Nearly a year ago a Delaware media outlet published a story on state workers and their astronomical fast food spending. State employees of Delaware apparently love their fast food, racking up a reported $195,000 in procurement card charges at fast food establishments in 2014 alone.
The emphasis of the piece focuses on the concern for Delaware State employees’ health and eating habits, but I want to use this piece to highlight the powerful insight you gain into your employee’s spending habits when you take the time to monitor card spend on a monthly basis.
In the piece linked above, the State of Delaware was able to use purchase card monitoring to see how much employees were spending on fast food (roughly $594 a day), where they were spending (McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts were popular), and ensure they were staying within the P-Card limits. Armed with the knowledge of what employees are spending (and eating) when traveling or out of the office can lead to the following positive actions:
-If you were concerned for employee well being, say, you could increase lunch budget limits to accommodate sit down restaurants with healthier options.
-You could restrict the fast food MCC code altogether so the company purchase card can’t be used at those establishments.
-You could monitor the spending to determine if the fast food spending (and subsequent quick lunches) correlate with an increase in productivity.
As you can see, having access to this type of card data can lead to serious changes in your organization, often for the better. Yet you can’t find this data using sample or manual audits alone. For big change, you’ll need a “big gun,” such as our own Oversight Insights On Demand™ operational expense audit solution. With this technology you can see every fast food purchase, quick cup of coffee, and restaurant charge.
Lots of data = more insight into the heart of your company’s spending
And having more insight leads to large amounts of positive change, which equates to happy employees. And I don’t have to tell you that happy employees make for a happy company.
Click here to find out what your employees are spending (and eating) with our free 90 day trial using your own data.
