How Finance Teams Use Their Time
The Cost of Operational Tasks
In our 2020 expense management survey, we asked 200 finance professionals of various-sized US companies what single a...
Posts by The Center Team
Four Common Objections About Corporate Card Programs
When we talk to CFOs about managing employee spending, their views on using personal cards vs. having corporate cards tend to fall on one end of the s...
Laying the Groundwork for Change and Success
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track: cultivating resilience, leading digital transformation, and embracing agility.
Managing Digi...
How Finance Teams Have Adapted to New Realities
When we surveyed finance teams for our second annual expense management report, we couldn’t ignore the dramatically different economic and social envi...
Playing the Long Game and Redefining Leadership
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track: strategic scenario planning, fresh thinking for forecasts, and playing the long game.
Lookin...
Why Do Companies Choose To Use Corporate Cards (Or Not)?
As the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money. We’re deeply interested in how companies manage those expenses. In the hundreds of conversa...
Looking Back and Moving Forward
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track: finding efficiencies, strategic time allocation, the year’s most valued skills, and more.
A ...
How COVID-19 Has Changed Employee Spending Habits
How has your business changed this year? Looking at 2020, it might be easier to determine what hasn’t changed. We’ve reimagined nearly every aspect of...
New Tools for Compliance and the Future of Finance
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track: the future of the finance function, spreadsheet warriors, using AI to manage compliance risk, a...
Seattle Jobs Initiative Case Study
TO THE POINT:
Since the COVID-19 outbreak created both a health crisis and economic uncertainty, people have needed services from Seattle Jobs Init...
Finance Prepares for Change and Transforms Information to Insight
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track: prepping finance for tech change, turning information to insight, disclosing company spend, and...
The Real-Time Expensing Alternative to Expensify
We know from surveys conducted over the past few years that most people are hesitant to change their expense management process, even when they k...
On-Demand Webinar | Top Tips for Optimizing Expense Management: Non-Profit Edition
98% of non-profits expect a high or moderate financial impact from the 2020 pandemic. The reality is that typically most non-profits run a very lean o...
What to Look For in an Expensify Alternative
If you’re in the market for an alternative to Expensify, here are some things to consider for your next expense management solution.
Modern Technol...
Manual Accounting, Automation, and Rebounding
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track: automating accounting processes, setting executive optimism, high-performance collaboration, an...
2020 Expense Management Report: Adapting to New Realities
We recently surveyed 200+ finance professionals the current state of expense management within their organizations. Earlier on, we shared ways to...
Remote Work, Reporting Challenges, and Tech Trends
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track: remote productivity, internal reporting, tech trends in finance, cultivating a growth mindset, ...
Center Introduces Credit, QuickBooks Integration
Center Improves Accounting Speed and Accuracy with Launch of New Credit Card Program and QuickBooks Integration
Center extends expense management s...
Automation, Adaptation, and Digital Transformation
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—building an inclusive culture, the return of business travel, the changing role of CFOs, and mor...
Is Your Finance Team Under Pressure? Eight Ways Center Can Help
Our survey Under Pressure: Operational Challenges for Finance Teams revealed the issues front-line finance teams face when trying to balance time-cons...
Priorities and Strategies in Light of COVID
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—building business resilience, leveling up organizational intelligence, and committing to change....
How Real-Time Expensing Works
At Center, we’ve eliminated the concept of the monthly expense report entirely in favor of a real-time expense process. We have replaced the typical c...
Making the Switch from Expensify to Center
If the idea of making a change to your expense management system fills you with dread, you’re not alone. We’ve surveyed finance leaders in organizatio...
Doing More With Less: Rethinking Expense Management Now
We know from our research that finance teams were feeling overburdened, even before the sudden shift to remote work and increased urgency around contr...
Finance Leadership, Strategic Analysis, and Resilience
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—involving employees in budget cuts, building resilience, increasing organizational impact, and m...
Why It's Time for a Corporate Card Program
Your organization might use a small business card for purchases or rely on employees to use their personal cards to pay for business expenses. But wit...
How To Think About Discretionary Spend Now
In response to the economic uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, 77% of finance executives surveyed last month by CFO Research said they were ...
Leading through Crisis and Reacting to Change
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—advice from seasoned business leaders, how finance is adjusting to WFH, leading with values, and...
Staying Nimble: Corporate Controller Q&A
We recently sat down with two seasoned corporate controllers with decades of experience leading F&A teams at companies ranging from startups to la...
Expense Policy Changes To Consider Right Now
The ripple effect of the Covid-19 pandemic extends into nearly all aspects of business life today, starting with the dramatic shift to work-from-home ...
