Manual vs Automated expense management: Know the difference

Automated-vs-manual-expense-management

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one of the most significant business functions, companies still rely on a manual expense reporting process that is outdated and cumbersome.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

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