90% of SaaS Firms Lack Visibility Into Non-Payroll Spend

You can’t fix problems, you can’t embrace opportunities, unless you can see them.

And in the business-to-business (B2B) realm, as found in the report “Improving Financial Performance,” done in collaboration between PYMNTS and Airbase, we found that visibility is sorely lacking in the back office. The pain points in tracking financial performance are especially glaring in the software-as-a-service sector (SaaS).

The 225 executives surveyed with deep knowledge and leadership responsibilities in accounts payable (AP) departments at SaaS companies with between 100 and 1,500 employees showed particular challenges in gaining insight into non-payroll spending. As many as 90% of companies said they do not have visibility into those transactions.

Drill down a bit, and as the data shows, 70% of companies do not have visibility into transactions until after they occur. Another 21% say manual processing remains an issue in managing and processing non-payroll spending.

The problem becomes more acute in larger companies, where the employee count is up to 1,500 workers, and where the lack of visibility before the spending is made touches 77%.  By way of contrast, 64% of the companies with fewer than 500 employees cite a similar range of limited insight. Manual processes, in addition, bedevil larger companies more so than smaller ones. Overall, the data show, 47% of firms are currently facing data entry errors when managing non-payroll spending.