Posts in category: Automation

When thinking about an expense management system, the first thing that comes to mind is the harried business travelers. They keep hundreds of receipts, manually entering all the trip details in the excel spreadsheet.

With a modern expense management system, your employees can snap a picture of the receipt, upload them to the digital vault, and then get the expense instantly approved for reimbursement by either the finance team or the manager. 

According to a survey by Levvel research, organizations that adopted Travel and expense management systems improved expense report accuracy by 30%, reduced paper volume by 20%, and saved time for creating and processing expense reports by 25%.

This level of effectiveness shown by automated expense management solutions is hardly surprising.

Why is managing expenses using excel not a good idea?

Travel and expense reports are handled manually at the end of each month, especially in many small organizations. Employees gather receipts and enter all the details, such as category, vendor, dates, etc., in the spreadsheets. They then submit their receipts to the finance team or the management for approval. While this process appears to work fine, it is inefficient. There is a lot of manual handling that takes time, which costs money. Also, the process is error-prone, and it cannot prevent fraud, such as duplicate receipts. 

Why is an expense management solution beneficial?

An expense management solution is beneficial for every business, no matter what the size is. It is cost-effective, reduces error frequency, and provides better insights to keep track of an organization’s financial health. Below are some reasons why expense management software is better than excel spreadsheets.

• Automation

Manually entering every trip detail in the expense reports is time-consuming for your employees. Subsequently, the finance team spends much time acting on the expense data. The expense management automation becomes the savior and lets your employees submit all the expense receipts as and when they pay. The process is much easier using OCR-based receipt management. With this software, your finance team can keep track of all the expense reports, as everything is stored in the cloud and can be accessed with a few clicks.

• Automated approval workflow

In a typical expense approval process, each employee sends the expense spreadsheet to the finance team, accompanied by a folder full of expense receipts. The finance team manually reconciles all the receipts, approves, or denies the claim, processes the payment, and records all the claims for future auditing purposes. It takes a lot of time and effort, particularly when employees attempt to claim reimbursements for expenses against company policy.

Meanwhile, an expense management solution automates the process of expense policy compliance. The system uses AI to check and weed out fraudulent or non-compliant claims and instantly approves legit reimbursement claims.

• Fast-track reimbursements

Manual reporting and reimbursement generally take over seven days, leading to massive employee dissatisfaction. An automated reporting system can expedite the reimbursement process, ensuring claims are approved in seconds.

• Improves policy compliance

Once various expenses start coming in, it is hard for the finance team to validate all the details in the spreadsheets manually. Manually processing expenses also leads to the approval of claims that don’t adhere to company policy. For instance, employees may have claimed reimbursement for personal travel expenses, citing them as clients’ visits.

Employers can ensure almost 100% policy compliance using an automated expense management solution. Employees and the management are instantly notified when non-compliant claims are made. There is also an option for employees to either remove the claim or modify it based on company policy.

• Real-time visibility and spend control

One of the best benefits of automated expense reporting is integrating with accounting software quickly. The seamless integration with the finance software allows the automated expense system to generate custom reports. These reports help the finance team analyze employee spending and cut down the costs of any expenses that go out of budget.

Conclusion

Excel spreadsheets for expense reporting are annoying for business travelers, and they are also a source of pain for the finance team and managers. Switching to an automated expense management system is a win-win situation for everyone. Using automated solutions will only help scale the business, make it easier for employees to get reimbursed, and even allow the managers to make optimal decisions while ensuring policy compliance.

ExpenseOut is here to help you get rid of spreadsheets for managing expenses to leverage the power of automation.

Schedule a demo to learn how our automated expense management software can benefit your business.

Delayed reimbursement from companies is one of the most significant causes of frustration for business travellers. 

While the delays are not intentional, management, finance teams, and HR professionals must look at what’s causing the reimbursements to be processed days or weeks after an employee has submitted a receipt or an expense report.  

Now, how can speedier reimbursements be achieved? 

To know that we first need to delve into what causes the delays in the first place. 

What causes delays in expense reimbursement? 

Turns out, legacy means of expense management are to blame. 

Typically, employees must fill out lengthy spreadsheets, maintain all their paper receipts, send detailed emails, or spend hours putting together an expense report before they can file a reimbursement claim.