Recommendations for Action to Take Now
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—the latest CDC guidelines for businesses, leading through a crisis, coming out stronger, and mor...
Advice from CEOs on Navigating an Economic Downturn
As the global Covid-19 crisis escalated this week, we tuned in to hear Center’s co-founder and executive chair Steve Singh (currently managing directo...
Technical Accounting, Data-Driven Decisions, and Creativity
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—hiring strategies, data-driven decision making, technical accounting, and more.
Know When to ...
Center Introduces a New Era of Expense Management
Integrated corporate card program and AI-powered expense software transform expense management with real-time transaction data
Center, a technolo...
Metrics, Predictive Analytics, and Revenue Growth
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—from AI and shareholder value to vision talks and data visualization.
Break the Bad Habit o...
Does Your Expense Automation Stop at the Back Office? It Doesn't Have To.
According to HFS Research, global process automation is expected to increase by 70% in the next two years. But as the controller of a large Bay Area s...
Decentralized Spend: What You Can't See Can Hurt You
We all have optical blind spots — the visual field of our eyes where we’re simply unable to detect an image. Decentralized employee spend is the busin...
Streamlined Expense Management is Good for the Whole Company
The expense report is the great business equalizer. Company size, title, and team are irrelevant. If you are in business, at some point you have come ...
December 2019: What We're Reading
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—the importance of purpose, the changing role of technology, and what inspires employee loyalty.
...
Shining Light on Five Common Expense Report Blind Spots
If most finance teams could have a superpower, it would be visibility. Knowing what’s coming, what’s been charged, and what’s been paid sounds easy en...
The Path to "Just Right" Spend Controls
Figuring out the right approach to spend controls can feel like a forest of uncertainties. Some companies go the laissez-faire route and wander on and...
Spending Too Much Time on Accruals? Real-Time Data Can Help
The True Cost of Accruals
When employees procrastinate on filing expense reports, the burden often falls on finance to follow up with reminders, ...
November 2019: What We're Reading
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—a renewed focus on cash, proven decision-making tools, and tips for optimizing cloud spend.
...
Financial FOMO is Real
Sidelined By Missed Opportunity
We’ve all experienced social FOMO — that fear of missing out on the fun we’re certain everyone else is ...
Effective Expense Policies for Every Stage of Growth
In business, there’s nothing more exciting than growing from startup to success story. Each milestone introduces new circumstances and complexities re...
8 Expense Policies Every Company Needs Now
It’s not uncommon for fast-growing companies to postpone spelling out a formal expense policy, but this is one task that should not be delayed. IRS re...
Does Expense Management Take Up Too Much of Your Time? You're Not Alone
We asked 250+ finance professionals what frustrates them most about managing expenses. Overwhelmingly, the answer was time:
Time to produce re...
October 2019: What We're Reading
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—prioritizing profit over growth, a novel approach to annual planning, and digital-age communicat...
The Problem With the Expense Management Status Quo
AUDIT APPROACHES VARY BY ROLE AND COMPANY SIZE
In our 2019 Expense Management Report, Under Pressure: Operational Challenges for Finance Teams, w...
September 2019: What We’re Reading:
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—the nuance of facts, what expense reports reveal, and how CFOs can influence tech, talent, and o...
The True Cost of Expense Reporting and Management
We surveyed 250+ finance professionals about their process for managing business spend and expenses. If you're like the finance professionals who part...
Introducing SpendOps
When Operational Work Becomes A Burden
Companies want CFOs and finance departments to play a larger strategic role in achieving business goals. But...
August 2019: What We're Reading
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—the balancing act for FP&A, creating clear data-rich presentations, and planning like a futu...
The Center Guide to Corporate Cards
Using cards for purchases is so ubiquitous, it’s almost hard to remember when people and businesses used cash or checks. Your business will undoubtedl...
July 2019: What We're Reading
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—Amazon’s $700M response to the workforce impacts of automation, the future of FP&A as “profi...
June 2019: What We're Reading
News and insights to keep you up to date and on track—the role of finance in the automated future, avoiding “fake news” in data analysis, and the most...
How Many Expense Management Tools Does Your Company Need?
As a company grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to get a handle on expenses. Despite innovation in financial tools and strategy, many companies ...
Hiring for Accounts Payable? Think SpendOps Instead
Last week we explored why hiring more people won't solve your expense management problem. This week, let's take a look at how the right finance hire c...
Will Hiring Solve Your Expense Management Problems?
“I’m about to hire someone to take over managing expenses.”
This statement, made by the controller of a rapidly growing tech company, wasn’t surp...
May 2019 - What We're Reading
Recent news and insights to keep you up to date and on track—data accountability, uniting your team through problem-solving, and embracing imagination...
