A tale of 2 marketers: another way to manage spending

Learn how to avoid expense clutter and manage employee expenses with a breeze in this article.

Stacy Kanevskaia
- 3 min read
A tale of 2 marketers: another way to manage spending

Nick and Nancy are media buyers for two companies. They both plan the next big advertising campaign, so they're on the way to approving a bigger budget and scale strategy with many campaigns, but they do it opposite — including the way how to control expenses in a company. Which one do you think is more likely to achieve success?

Let's begin.

Chapter 1: Nick's story

Meet Nick. 

Nick works at Company A. His last Google Ads ad campaigns boomed, and now he can scale ads and prepare for a bigger strategy. And, of course, get more budget. The amount is more than $5,000, so fingers crossed.

Now Nick needs to approve his budget. He sends emails, goes through many desks, and waits hours for approval. During this time, his last campaign becomes less trending, and once approval is ready, he decides to switch off the last campaigns. Well, he could avoid that.

It's time to get a corporate card to place an order. Here's where the adventure begins: Nick has to chase for a card across every desk again. And this is not fun.

Lucky Nick: he got the card. He launches his campaigns and waits for Google to approve them. Nick saves receipts and sends them to the finance team. The controller matches this to the credit card statement and finds out some receipts are missing, so Nick needs more time to find and submit them two days later.

During this time, Nick notes that his campaigns got blocked and his ads are on stop cause his account is frozen. Since he launched many campaigns, the whole strategy fails.

Now he spends hours dealing with unblocking while emailing the finance team to get a new card. 

"Well, wait 2-3 days to issue a new one". How can he lose so many days on scaling? Competitors never wait.

So, how does Nick feel? He made a painful trip from budget approval to campaign launch and ad account suspension. He finally started the process, and his ads got blocked. He can't continue his strategy and control expense because he needs to wait for days to get a new card to pay for ads, and now he lost money and time. Everything needs to be done from scratch (surely, a new Google Ads account too).

Chapter 2: Nancy's story

Now, meet Nancy. 

Nancy works in Company B. Unlike Company A, B integrates Karta's spend management software into their finance workflows to control expenditure in an organisation. 

Like Nick, Nancy is tasked with new bid launches, so she is on her way to creating many campaigns. Knowing that she would be making these purchases within the next few days, her CMO set the budget with a limit of $5,000 on new campaigns and added Nancy to a budget so that she can create one or more virtual business cards. All cards are tied to the budget, so there's no chance to spend more than $5,000 and no need to approve every further staff expense.

With peace of mind, Nancy proceeds to make these purchases with ease. Every transaction she makes gets logged into the Karta app in real-time, which the finance team can easily access anywhere and anytime, skip lots of painful spreadsheets, and quickly control expenses in business. Nancy can also control expenses and easily check how much is left on the card and does she need to create a new one or ask for a top-up.

Suddenly, Nancy decides to split her strategy and launch more campaigns, but she knows this pain: with one card, her Facebook account can be suspended. She creates 12 new one-time purchase cards in minutes, ties them for each campaign specifically, and stays calm because each card has unique details, so it's safer for ad accounts, and her Facebook account will now get flagged.

After many smooth launches, Nancy returns happily to forecasting other advertising and expense control strategies — not worrying about if she overspends or if her ad account will be suspended.

Imagine Nancy has only one corporate card, no budgets and limits on spending, and no flexibility in tracking her expenses... that's when we go back to Nick's story. Instead, Nancy uses her advertising skills on max, follows a strong expense management strategy, and gets customers without stops or blocks on the way. Either way, Nancy is not stuck feeling annoyed or facing financial stress on her finances!

Which side are you on — Nick or Nancy?

There’s a stark contrast between the team expense workflows of Nancy, who experiences it conveniently, and Nick, who is left feeling lost and frustrated. Any employee would rather be like Nancy — removing redundancies altogether.

With Karta, employee expense management always goes to a happy end

With our corporate cards and expense management solution, employees like Nick can save time, money, and stress by eliminating the need to deal with manual expense reports, share a corporate card, and chase for approvals. Every dollar spent is in control, tracked in real-time, and fewer obstacles exist to reaching new goals and getting new customers.

The possibilities for managing team expenses are endless regarding virtual cards. You can set employee spending limits and expense controls, prevent overspending, and improve efficient budget management. There's no need to approve every payment or save receipts — everything is in one app, and you can seamlessly manage company expenses. Your employees are calm and motivated, and your finance team has less paperwork and works on growth strategy.

Let Karta take the pain out of managing your staff expenses. Our vision is to help you gain comfort, expense control, and visibility over how your employees spend money.

It's time to get started and create the first card your employees will actually love.

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FAQ:

What is an employee expense management system?

Basically, it's software that automates every aspect of employee management to eliminate the risks associated with manual expense management. It streamlines approvals, simplifies the receipt-to-reimbursement process, and allows companies to manage team expenses in real time.

Why do companies need expense management?

Companies implementing efficient expense management systems can control costs and maintain accurate financial records while improving employee morale and financial growth. This also removes the hassle of tons of manual work from the finance team.

How do I keep track of my employee expenses?

To make it simple, use spend management software. For example, Karta lets you create a budget for specific expense categories, set limits to spending, and add employees who can easily create cards and stick to a budget. This way, you stay on top of your team's spending while employees get more autonomy.