Mar 15, 2023
5 mins read
Workspace Spend Management
With companies moving toward a hybrid work or completely remote work environment, the need for coworking spaces has increased. While many employees will continue to work from home, coworking spaces offer valuable benefits, from productivity and focus, to socialization and networking opportunities.
As companies enter a new frontier of a remote workforce, they will inevitably encounter new types of expenses; coworking spaces could potentially be one of them. And even if companies previously offered reimbursement to employees for coworking space usage, they can expect the volume to increase with their fully remote workforce. With that comes challenges in workspace spend management and budgeting.
It’s more important than ever that companies create a coworking spend budget, so that they can prepare for the incoming expenses related to coworking spaces, and allocate the right amount of funds for their team.
For many companies, coworking space usage might have been previously done on an ad hoc basis, with employees submitting receipts or expense reports for reimbursement. And that might have worked for the few employees who were regularly using coworking spaces as replacement offices, or for those who were booking coworking spaces for meetings.
However, if your company is now moving to a permanent hybrid work or remote work environment, you might just see the number of receipts and expense reports skyrocket. It’s quite possible that your team is equipped to manage that number of inquiries. But if a much higher amount of money is going toward reimbursement for coworking spaces, it’s probable that you might need to reconsider the category that expense is filed under and paid from. And, this might now become an expense that requires more attention from a budget planning standpoint.
If you know that your employees will have a certain amount of money per month allocated for coworking spaces, you can research the average cost for spaces (desks, meeting rooms, event spaces), create an estimate. Then, you can compare that to what you have allocated per person per month, and create a coworking spend budget that you can then track against.
In order to create a coworking spend budget, companies will need to answer several questions:
With employees all over the country and the world, managing the influx of invoices can be challenging. However, Flexspace functions as a hub for on-demand coworking spaces, giving you the ease of searching, booking, invoicing, and managing, all in one platform. You can even change your budget in real-time, based on how much (or how little) your employees are using the available coworking spaces.
If your company is headed toward a remote work environment, or if you’re already there, creating a coworking spend budget will help you get ahead of the increase in expense reports and reimbursement requests, and help with your flexible workspace spend management. Implementing a budget how could mean saving money later.
To learn more about Flexspace, set up a free demo with our team today.
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