Universities and nonprofit organizations often have staff or departments operating on grants. It makes it imperative that they closely watch and control budgets, and many grants have very specific requirements for how money is spent.
With this level of necessary compliance, there can be some challenges, such as expense reporting challenges for higher education, which need to be addressed in ways that are different from the private sector.
Canadian higher education institutions often have the same operating and expense requirements faced by private organizations, with additional layers added on.
Expense Management Systems
It is essential for higher education institutions to implement a modern, advanced expense management system. First, it eliminates the problems that are inherent with a paper-based system, including the potential for error and fraud.
An automated system can also bring together different elements of expense management within a department or an entire intuition, and prevent a lot of the problems that occur when things are being managed in disjointed and different ways even within the same department.
It’s important to choose an automated system well-suited to the complexities of a higher education intuition, but on the user’s end, it’s going to feel simple and streamlined.
Make Employees Aware of Grant Requirements
It’s important to make university employees aware of grant requirements that pertain to them. They may not understand that rules even exist, which will make them inadvertently non-compliant.
This can be avoided by being clear and transparent with what the grant requires of employees, particularly those employees that travel and are responsible for major spending. If necessary, train employees on these requirements.
In addition to overall grant requirements, make sure that departments have defined travel policies as well. Most universities have their own travel policies, and those will need to be implemented along with the specifics of the grant itself.
Monitor Expenditures
Department heads should make sure they’re regularly monitoring expenditures.
The best way to do this stems back to the idea of automated expense management software. If key personnel have easy access and complete visibility as far as spending, it’s easier to spot small problems, inconsistencies or red flags before they become big ones.
A lot of universities lack a sense of internal control because they don’t have a centralized way to see what’s happening, but this obstacle is entirely avoidable.
Focus On Improving Efficiency
Finally, when universities are facing tight budgets, the first tendency can be to cut, cut and cut some more, but this isn’t always the best approach.
Instead, it’s useful to look at data and analytics and see where inefficiencies exist and try to address those in more effective ways, rather than simply saying the solution is to make blanket cuts.
You want to balance budgetary restrictions with employee satisfaction, so ask for their input along the way. There are ways to cut costs easily, such as lowering the cost of processing expenses by automating your process, that are actually going to make most employees happier, rather than the opposite.
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