Following this tedious process, the expense report goes through two or three rounds of verification by the finance team and the management before the final go-ahead is given for releasing the reimbursement to the employee.

To make matters worse, companies can have confusing or vague travel and expense (T&E) policies that make it even harder for employees to send in accurate expense reports.

Because expense fraud is on the rise, reimbursements are delayed even more due to the additional checks required to weed out fraudulent receipts or previously claimed expenses. 

Automation—the surefire way to faster reimbursements

With an automated expense management solution, like ExpenseOut, the days of employees waiting for several days or even weeks for their reimbursement claims to be approved are long behind us.

Given its groundbreaking AI capabilities, OCR functionality, real-time policy checking, mobile-friendly design, and multi-level approval feature, employees can get their reimbursements in seconds.

Here’s how ExpenseOut makes expense management seamless at every touchpoint.

At the employee level

Gone are the days of filling out spreadsheets and carrying around crummy receipts. With ExpenseOut at their disposal, employees can snap a picture of their receipt, have it stored in the digital vault, or send it instantly to the finance team or management for approval. 

All of this can be done on the go! 

The OCR functionality allows the software to capture all the essential details and send a detailed report to the management, finance team, or HR professional. 

Notably, when there is a policy violation, the employee is notified before the submission occurs. The employee can either remove/ replace the expense item or leave an explanation. This feature will come in handy, especially when premium clients are involved, and the employee must buy dinner at a fancy restaurant or book flights at the last minute to meet with them. 

At the finance team level

The finance team is instantly notified when an employee submits the expense report. It is worth mentioning that the software automatically cross-references the receipts with previous submissions to ensure duplicate expenses are not reimbursed. 

Also, suppose there is any policy violation. It shows up on the finance team’s dashboard, which allows them to seek clarification or reject the reimbursement claim without any direct interaction with the employee. 

However, if the expense is legit, the finance team can initiate the reimbursement in seconds. 

The finance team can quickly credit the reimbursements to the employee’s salary account due to ExpenseOut’s ability to integrate with Human Resource Management Software and accounting tools. 

At the management level

With the click of a button, the management can approve or reject reimbursement claims.

ExpenseOut also allows the management to pre-approve expenses.  Instead of exchanging emails or filling out forms, the employee can quickly raise a request, mentioning the reason for the expense. The management can weigh the merits of the expense based on the company’s T&E policy, which is a process automated by ExpenseOut.

Expense requests with red flags are immediately identified by the software’s AI and brought to the management’s attention in real-time so that they can make decisions optimally. 

Given this streamlining of the approval process, the management can clear reimbursement requests in seconds and focus on more important work. 

Conclusion

Irrespective of your company size, ExpenseOut’s automaton capabilities will speed up your expense reimbursement process and bring down the time taken to process claims to mere seconds.

With ExpenseOut at your disposal, you can focus on more important tasks while being confident that not a single fraudulent claim has been reimbursed and that your employees are thoroughly satisfied with their business travel regime.

Take your reimbursement process to the next level with ExpenseOut. Try it for free now! 

Travel & Expense Management is the second-largest controllable expense for many organizations.

Despite it being one of the most significant business functions, companies still rely on a manual expense reporting process that is outdated and cumbersome.

With the help of Automation, an organization can seamlessly handle the expense management process, thus saving time and effort.

Does your company’s travel and expense management process need automation?

Let’s dive into the blog to know the pitfalls of manual expense management and how automation can help you to fix its challenges.

Process of Manual expense management—and the challenges it poses

Manual expense management involves numerous paper receipts and excel sheets used for tracking and reporting T&E spending. Validating the reports is a tedious process that has become a huge problem for both employees and finance teams.

In manual expense management, employees usually collect all their receipts for the month/ quarter and spend countless hours creating an expense report.

Then, the employee emails the report to the finance team, including dozens of photos of the receipts, or submits the paper receipts directly to the management/ finance team for verification.

The whole process of ensuring that the receipts follow company T&E policy takes several days, which delays reimbursement for employees.

This process not only consumes everyone’s productive hours but also requires a lot of effort and manpower. Further, if a company is still handling expenses manually with paper receipts and spreadsheets, there is a high possibility the reports may be inaccurate due to human error, which poses large financial risks and affects the finance team’s productivity and the company’s bottom line.