The Opposite of Innovation: Cost Control at Tesla
Zack Kirkhorn’s job just got a little tougher. He’s the 34-year-old Harvard business grad named Tesla CFO in March 2019. In addition to his regular jo...
April 2019: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more intelligent, connected, and strategic. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Fiscal Culture is Company Culture. What's Yours?
As we prepared for the launch of our CenterCard program, we encountered a wide range of fiscal cultures. One well-established company's CEO still appr...
March 2019: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more intelligent, connected, and strategic. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Evolving Fiscal Culture As You Grow, Part Three: Stabilizing
In the first two articles in our Evolving Fiscal Culture As You Grow series, we addressed creating a solid fiscal culture in Starting Strong and devel...
Evolving Fiscal Culture As You Grow, Part Two: Scaling
In Part 1 of our Evolving Fiscal Culture As You Grow series, Starting Strong, we covered strategies for shaping a strong fiscal culture in the early d...
Evolving Fiscal Culture As You Grow, Part One: Starting Strong
Fiscal culture is your company's approach to managing finances, but there’s no one way to define an effective one. It incorporates everything from how...
February 2019: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more intelligent, connected, and strategic. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
January 2019: What We’re Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more intelligent, connected, and strategic. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
The 5 Types of Business Traveler
Travel is typically one of the biggest drivers of a company’s discretionary spend, especially for companies with sizable sales teams. Yet it’s also on...
5 Resolutions To Start the New Business Year Off Right
We’ve found that many businesses simply accept the budget process as being cumbersome and complex, but it doesn’t have to be that way. As you turn the...
December 2018: What We’re Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more intelligent, connected, and strategic. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
November 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more intelligent, connected, and strategic. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Your Employees Want to Do the Right Thing
We recently surveyed 300 employees at a range of small, medium-sized, and large companies for a deeper understanding of their attitudes toward bu...
October 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Are Spreadsheets Something to Celebrate?
There’s a holiday for just about everything, it seems, and today happens to be National Spreadsheet Day.
Certainly there are those who might view...
Take Your Company's Spend from Outdated to Optimized
As we approach the end of the year, there’s one word on many executive’s minds: budget. With only three months until 2018, most organizations are work...
What To Do When Your Spending Outpaces Your Growth
A high-flying start-up drops $4 million on its holiday party. Its 5,000 employees have free run of the lavish theater where the Grammys are awarded, s...
September 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
How Well Do You Know Your Company's Budget?
Managing budget and spend is time-consuming and complicated. We recently surveyed nearly 250 US-based business owners, CFOs, and managers to build a d...
August 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Getting a Handle on Discretionary Spend
Do you know how much of your company’s budget goes toward discretionary spend? If not, you’re in good company—25% of the business owners and managers ...
July 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
The Blueprint for Effective Budgeting
Previous article in this series: Who’s Responsible for Keeping Your Budget on Track?
In our State of Corporate Budget 2018 sur...
June 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Leading for Increased Strategic Impact
The Association of Financial Professionals (AFP) reports that CFOs expect their finance teams to double the amount of time they spend on strategi...
Who’s Responsible for Keeping Your Budget on Track?
Previous article in this series: In the Dark About Discretionary Spend?
In our State of Corporate Budget 2018 survey, we ...
May 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
In the Dark About Discretionary Spend?
Previous article in this series: The Problem With Set It and Forget It Budgets.
In our State of Corporate Budget 2018 survey, ...
Is Your Company Ready for a Corporate Card Program?
When your company is just starting out, you can usually get by with a small business card or by having employees use their own cards for travel and pu...
April 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
The Problem With Set It and Forget It Budgets
Previous article in this series: Are Manual Processes Slowing You Down?
In our State of Corporate Budget 2018 survey, we asked nea...
Are Manual Processes Slowing You Down?
Previous article in this series: Is Your Budget Bar Too Low?
In our State of Corporate Budget 2018 survey, we asked nearly 250 ...
March 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Is Your Budget Bar Too Low?
Previous article in this series: Over Your Business Budget? You're Not Alone.
In our State of Corporate Budget 2018 survey, we asked...
February 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
Over Your Business Budget? You're Not Alone
Previous article in this series: What Grade Would You Give Your Budget Process?
In our State of Corporate Budget 2018 survey,...
January 2018: What We're Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
What Grade Would You Give Your Budget Process?
If you’re like most of those who took our State of Corporate Budget 2018 survey, you probably think your company’s budget process is perfectly adequat...
December 2017: What We’re Reading
We’re here to help you make your business spending more strategic, intelligent, and connected. Stay up to date and on track with recent insights from ...
