Expense Management 101: Your Guide to Expense Reporting

You will have a solid business case for automating expense management processes in your company by now. The next step is to get buy-in from your executives to purchase and implement a solution. These were some of the many factors you should consider when looking for automated expense management software. Also, you’ll learn not every solution is right for your company and not all of them are the same. You must choose the solution according to your requirements and the size of your company. There are a few factors to consider when looking for automated expense management software.

The medical reimbursement guidelines can vary from one country to another. Some countries like the US have reimbursement policies defined by certain authorities. How To Choose The Best Expense Management Software Any business trip an employee undertakes for business activities such as sales meetings or attending a workshop comes under this category.

Automated expense tracking

Engage the shortlisted vendors to discuss your needs and refine your understanding of each vendor’s capabilities and pricing. Compare each platform’s features, pricing, and user reviews to refine your criteria further and evaluate the vendors on your shortlist. Another factor to consider when choosing an automated solution is its integration. The software you choose must integrate with the existing system for a smooth transition.

• This feature ensures that your decisions are always supported by reliable numbers.
• Different organizations have different requirements and workflow when it comes to expense management.
• Any difficulty in understanding travel expense policies can cost the company more in the long run.
• When it comes to making expense reports and approving them, nobody likes it.
• But even when you already have rules about employee spending, it can be worth it to formalise them by creating an expense policy.

If you’d like to check, strictly in terms of money, the RoI of an expense management software, here’s a free ROI calculator you can use. This feature allows employees to simply take a picture of the paper receipt using the OCR scanner. The software then auto-populates expenses details from the captured image, all ready to report. This ensures that a truly one-click experience replaces the otherwise tedious manual expense reporting process.

Defining the goals you want to achieve by automating expense management will help you set priorities and build your expense management strategy. It will also help you decide which expense management software you need. Analyze your current expense policies and data to identify areas where you’d like to make improvements or streamline workflows. Adding payment cards or virtual cards to your expense management system can make this process even faster and more secure. Pcards can be assigned to individual employees, and expenses can be tracked and approved in real-time. Due to automated expense management systems, managers can track the purchase habits of their employees the moment they happen.

Manual expense management processes can leave finance teams in the dark about how much money a business is spending. Expense management software captures, tracks, and centralizes expense data in real-time to report exactly where your company’s money is going. You can analyze this data to gain insights into expense policy compliance and spending patterns, detect errors and fraud, and forecast future spending.

Are traditional means to expense management affecting the health of your business?

Business expenses are mainly of 3 types, fixed, variable, and periodic expenses. Examples of fixed expenses are subscription fees, rent, and Internet services. Variable expenses are those that vary continuously and account for a substantial part of business expenses. Payroll expenses, equipment rental, etc. may be considered variable business expenses.

It also provides timely and accurate information about employee spending across the organization. Under these benefits, companies will reimburse employees for medical bills such as medical treatment or hospitalization. Mileage expenses are the expenses that organizations pay or reimburse the employees for using their vehicles for business travel. Almost every company has times when they have to reimburse employees for their expenses. Whether it is internet or phone bills, traveling to an expo/conference, or health and wellness, it is essential to understand the different types of employee expenses. The IRS treats capital expenses differently than most other business expenses.

IT is responsible for implementing and maintaining the expense management software and integrating it with other business software platforms. They would see benefits from low-maintenance and flexible solutions that are easily scalable, secure, and facilitate integration. There are many solutions available but they have complex interfaces and you have to assign a full-time team member to use them.

Help your finance function drive business strategy and growth

Manual expense management processes mean a lot of paper and spreadsheets. This also leads to inefficient, more time-consuming, and error-prone processes. Will you need to change your process or tools as the company grows with time? Having a solution that is flexible and can scale with your company’s growing needs is a key consideration while planning your expense management process.

Many companies have strict policies about this, so employees need to understand these policies before submitting expenses. Get automated process workflows that elevate the productivity and efficiency of your business with Cflow. Centralized access to data provides real-time updates on business expenses. Get a free demo of Stampli and learn how to automate your expense management processes quickly and effectively.