Why Automated Expense Management Systems are miles ahead

With an automated expense management system, employees can simply upload images of receipts, and the expense management software can automatically extract all the crucial details, such as the date of the expense, costs, and seller information by means of OCR functionality.

Once all the receipts have been submitted, employees can directly generate and download an expense report instantly.

If any inconsistency or policy violation is recorded, the software will notify the expense violation to both the employer and employee immediately. Once this is done, employees are also given options to provide detailed explanations for the violations, and the admins now have the right to either approve or reject the spending. 

An automated system also speeds up both the approval process and reimbursement. Paying out employee expenses accurately and on time can lead to better employee satisfaction, which can motivate them to be more productive.

Automate your Expense management with ExpenseOut

From receipt capture to employee reimbursement, ExpenseOut has all the right features to take the hassle out of the expense management process.

Over the years, ExpenseOut has helped many businesses to streamline expense reporting, gain complete control over spending, and get detailed financial insights to stay ahead of the competition.

A lot of highly anticipated features like OCR scanning, multi-level approval, and seamless accounting software integration make ExpenseOut a one-stop solution for all your business travel and expense management needs.

The key features of ExpenseOut are:

• Hassle-free process for employees to submit and manage their expenses
• Submit your expenses from anywhere using a mobile or web browser
• Automatic data extraction from the receipt like trip costs, tips, taxes, and seller information
• Real-time verification of corporate expense policies
• Unified dashboard to view and approve expense reports
• Integration with accounting software

Conclusion

Expense management automation is a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective alternative to traditional and manual expense reporting.

It is the easiest way to ensure that your expense reporting is being completed effectively and accurately. Using an automated system not only helps to streamline your processes but also keeps your company protected from fraud and possible non-compliance.

If you want to transform your expense management process with ExpenseOut, please reach out to [email protected] for more details. Book a demo with us today to fix your company spending.

Companies often underestimate how much they need an expense management solution. 

Usually, the realization strikes when they face massive piles of tax documents with unaccounted expenses resulting from years of handling travel and expense (T&E) spending with spreadsheets or legacy software and relying on paper receipts that can be easily duplicated or misplaced.  

Don’t let this happen to your company. Here, we discuss the crucial telltale signs that show you desperately need an expense management solution so that you can take corrective measures right away.

Delays in processing employee reimbursements 

The process of filing an expense, ensuring that it is policy compliant, getting approval, and receiving reimbursements can be quite tedious for employees. If your employees have to find old receipts, struggle with spreadsheets to file their expense reports, and wait for days on end to receive payment, then it is time to consider an expense management solution for automating most of the process. With the right solution, reimbursement requests can be processed in a matter of minutes.

Manually done expense reports (inability to keep up with volume)

Reporting expense manually is something that takes away an employee’s productivity significantly. Collecting old receipts, making sure that they are all in alignment with the company policy, and submitting them via legacy expense management solutions or an email is a recipe for disaster, given that it becomes exceptionally hard to keep track of the paper trail.

Discomfort for the employee is only the beginning of the organization’s troubles; without a streamlined expense management solution that takes all the receipts online and generates reports in real-time, both the management and the finance team must spend hours weeding out duplicate or fake receipts and identifying wasteful and/ or non-compliant expenditure. 

The problem will only get worse as the company grows; even if you can manage expenses manually now, you will soon be buried in a sea of paperwork when you begin auditing. 

Data security concerns

Mistakes in entering or filing expenses, losing receipts, letting non-compliant expenses slip in, etc., are all problems that accompany the use of manual expense management methods. 

If you are facing any of these issues, it might be time to consider an automatic expense management solution that will securely manage your travel and expense data on the cloud and alert you whenever there is any suspicious spending activity. 

You might also need to quickly invest in an expense reporting solution if you are operating in an industry with a lot of data compliance regulations, as automated software will allow you to stay ahead of and comply with all the newly changing regulations. 

Inability to track the financial data of the company 

Inability to stay on top of your company’s finances, especially when you have a rapidly growing team that relies on business travel or a relatively small accounting team, is a clear sign that you need the ability to track expenses automatically. 

Such a solution will provide you with crucial insights on the ROI you are getting from business travel and further allow you to visualize which areas need more funding and which areas are overfunded or wasteful. 

