, the more that check those boxes, the more you're going to want to figure out how to automate them.”
Risks associated with manual financial compliance
Reporting
Financial reporting is essential to every organization because it helps you monitor the overall health of the business and supports decision-making of the leadership team. It is also required by law. Reporting errors could trigger investigations by the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities Exchange Commission, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
Tax compliance
Complying with ever-changing tax laws is a constant challenge — especially as businesses scale and begin operating internationally. As tax codes evolve, so must your business, and tax violations can become costly fast, while also reflecting poorly on the company’s public image.
Regulatory requirements
Staying up to date with shifting national, local, and international regulations is a whole job in and of itself. Even minor slip-ups in adherence to these laws could result in devastating fines or penalties.
Where there’s this much risk involved — and AI can not only alleviate some of that risk but also take menial tasks off the plates of controllers — automating your compliance is the clear choice.
“Go work on automating the easy stuff,” Meisner reiterates. “Make sure that your house is so clean that you're not wasting your efforts on manual entry of accounts payable and tedious account reconciliation processes.”
When your business uses an AI-enabled spend management platform that integrates with your ERP to automate its expense compliance, your finance team gets improved efficiency and accuracy. It's like giving everyone in your company an assistant to amplify their human effort. Everything from managing risk to controlling business travel is easier. But perhaps most importantly, automating compliance allows controllers to be more strategic in their roles and contribute to the direction — not just the success — of the business.
What it comes down to, Meisner says, is “You've got a team of people, right? What can you do to make sure that they're not wasting their time on inefficient activities and that they're spending their time on things that truly add value to the business?”
The 5 workflows to automate for greater policy compliance.
When you’re using AI-powered tools to automate policy compliance across your business spending, these are the five most critical workflows to automate:
1. Expense policy enforcement.
Establish clear expense policies that define acceptable spending practices, limits, and documentation requirements.
Implement an automated expense management system that embeds your policy everywhere spend happens, automatically enforces policy rules, auto-generates receipts and memos, and can learn your policies over time and dynamically suggest accounting rules.
Use policies to control spend as it happens by automatically rejecting out-of-policy expenses instead of after it has happened during a manual review process.
2. Expense reviews and approvals.
Set up automated approval workflows based on predefined spending thresholds, hierarchies, and policy rules.
Implement an electronic approval system that enables managers to review and approve or reject expense claims digitally.
Integrate the system with notifications and reminders to ensure timely approval and minimize bottlenecks.
3. Receipt capture and verification.
Integrate mobile expense management applications or receipt scanning tools that allow employees to capture and submit receipts digitally.
Leverage optical character recognition (OCR) technology to extract relevant data from receipts in any language and validate against expense claims.
Automate receipt generation and reconciliation with submitted expenses, identifying discrepancies and potential fraud.
4. Real-time compliance monitoring.
Use data analytics and reporting tools to monitor spending patterns and identify anomalies or suspicious transactions — and automatically flag those expenses for review.
Implement automated alerts and notifications for potential compliance breaches, such as high-risk vendors or excessive spending.
Continuously track and analyze spending data to identify trends and areas for improvement in compliance processes.
5. Integration with financial systems.
Integrate the expense management system with financial systems, such as an ERP like NetSuite, to automate accurate and real-time data exchange.
Enable automated coding of expenses, mapping them to appropriate general ledger accounts for accurate financial reporting.
Establish seamless data flow between the expense management system and other financial modules, such as accounts payable, to streamline reconciliation processes.
Where your ERP comes in.
ERP integrations are at the top of the list for controllers looking for a spend management solution. It is critical to control, review, and approve expenses and ensure that they’re being integrated and logged appropriately to an ERP like NetSuite.
“With Brex and NetSuite, we’re easily saving 10 to 15 hours every month on reconciliation. The integration also enables us to control the reporting our way.”
— Katherine Spillane, Controller at Avenue One
Furthermore, by taking advantage of integrations between your spend management system and your ERP, you can get real-time data syncing, giving you insight into what's happening that could be affecting cost control, data security, and compliance. Because business changes so quickly, you need to be managing the business now — not based on what happened a month ago that got reported two weeks after the end of the month.
“Real-time syncing of information is just really important to getting the insights you need so that you can improve accuracy, improve controls, avoid fraud and irregularities, and achieve better forecasting,” Meisner says. “In the area of cost controls and forecasting, what good does it do you if you wait until the month is over?”
Benefits of NetSuite for compliance automation.
Brex helps finance teams prepare, review, and export journal entries more quickly and accurately — with dramatically less manual work. Together with NetSuite as your ERP, you can:
Streamline compliance processes: Controllers can centralize compliance activities, ensuring consistency and efficiency across the organization.
Enhance data accuracy: By automating data collection, processing, and reporting, NetSuite reduces the risk of human errors and improves compliance data accuracy.
Simplify regulatory updates: NetSuite provides automated updates and alerts, keeping controllers informed about changing regulations and facilitating timely compliance adjustments.
Increase visibility and control: NetSuite offers real-time reporting and analytics, empowering controllers to monitor compliance status, identify potential issues, and take proactive measures.
Improve audit readiness: With comprehensive documentation and a reliable audit trail, NetSuite simplifies compliance audits, saving time and resources for both internal and external audits.
“Brex has been a tremendous time saver when it comes to reconciliation and expense management, especially since Brex’s direct integration with NetSuite allows us to manage all entity spend in one dashboard.”
— Ty Barton, Accounting Manager at Signifyd
The next generation of control.
By automating spend management compliance, controllers can reduce the risk of errors, policy violations, and fraud, while improving efficiency and transparency in the expense management process. AI-enabled automation amplifies human effort and gives the accounting team an army of AI analysts so they can skip the fact-finding and error resolution and go straight to better decision-making. This allows controllers to expand their influence on the business, grow their strategic authority across the org, and enhance their reputation with leadership.
“I've worked in the NetSuite ecosystem since 2008, so I've been in the world of real-time data in one integrated database for a long time,” Meisner says. “Integration is challenging because it's something that you have to maintain continually and that's why one of the most critical things is to have partnerships. Through the kinds of partnerships that NetSuite has with its partners like Brex, a lot of that risk and cost is mitigated.”
Learn more about Brex's best-in-class, native NetSuite integration and how it enables accounting teams to automate reconciliation workflows here.
See what Brex can do for you.
Learn how our spend platform can increase the strategic impact of your finance team and future-proof your company.