6 Great Money Management Tips For Remote-First Businesses

1. Secure a Suitable Business Bank Account

The first thing you should set out to do is secure your business its own dedicated business bank account. Why? Because some of the best business bank accounts already provide money management features for business owners to use, including the development of spending reports, as well as analytical insights into the health and performance of your company’s revenue streams. 

Alongside this, having a dedicated business bank account may even prove handy when it comes to processing international transactions. It’s one thing to set up a payroll system for fully remote teams, but it’s another entirely to process once-off payments to international suppliers. And if you need to make time-sensitive payments, then you don’t want to find yourself having to wait days or even weeks for wire transfers to go through from one country to another.

Thankfully, dedicated business bank accounts can provide rapid payment processing for businesses, as well as additional cardholders, making it easier than ever for business owners to provide business credit and debit cards to their staff.

2. Implement Remote Expense Policies

Just because you can allocate business credit cards to every member of your staff, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Business cards should ideally be used by members of your management team to curb risks of card abuse or even inadvertent overspending.

Another surefire method for curbing unnecessary office spending is implementing clear-cut policies surrounding the use of business credit and debit cards. What can they be used for? How much does every department have to spend per quarter? Establishing these business expense policies for remote teams can seem a little different to implementing them in traditional office environments, mainly because it’s not as simple as hanging up notices or calling a company-wide meeting in your conference room.

Even so, you can share policy documentation via email or even have them readily available to staff on workplace project management software like Trello or Asana. And for added measure, it’s a good rule of thumb to establish meetings every quarter to provide staff with a refresher on your company’s policy when it comes to making business expenses

3. Invest (& Outsource) Strategically

Although you may be saving on overhead costs like rent and utilities when transitioning from in-office to working from home, it’s important to note that there are still risks of overspending as a business owner when managing a remote-first enterprise. This is because you’ll naturally find yourself reallocating funds you would’ve once spent on rent and utilities towards other company assets, be it SaaS solutions or even on freelancers or contractors to support the output of your core workers.

Even if you do find yourself with an influx of funding following your move to remote work, it’s still imperative that you monitor your spending closely, just to make sure that you don’t surpass the amount you would’ve spent on overhead costs. And if you do find yourself spending more, then now is the time to begin identifying areas where you can cut costs and revisit your business growth strategising.

Generally speaking, you should aim to invest in assets that are poised to accrue an immediate or at least a more prompt return. In other words, business owners should prioritise your business investments by how likely you are to see a return on that initial investment. In doing so, you can help ensure that your remote-first business can grow incrementally and sustainably.

4. Keep Your Marketing Budget Well-Optimised

Speaking of freeing up your budget by cutting down on overhead costs, it’s natural for newly remote businesses to reinvest their freed up funds into their marketing budget. After all, bolstering your marketing efforts is key to ensuring that your enterprise can maintain a strong presence in your community, be it within your locality or even within your industry on a national or global scale.

But when it comes to marketing, the absolute worst thing you can do is assume the answer to getting better digital results is to simply invest more money into your campaign budget. The cold, hard truth is that digital marketing is less about capital and more about strategy in more ways than one. 

Whilst you may be able to compete for more ad space by spending more on your digital ad campaigns, there are always ways to boost your digital engagement aside from relying on just paid channels alone. So don’t neglect your SEO (search engine optimisation) efforts, nor your social media profiles. Investing time in these platforms can help your business maintain a financially-optimised, omnichannel marketing strategy that delivers stellar results.

5. Leverage Automation Technologies

Although it may be tempting to delegate more work to your staff now that they’re fully remote, it’s important to keep in mind that your human resources are still finite – even if you’ve onboarded some freelancers and contract workers alongside maintaining a core crew of staff. Every hour that your staff works is an hour you’ll have to pay for, be it in the form of an invoice or as a fixed salary. If you’re concerned that you don’t have the manpower required to scale your business, however, then adding more staff in anticipation of business growth could end up in crippling your enterprise before it even has a chance to expand.

Thankfully, there is a clear solution here: automation. With the power of automation, your enterprise can reduce its reliance on human labour for menial or administrative tasks. With the right automation processes in place, you can help ensure that your company’s daily operations run smoothly and autonomously. This then allows you and your employees to focus more on big picture thinking, or to make sure that your clients and customers are receiving your full attention instead.

6. Take Full Advantage of Your Business Tax Benefits

Finally, don’t forget that a large majority of your business expenses every fiscal year are likely to be tax deductible. Businesses are given a generous variety when it comes to tax deductions, meaning that you can claim back travel expenses, insurance expenses, and in some cases even workers’ wages and superannuation contributions. You can even claim back business expenses associated with your WFH or remote work activities (i.e. a portion of your household utility bills and internet bills!).

It’s highly recommended that all remote business owners look into the tax deductions and other tax incentives that may be available to them, just to ensure that they’re taking full advantage of all the business tax benefits that they’re eligible to receive. If you’re uncertain about what tax deductions are available to you, then consider consulting with a dedicated business accountant, or even with your in-house accounting department and any other parties that may be able to offer their support here (i.e. shareholders and other stakeholders).

Although managing your company’s finances when transitioning to a fully remote business model may require some rearranging and reevaluating here and there, taking the time to establish expense policies and the other measures outlined above will naturally help your business maintain sustainable spending practices moving forward.