Also, with the right expense management solution, companies can closely track how employees are making use of their credit cards/ petty cash advance in real-time. Another key benefit is that companies will be able to save on payroll taxes using an expense management solution because employee reimbursement is generally not considered to be taxable income. 

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, managing your company expenses, especially the T&E spending, through expense management software will go a long way in streamlining the reporting, approval, tracking, and reimbursement process and benefiting everyone from the finance team to the management to the employees who undertake business travel. Having all your spending information appropriately organized with comprehensive reports will further make tax season less stressful for companies. So, if your company exhibits any of the above mentioned signs, feel free to reach us for a demo at [email protected] or book a call at https://www.expenseout.com/. 

As a startup, you have your task cut out when it comes to handling finances. Just like every other business, you need to keep close track of your business expenses, but in your case, your very survival depends on it.

Honestly, it can be daunting to get every employee to provide accurate business expense reports so that you can perform audits and ensure your company’s money is spent wisely. To make matters worse, you likely struggle with creating financial projections and spending strategies for coming quarters because your company is new and has no historical financial data.

Sounds familiar? As you read on, you’ll see the common mistakes startups make that drain productivity and resources and understand the importance of an end-to-end, automated expense management solution to take over the task for you.

Lost receipts

Startups generally have a founder and some employees, a group of founders, or even a random group of individuals fixated on product development without figuring out the management hierarchy. As a result, there is a good chance that paper receipts from employee business expenses will be misplaced, leading to the company having unpaid bills.

Another way you end up with untraceable expenses is the natural process of decaying of paper receipts. After a point, most of the vital information on receipts becomes unreadable, and the receipt itself becomes worn out, which leaves you with headaches as to what the receipt was for.

Apart from eroding your valuable capital, the loss of receipts further leaves you unprepared for audits and credit card reconciliation.

Vague travel and expense policies

Loosely defined business or travel expense policies often lead to employees’ fraudulent or otherwise problematic spending activity. If you don’t lay out a clear corporate spending policy based on designation, your startup will likely end up with overspending.

For instance, if you are prepared to reimburse employees for travel and don’t specify that you’ll only pay for a train, don’t be surprised to find employees taking business class flights to events that don’t generate revenue.

Lack of visibility in spending

Without an automated reporting and approval system for expenses, there is a good chance that lots of fabricated receipts will make their way to the finance team, wasting their time and resources, which will already be scarce.

Knowing whether a person’s expenses align with the revenue they bring in is another area that startup founders are concerned with. When there is no system to track spending daily and crosscheck it with the company’s policy, the startups’ funds can be squandered.

For example, you might have sales reps claiming they went a certain number of miles and spent the corresponding amount for fuel. Still, you can’t be sure of it unless you have a system that gives you a clear insight into every line item in the expense report and the revenue they brought in while doing it.

Notably, poor expense visibility will cause problems down the road for startups in areas such as accounting, fundraising, future growth projections, and creating annual reports. More importantly, lax expense reporting could land your startup in hot water with tax authorities, both locally and internationally.

Spending too much time on manual tasks

As it is, startups tend to be short-staffed and under tight deadlines. So, no startup wants their managers bogged down with verifying whether a sales rep went to a particular restaurant or took a specific mode of transport.

Undoubtedly, startups with an unhealthy fixation on manually dealing with employee expenses, whether on spreadsheets or legacy accounting software, are burning through investor cash on unimportant tasks that an app could solve automatically and in no time.

Conclusion

An expense management solution may not by itself make your life easy as a startup, but it will certainly take away a lot of the pain that goes into handling travel and business spending. Specifically, startups can’t do without an expense management solution because they need the automated expense reporting, approval, reimbursement, policy compliance, and analytics that come with it. With ExpenseOut, you have a scalable, AI-powered expense management solution that can ensure your finance team, management, and employees are operating at peak productivity.

An employee’s expenses can sometimes be a good indicator of their productivity. 

“John spent 5$ on gas for the business meeting.”

“Karen had lunch with an important client and spent 50$.”

“Mark flew out for the director’s meeting after paying 227$ for a flight ticket.”

And so on. 

In all these cases, the employees made good use of the resources made available to them by the company by closing deals, going on sales calls, and even traveling to another state to attend a business meeting. 