What Automation Brings to the Table

For example, consultants and lawyers commonly use these reports to track expenses related to a particular client, while manufacturing companies track expenses related to certain product lines. Sales reps use them to report travel and entertainment expenses and get reimbursed. Expense reports are important because they allow managers to track the spending of the company or a particular department or team – especially costs related to a specific client or project. Expense reports also help employees who need to be reimbursed for approved business expenditures.

It is time you also think about making your expense management automated so that it will help your business set free from the worries of manual expense requests and approvals. Making expense reports might seem fairly a straightforward process yet it is anything but simple. And, if you still rely on manual processes, it is a headache for everyone involved.

When someone acts against expense management policy, that time you can decide what needs to be done. A company expense policy is a set of regulations that are created to direct the employees on how should the company funds be used for business purposes. The AI-based system automatically detects duplicate expenses, wrong expense file receipts, etc. The finance department no longer needs to manually cross-verify every payment, thus saving countless hours. As managers, department heads, or the finance department, there are better and more important things you have to do than verifying expense claims against policies. An expense management software automates policy checks and alerts you about any violations.

How to Select the Right Expense Management Software Platform

Employees will lose a lot of time if they continuously ask colleagues how to prepare their expense reports. However, a digital travel cost management solution may eliminate mistakes and make expenditure reporting less tedious. A company will definitely have a set of expense policies that employees should follow. However, it is difficult for employees to remember all the expense policies and regulations that are set by the company at all times. Understanding and ensuring policy compliance may take up a lot of the employees time while they manage expenses.

Obtaining precise consolidated information — through automated processes — reduces the risk of erroneous decisions and losses. The accountability of employees also improves by automating the expense management process. The scope for expense fraud and duplication is greatly reduced through automation. Employees need to understand that an expense management discipline, where quality and customer satisfaction are balanced against costs, is an ongoing priority of the firm. Much too often, employees see costs as what “management” controls, and cost reductions as a benefit that will be taken away from them. The paradigm has to shift to where they see the company’s cost similar to their own personal expenses and exercise the same level of discretion.

Automated expense management workflow is streamlined, and redundant steps are eliminated. Employees need not waste their time on repetitive and cumbersome activities, instead can focus on project-related activities, which will improve overall business productivity. The expense management module takes care of the creation, submission, and approval of the expenses. This enables automatic and easy management of reimbursement claims, and robust reporting and compliance controls. Out of all the business expenses, only some of them are tax-deductible.

This helps you filter down your best options among multiple software solutions available in the market. Employee expense management software saves employees’ and the finance team’s time. The employees can directly upload the receipt image on the software by choosing the correct category. Therefore, an employee expense management system is the process of tracking and maintaining all the expenses that involve expense submission, approval/denial, and reimbursement. One of the most common challenges that employees face in any organization is expense filing.

Expense processing

If you have frequent traveling employees, you might need a highly rated vendor with quick responses, active live chats, and timely customer support. Last-minute approvals might result in out-of-policy claims being approved. There is no one place where all activity on an expense report is tracked.

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Different organizations have different requirements and workflow when it comes to expense management. Automated expense management solutions allow you to make direct integrations into the company’s https://globalcloudteam.com/ other central financial or accounting systems. Whether it is about case management solutions or automated expense management, they have the features to grow as your business grows.

Benefits of Automated Expense Management

No one’s time gets wasted when there are easy-to-use expense management processes. The need to spend valuable work hours on painful logging and the process of expense reports is minimized, thus increasing productivity at work. Many organizations that spend or are planning to invest in technology want to simplify the expense reporting process for employees and managers. Expense management software maintains detailed digital audit trails for each expense and all stakeholders’ corresponding actions. This makes it easy for Finance teams to audit expense reports before processing reimbursements. This also eliminates the need for storing stacks of paper receipts and worrying about their safekeeping.