You may be wondering what a financial controller is and what their duties and responsibilities are. The truth is they play an important role in a company’s financial health, and ensuring that a company remains profitable year over year. We’ll explore what a financial controller is, their key duties, and how they effectively contribute to healthy financial management within an organization.We’ll also look at some of their most important duties relating to travel and expense management.
Whether you’re considering if your company needs this role or to look for someone to fulfill this role, or you just want to know more about the roles and responsibilities, by reading this article you’ll get a better understanding of everything relating to financial controllers.
What is a financial controller
A financial controller is essentially a company’s lead accountant who is in charge of overseeing everything relating to accounting and day-to-day financial operations. This means controlling that the money coming in is enough and will cover the money going out, and managing books and records.
By using a strategic lens through which to manage and oversee forecasting, budgeting and overall decision making based on accounting records, they can help your company ensure better control of your travel spend.
What are the duties of a financial controller
The duties of a financial controller are varied. They can range from:
What does a financial controller do in terms of business travel management
A financial controller is in charge of making sure that the budget set aside for travel management is being respected. This might involve helping to establish the limits set forth in a travel policy or making sure travel approvers are not only approving flights and hotels within a certain budget for business travelers but also that the different limits are being respected by the automated policy.
The controller also might review the travel spend and insights to ensure that they are being respected and see where there is room for improvement to maximize the budget and ensure your company stays on track.
Don’t have a travel policy?
How to become a financial controller
To become a financial controller, normally the most common route is to get a degree in finance or accounting. People who are inclined to go this route usually have a strategic brain, that can process numbers and math quickly, and easily make conclusions based on a series of numbers and patterns.
Beyond just a Bachelor’s in Science, some will go on to do an MBA, or Masters in Business Administration, which helps to understand the deeper intricacies of running and operating a business.. With experience as an accountant or auditor, you can then move on to become an assistant controller, and finally a financial controller. Maybe the best route is to start out first in a small and then medium-sized business and perhaps in a larger company later on after more years of experience.
What are the 5 significant roles of a financial controller as they relate to travel management
The 5 most important roles of a financial controller as they relate to travel management are as follows. It should be noted that a lot of these functions can be easily supported with travel and expense management solution like GetGoing.
1. Preparing financial reports
Preparing financial reports is an important function of a finance controller and these financial reports can be easily prepared with the help of an expense management system that automatically keeps track of your spending, helps you understand what part of your budget is being destined to what function.
2. Improving efficiency
Improving efficiency can be closely tied to automation. When you automate expense management, you can be sure that the system works in the background and keeps you on track of your travel expenses so that you don’t go over.
3. Managing budgets
Managing budgets is another important function of a financial controller meaning that they set out a certain budget for each aspect of your business, operations, management, software, staff wages, etc. and they ensure that the whole company complies.
4. Ensuring financial compliance
Ensuring financial compliance is the most important function of a controller, assisting with preparing operating budgets, overseeing financial reports and ensuring that payroll is managed. Essentially they are keeping track of collecting, analyzing and consolidating financial data.
5. Reporting and analysis
Reporting and analysis can easily be done with the help of a T&E solution like GetGoing. It makes reporting a piece of cake so that you can worry about more important things, like unlocking room for improvement or finding ways to better optimize your budget across departments. Leave the reporting and insights to GetGoing so that the controller can focus on making more strategic decisions that will drive profitability and positively influence your bottom line.