Now, what about the aftermath of making the expense? Many companies don’t realize how—right after making an expense that boosted company productivity or revenue—employees experience a lull in their productivity due to a very much preventable issue. 

The pain of expense management

Employees, especially those who are on the field a lot and spend out of pocket for company-related activities, waste an excessive amount of time reporting their expenses and getting reimbursed for them. Undoubtedly, spending countless hours collecting receipts, preparing expense reports, and getting approvals from various people in the company—only to wait several days for reimbursements—will take its toll on employee productivity and happiness. 

The link between automated expense management and productivity 

Here is how automated expense management software helps employees work efficiently and only on tasks that matter to the company.

Employees no longer have to carry around outdated paper receipts, prepare expense reports, submit them to the management, and wait around for the finance team to approve their reimbursements. 

With software, such as ExpenseOut, employees can record all their expenses on their smartphones. All they need to do is scan their receipts using the OCR functionality. Once that is done, the receipt is automatically stored in a digital vault. Notably, the expense software reads the receipt, checks its authenticity, and adds the details automatically to an expense report, which the manager and finance team can access at any time. 

The manager and finance team can then easily approve or reject the expense based on company policy, meaning that reimbursements will reach the employee in a matter of minutes after the submission of an expense report. The software can even be customized to automatically reject all expenses that don’t comply with company policy. 

Since this entire process takes place over a user-friendly app, it saves employees the trouble of manually preparing an expense report with a clunky spreadsheet and following up with everyone regarding their reimbursement status.

Clarity over T&E policy saves time

With expense management software, the manager can set budget limits based on spending category or employee designation. 

For instance, the management can allow junior salespeople only to book economy-class flight tickets while authorizing senior salespeople and managers to book first-class or business class flights. Similarly, companies can set limits on how each employee or department can spend on travel, food, accommodation, etc. 

When there is a preset budget, and the software doesn’t allow non-compliant entries, the finance team will save a lot of time by not having to manually verify that every transaction aligns with company T&E policy. Also, there is no question of employees overspending and losing valuable time trying to justify their expenses.

Cash advances can be a lifesaver

Another great way companies can keep employees productive and happy is by using cash advances sent using expense management software when there is a known expense. With a cash advance, the employee no longer has to pay out of pocket and spend tons of time preparing reports and waiting around for reimbursement from the finance team. 

Real-time insights from expense management software can facilitate smarter decision-making.

The expense analytics and audit can provide companies with actionable data on how to improve employee productivity. For instance, companies can identify expenses that had the most impact on the bottom line and encourage that while discouraging activities that didn’t produce a sufficient return. 

For instance, if a company finds that meeting potential clients at their offices is cheaper and more effective than taking the client out to a meal, the management can push for more meetings in the client’s office.

Also, if your company has on-field employees who depend on expense management software to track mileage and claim their travel reimbursements, you can get a good idea of how productive your employee is on a given day and provide feedback for them to improve. 

Conclusion

Are your employees truly productive? Are your employees focusing as much as possible on their core tasks and not wasting time filling out extensive reports? Are your employees reimbursed as fast as possible after an expense, so they don’t waste valuable time following up with the finance team or dragging around crummy paper receipts? 

The answer to all these questions can be a yes if you have an automated expense management system. To see how much of a profound impact it can have on boosting employee productivity, try ExpenseOut free for 30 days. 

If you are in the market for an expense management solution, you have a difficult choice to make. There are countless solutions claiming to be powered by the latest technology. To make matters worse, each of these expense management solutions has glowing reviews from a sea of seemingly endless customers.

Now, how do you decide which of these solutions will be optimal for your specific needs?

You could need the expense management solution for your remote employees, or you could need it only for on-field employees. You may even need it to be applicable for all your employees, whether in the office or working remotely or representing your company on the field. 

To cater to these diverse needs, you need a customizable solution that automates most expense management. Most importantly, you need a solution that doesn’t burden you by being difficult to use or by being pricey. 

Here, we outline how to pick such an expense management software that the whole company loves. 

Powered by the latest technology

Look for an expense management solution with Artificial intelligence (AI) or similar capabilities, such as machine learning (ML). Doing so ensures that the software you pick to manage your company’s expenses does away with the tedious work. 

