How CFOs and finance teams use Rho Budgets

Finance teams use Rho to control spend and automate tasks like expense management and accounts payable to get more done, but one of our most beloved – and underrated features – is Rho Budgets. 

Read on to learn the creative ways our customers use this feature in case it inspires your own use of the platform. 

What are Rho Budgets? 

The Rho Budgets capability helps finance teams establish better visibility over how company spending is tracking against pre-set budgets. 

For example, say you’re a prebiotic beverage company called Awesome Root that has finalized budgets as part of the annual planning process and has $100,000 dedicated to TikTok ads. In Rho, you can create a budget called TikTok and specify the budget amount as $100,000. 

Once the budget is created, you can ensure Rho Card transactions are taken out of that budget in a few ways: 

• Assign a Rho Card to a budget so that all transactions using that card are assigned to the budget. 
• Associate existing transactions to a budget by clicking each expense item and updating the Budget label in the expense pop-up window.
• Assign specific Rho users to a specific budget.

As you spend, the Reporting view provides a visual and numerical summary of spending across your configured budgets, letting you know how you are progressing against your pre-set limit. Having that information helps inform future budgeting decisions, measure how you are progressing so you can keep an eye on your margins, and uphold accountability. 

Awesome Root’s marketing director might be alarmed if she sees that 85% of the TikTok budget has been spent by August!

10 creative ways Rho customers use Budgets

Here are ten of the most creative ways Rho customers have used Budgets to control spending. 

1. Budgets for Departments

Sample budget names: Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Partnerships, etc. 

This is our most common use case and is frequently used by businesses with 50 or fewer employees. 

You assign a budget to your company’s corporate departments like Marketing, Engineering, Partnerships, and Sales. As organizations grow, they will likely explore the other use cases for Budgets that we’ll discuss next. 

2. Budgets by Expense Category

Sample budget names: Equipment, Entertainment, Recruiting, Office Supplies, Utilities.

Some clients assign Budgets by types of operational expenses they will encounter, such as office supplies or utility bills. 

3. Budgets by Client

Sample budget names: Client A, Client B, Client C

Advertising and marketing agency Rho users love using Budget to track spending against pre-set client account budgets, as margins depend heavily on this. Having this level of granularity can inform client discussions, say if additional investments are needed to support campaigns through year-end.

4. Budgets by Job Code 

Sample budget names: 010021, 010022, 010023

Most common with construction companies – roofing, commercial buildings, and more – that want to closely monitor how expenses impact job code budgets. Using Budgets in this way also supports construction accounting, as job codes are often assigned specific values in the general ledger. 

5. Budgets by Ad Channel

Sample budget names: Facebook, LinkedIn, Snap.

Another common use case by advertising and marketing agencies (and consumer product companies!) These clients earn valuable cashback on their ad spending and gain control and visibility over how current ad channel spending progresses against amounts set at the beginning of the year. 

Channel effectiveness also changes all the time. If a Rho customer wants to divert some funding to test a new channel, they can quickly see which ad channel budgets have the most room to work with and compare to how each of these channels has driven customer conversions. 

6. Budgets by Vendor

Sample budget names: Rippling, Affirm, DHL.

Some businesses work with many vendors and want an easy way to track how much they spend with each. This data is valuable for vendor management and procurement, ensuring you aren’t overpaying for materials or services. It's also helpful for getting the most out of vendor management software.

Fun note: You likely wouldn’t see Rho listed as an expense item in your Vendor budget list as Rho has zero platform fees! 

7. Budgets by GL Code

Sample budget names: 6150 (Utilities), 6110 (Rent Expenses).

This is our personal favorite use case. Finance teams have a lot to manage, and one way we’ve seen some of our clients get time back is by outsourcing some expense GL coding – to their employees! 

When employees go to submit an expense through the Rho mobile app or web app, they can assign each transaction to a Budget that corresponds to the appropriate GL code. 

Users do this to involve their employees in coding to direct General Ledger accounts while retaining control of what gets pushed to ERP via direct integration. The finance team is still there to provide a check, but this takes a lot of heavy lifting off their plate. 

8. Budgets by Event or Campaign

Sample budget names: Annual Conference, Spring Marketing Campaign

Event-organized companies and those with seasonal campaigns favor this use case. Think of advertising agencies or consumer product companies that have key campaigns and events that they attend to showcase their products. 

9. Budgets by Individual Business Lines

Sample budget names: Men's Line, Women's Line, Kids’ Line.

Common among industry-diverse corporations with several product lines, which helps analyze how expenses compare to revenue returns on each business line. 

10. Budgets by Office or Store Location

Sample budget names: Los Angeles Office, New York Branch.

Effective use case for businesses with multiple geographic locations. 

Wrap-up: Control spend better with Rho

These are just a handful of how our customers use Rho Budgets to help establish better control and visibility over spend. 

Are you a current Rho customer and want to experiment with this feature? Feel free to contact your Client Service representative, who can assist you. You can also check out our Help Center article about this feature. 

Interested in demoing the Rho platform’s spend management features? Get in touch today!