The Best Business Expense Card for UK Small Business Owners and Freelancers

Managing business expenses is a critical part of running a successful organisation. However, it can also be a time-consuming and complex task, especially for small business owners and freelancers facing tight budgets and limited resources.

Traditional methods of business expense management, such as business credit cards and traditional banks, have their limitations and can cause more problems than they solve. But what if there was a solution that addressed these issues and enabled you to optimise your business expense management process effectively?

We’ve been looking at Soldo, a business expense card for UK small business owners and freelancers looking to streamline their expenses.

Is this the best credit card for expenses?

In this guide, we will explore best practices to manage your business expenses and the benefits of using a business expense card like Soldo. Lets find out how effortlessly you can save time, money, and streamline your business expenses with Soldo.

Best Practices to Manage Your Business Expenses

Managing your business expenses can be a daunting task, particularly if you’re a solopreneur or a small business owner seeking to optimise your financial operations.

Keeping track of receipts, reconciling transactions, and categorising expenses makes it challenging to manage the cash flow and identify the areas where you can save. If you’re trying to manage business expenses, the best processes are:

1. Create a Separate Business Account: Keeping your business and personal finances separate is the foundation for managing your business expenses. This ensures that you accurately track and report your business expenses, which obviously saves you time and potentially costly mistakes.
2. Track Every Expense: Whether you use a paper-based or digital system, track every transaction so you can monitor your spending. Business owners who don’t track their business expenses are more likely to overspend, and miss out on valuable tax deductions.
3. Automate Expense Tracking: Implementing an automatic tracking system can streamline your expense management process. Using modern app-based banking solutions like Soldo means all transactions are recorded in real-time, freeing up valuable time and reducing the potential for costly manual data entry errors.
4. Set Clear Expense Policies: Establishing clear policies around expense categories, spending limits and reimbursement procedures helps to reduce confusion, provide consistency, and avoid any discrepancies. These allowable expenses should also tally up with what official sources say (such as HMRC – read their guide to what counts as an allowable business expense here).
5. Regularly Analyze Expenses: Regularly reviewing your expenses enables you to identify trends and opportunities to save money. Reviewing your business expense reports regularly also helps you monitor budget adherence and resource allocation. And of course this ensures you can make informed financial decisions for your business moving forward.

Why Choose Soldo for Business Expenses?

Soldo is a modern, cash management solution created to simplify expense management, enabling you to focus on growing your business.

As a tool built for companies who need to track employee expenses, whether issuing multiple expense cards or simply allowing your small team to claim expenses on specific processes, it could be invaluable. In fact Soldo is one of the UK’s growing business finances options.

Some of the benefits of using Soldo for your business spending include:

1. Effortless Expense Tracking: Soldo’s prepaid Mastercard and user-friendly app allows you to categorize and monitor business expenditures on-the-go. All transactions are recorded in real-time, meaning you never have to juggle receipts or worry about missed or misplaced expenditure.
2. Total Control and Customization: Soldo provides unparalleled control and customization, allowing you to set spending limits, restrict certain spending categories and allocate funds to specific people, teams, and departments.
3. Seamless Integration: Soldo seamlessly integrates with popular accounting software such as Xero, Quickbooks Online, NetSuite, and Sage, which simplifies the expense management process and eliminates manual data entry, saving you time and energy that you can divert to other business areas and driving your growth.
4. Enhanced Security and Compliance: Soldo is UK-regulated, has the FCA Electronic Money Institution license, and their data protection and privacy policy follows the UK GDPR legislation. The platform also uses advanced security features such as 3D Secure and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) to ensure secure transactions and protect sensitive information.
5. Multi-Currency Support: Soldo offers multi-currency wallets and cards in GBP, EUR and USD, which is particularly useful if your business operates internationally. This feature simplifies cross-border transactions, saves currency conversion fees and reduces the need for manual data entry.
6. Low Annual Fee: With business bank accounts, you often need to pay an annual fee. Soldo’s fees start at £6 per user/per month, for up to 3 employees. Larger companies pay £10 per person per month and there are options for larger enterprise accounts too.
7. Virtual Cards: In the age of Apple and Google Pay, you can also issue virtual cards for online transactions or for small transactions such as local travel expenses, office supplies or ad-hoc purchases.

You can also use Soldo for business expense cards for teams of different sizes.

Soldo vs. Credit Cards and Traditional Banks

Traditional banks and credit cards offer their own solutions to business expense management. However, Soldo stands out among the competition, providing distinct advantages over outdated and expensive financial management solutions.

1. Better Expense Management: Credit cards can only show you the total amount spent, making it challenging to track individual expenses or specific departments. Soldo, on the other hand, tracks every transaction in real-time and provides clear insights into spending patterns, ensuring that you can keep expenses within budget and savings within reach.
2. Reduced Reconciliation Efforts: Traditional banks may require you to manually reconcile bank statements with your business expenses, which is a time-consuming and complex process. Soldo’s integration with accounting software simplifies this, automating the process and reducing potential manual errors.
3. Enhanced Control and Security: Credit cards can potentially leave you exposed to fraudulent behavior or overspending. Soldo gives you complete customization of payment limits, restricted categories and strong security measures such as 3D Secure and SCA protocols resulting in peace of mind.
4. Streamlined International Transactions: For businesses that deal with international transactions, relying on traditional banking solutions and credit cards can lead to expensive foreign exchange rates, fees or poor currency conversion rates. Soldo’s multi-currency support not only eliminates these fees but streamlines the entire cross-border transaction process.

Get Started with Soldo

Using Soldo makes as your business expense cards is efficient, effective and affordable. Whether you’re a small business owner or a freelancer, Soldo’s custom expense management solution makes it simple to manage your expenses.

The time and money you save with Soldo can be used instead in other areas of your business, freeing up valuable resources and helping you achieve a higher level of financial literacy and stability. Choose Soldo, the ultimate solution for UK-based small businesses and freelancers who want to streamline their expense management practices.

Managing your business expenses can be time-consuming and complex, but implementing effective practices, such as those outlined in this guide, can streamline the process and enable you to optimize your financial management practices effectively.

Furthermore, incorporating innovative financial management tools such as Soldo, tailored to small businesses and freelancers’ needs, will transform the way you handle your expenses and put your organization on a path to success.

Sign up for Soldo here.