There are solutions in the market that can automatically detect and reject fake expense claims. Using AI/ ML, these solutions can ensure that no receipt is submitted twice, no receipt that violates company policy makes it to the manager’s / finance team’s consideration unless the management wants to make approvals on a case-by-case basis, and no duplicate receipt gets accepted. 

Another functionality you need to be on the lookout for is OCR (Optical character recognition). Using the same, your expense management software can allow employees to scan receipts and store them in a digital vault rather than carrying around old crummy receipts whose authenticity can’t be verified.

Advanced analytics to prevent fraud and misreporting

Expense misreporting costs companies millions of dollars every year, so you need an expense management solution that is equipped to identify fraudulent expenses. You know you have the right software when you can view employee/department-wise spending in every category in an easy-to-read interface. 

You have hit the jackpot if your expense management solution can analyze your expenses to find patterns of overspending, fraud, or negligent reporting of company expenses. 

Seamless reporting, tracking, and reimbursement of expenses

Your expense management software needs to help you do away with outdated, time-consuming spreadsheets. This means your expense management system can’t be cluttered with incomprehensible data. Instead, it should provide you with the ability to automate the reporting process along with the reimbursement part.

With the right software, employees can automatically generate expense reports vetted for policy compliance by the system. The manager can look at the easy-to-read report to quickly approve the expense, following which the finance team can settle the reimbursement claim—all within a matter of minutes. 

Getting a solution that makes your life that easy is vital if you want to be productive and focus on your core responsibilities rather than worrying about whether an employee went the distance that they claimed they did while performing some on-field activity for the company. 

Highly customizable for your business needs

Your expense reporting needs could either be hyper-specific or generic to the point they can’t be defined. Consequently, you need a solution for managing expenses that can be customized to your needs, irrespective of whether it is for on-field, remote, or office-based teams. 

For instance, if you want to monitor whether your on-field sales teams’ mileage claims are accurate, you need a solution that can track the distance they have gone via their phones. 

Similarly, if your needs are specific to business travel, you need a solution that allows employees to input travel-related expenses. Further, if your employees want to treat your clients to a nice meal, your software needs to allow temporary, preset spending policy exceptions. 

A solution that works for everyone

The expense management software that your purchase needs to be suitable for meeting the requirements of everyone who uses it. For the employees, it needs to be a non-burdensome app/ site where they can log in their expenses in seconds and get it approved instantaneously. 

For the manager, it needs to be a platform where they can view expense reports easily, verify policy compliance simultaneously, and approve expenses swiftly.

For the finance team, the expense management software must be a source of actionable insights regarding the company’s T&E (Travel and expense) alongside being a handy tool for preparing for audits and processing reimbursement claims speedily.

Value for money

Your expense management software shouldn’t end up being a financial burden. Look for a solution that scales with you, preferably one with a free trial that can slowly be scaled to incorporate a few paid users before implementing the solution for the entire company. 

Conclusion

ExpenseOut ticks all the boxes for an expense management solution that delights the finance team, employees, and management. With it, your company can seamlessly report and track every expense, reimburse employees instantaneously, and do away with fraudulent expenses once and for all. If you want to learn more, reach us at [email protected]. 

Imagine a situation where your finance team is spending excessive amounts of money processing simple reports, letting fraudulent expense claims go unnoticed, and unnecessarily wasting countless hours. 

Sounds scary, right? 

Companies that are still reliant on manual expense management processes don’t have to imagine. The nightmarish scenario that we described is a reality for them because finance teams can’t do with old-fashioned spreadsheets and still expect to be productive. 

Study after study has confirmed this fact. For instance, the Global Business Travel Association estimates that 19% of expense reports contain errors. 

More shockingly, the study found that processing a single expense report can cost as much as 58$! Another 52$ goes down the drain if the finance team has to make corrections to an expense report. 

Add to this the trouble a company can get into during audit time if the expense reports are faulty, and you end up with a grim picture of how toothless your finance team is without a proper expense management system.

But how exactly does an automated expense management solution help? Here, we uncover the tangible benefits that an automated expense management system brings to a finance team. 

• Highly streamlined and accurate expense processing and reimbursement

Since expense management software eliminates the need for receipts, finance teams no longer have to spend hours poring over old pieces of paper that are about to fall apart. The system automatically tells them whether an expense is policy compliant, meaning reimbursements will only take seconds. 

Further, it lets finance teams to allow for reasonable policy violations, such as taking a big client out to a fancy dinner. 

What’s more, the automation does away with the errors that often creep in when a long and tedious manual process is involved. 

• Fraud prevention and policy compliance 

When reimbursement is made on the merit of old receipts, there is a high chance of fraudulent claims. In the US alone, expense fraud costs companies a whopping $3 billion a year. If companies automate policy compliance, they can ensure that finance teams get expense reports free of fake, duplicated, or inflated receipts. 

For instance, an automated system can detect within seconds if an employee is trying to pass off dinner with a family member as an outing with a prospect. Automated expense management will also come in handy for the finance team when it comes to rejecting expenses that have already been reimbursed. 

Besides, expense management solutions allow you to set customized spending rules to the level of a single user, which makes the finance team’s job easier because they do not have to rifle through the employee handbook every single time before approving an expense. 

• Superior regulatory compliance

Small financial irregularities can often lead to companies losing tons of money due to legal issues with regulators. An automated expense management system helps the finance team ensure that every instance of company spending follows national and international regulations and company policy without the need for complex and error-prone manual audits.  

• Unparalleled visibility of company expenses

For the finance team, one of the key benefits of an expense management solution is that it allows them to generate comprehensive reports of company spending. With these reports and the visibility that comes with them, finance teams can identify the area where wasteful spending has occurred. 

For instance, if the data shows a department purchasing flight tickets too late and incurring high prices, they can be informed to book tickets earlier, leading to massive savings for the company. 

• Powerful third-party integrations

Expense management software can integrate well with third-party applications, such as corporate travel agencies, online booking tools, accounting software, and ERP solutions. Due to this capability, finance teams no longer have to spend countless hours loading data from one platform to another. Consequently, each platform ends up with updated and accurate information that enables the finance team to save time, reduce instances of fraud, and speed up reimbursements. 

Conclusion

As you can see, an automated expense management system helps your finance team stay hyper-productive and effective when it comes to ensuring policy compliance in employee expenses. Moreover, they can quickly reimburse employees while maintaining high levels of spending visibility and data security.   ExpenseOut is guaranteed to delight your finance team. Try it free now/ book a demo. 

Expense management has led many corporates and businesses to boost their revenues and minimize losses.

Typically, companies stand to incur huge losses if business travel expenses are recorded incorrectly. On the other hand, it is often difficult for employers themselves to record these expenses since they must manually submit their expenses along with old receipts that are already at the point of crumbling and falling apart.

A needlessly complicated system that promotes errors on both sides needs to be replaced with something better. This is where expense management systems come in.

Here are a few tips on how you can integrate expense management into your existing workflow and business model so that it does not interrupt the well-established processes that have proven efficiency.

Build an employee portal for logging expenses.

Increase the usability of the software by implementing features like taking pictures of invoices instead of requiring employees to mail them in. This greatly reduces the amount of work the employees are responsible for and makes it much more likely that misreporting of expenses does not occur. Making the process paper-free speeds up the process and makes management and verification easier.

Collate employee data and send directly to approving authority

Using the software, you can automate the process of categorizing the expenses because the employee has already filled in the relevant information while reporting the expense. This makes it easy for the software to collect similar entries together and compile them into an easily usable spreadsheet for approval from the appropriate authority.

Because there are no intermediaries in this process that might introduce fraudulent entries or other errors, the need for verification or checking is reduced by many times. By installing the appropriate software infrastructure, you can delegate human resources to other relevant tasks or simply terminate any unnecessary redundancies.

Directly release funds post-approval of expenses

Because the entries have been recorded and verified by this point, reimbursements can be directly credited to the employee’s accounts after the entries have been authorized by the appropriate authority. This method eliminates logjam and does not introduce any additional methods into the existing process, making it easy to implement.

Since detailed records are kept for each transaction, it is easy to trace every financial transaction to the record itself and attached proof so that future disputes can be resolved with little effort.

Conclusion

Therefore, we see that implementing expense management systems is a no-brainer. They improve the efficiency of the workforce while cutting down on unnecessary losses as well as boosting revenue and employee morale. It is a win from all perspectives.