Are you planning to purchase an expense management solution to keep track of day-to-day corporate and business travel expenses? If yes, then it’s time to consider a wide variety of these factors such as cost, amount of flexibility, integration features, scalability, mobile capabilities, ease of use, deployment options, business value, and more.
The business has been slow to catch up with the consumer technology revolution we now take for granted. People have gadgets in our home that listen, talk and even laugh at us, but at work, they’re drowning in paperwork and scrambling around looking for lost receipts in a shoebox next to the stationery cupboard. It’s time to bring the office up to date, and a great way to start is by adopting a future-ready expense management software package.
Why do you need one?
Whether you have a handful of employees or a hundred, trying to be successful with the wrong expense management tool is cumbersome and frustrating. Using an unfriendly interface can lead to an error-filled report that creates a time-consuming process for everyone. It can also increase the likelihood of user error or lead to employees reporting very late– or even not reporting at all due to pure dread of interacting with the tool.
Perhaps you’re worried about inaccuracy and fraud, or maybe you’re simply looking for a more feature-rich and friendly interface to make life easier. Whatever expense challenge you’re facing, having an expense management software can help you.
When reviewing the various tools available on the market, it’s important to know your priorities. After all, an expense management tool isn’t just about making it easy for employees to input expenses. It’s also important that the approver can quickly access and handle the report.
In other words, it needs to be easy-to-use for all parties. It should have an intuitive interface and certain must-have features so that it works seamlessly for your company. When it comes to adoption and consistent use of your expense management software, simplicity is the name of the game. This is even more true if you have one or more employees who travel frequently for work. Being able to input expenses on the go and request timely approval are major factors. Here are some tools that fit the bill.
The benefits of using an expense management software system
Improve Visibility, Restrict Expense Fraud
Believe it or not; statistically, your employees are likely to commit some form of expense fraud. Avoiding frauds, duplications and more need real-time, accurate visibility into expenses with an audit trail, and that needs a better expense management solution.
Save Billable Hours
Your employees and finance team spend the hours in manual data entry and processing. These are billable hours being wasted, and have a very high time-cost to your business. Further, these hours are only adding to the employee dissatisfaction.
Cut Costs
The complete automation of expense management tracking, processing and reimbursements can cut down your costs. The average time to achieve a unit RoI (Return On Investment) with an expense management automation solution is less than a year for any organization.
Powerful Business Insights & Reports
With detailed, accurate data on travel and employee expenses, your business has the power to plan effective expense policies, budgets, incentives and also negotiate volume discounts with vendors – thereby, keeping your bottom line in check.
It Helps You Meet Your Financial Objectives
It’s not enough to stick to your budget if you don’t also make strides toward important saving goals. Whether you set a goal to build an emergency fund, pay down debt, set aside money for retirement, or save for college, vacation, or other short-term goals, you’re more likely to achieve these goals if you budget for them, create a savings plan, and then track your spending to ensure that your spending matches your priorities.
Some factors to consider
In this digital age, the majority of business operations are running on all types of mobile devices. If your expense management system lacks mobile functionality, it would be a heavy loss to your organization. So, before making your selection, check out whether your solutions run on a mobile device or not.
Are your employees able to scan the travel receipts and upload them in the system while travelling? Are your employees able to access the travel report while on move? Are your employees able to scan and upload any other kind of expense like conveyance, general, parking, telephone, etc?
Conclusion
Relieving finance leaders from administrative workloads starts with empowering employees to manage things like expenses more effectively. Employees are increasingly responsible for their corporate purchases, such as flights and car hire. The growing trend towards decentralised businesses spending places greater trust that employees will complete processes honestly, accurately, and within a reasonable time-frame. When expense processes are inefficient, manual, and labour-intensive, employees tend to find ways to quickly process their claims out-of-policy. This reduces a finance leader’s visibility into financial data and can make it more difficult to detect errors and compliance issues.
Employees expect to travel, expense, and invoice systems to be as simple, smart, and user-friendly as the mobile apps and tools they use every day. When organisations give them systems that match these expectations, they can start to get a better handle on the budget.
An expense management system is an important tool to manage and control everyday travel expenses and other types of expenses. Implementing an expense management solution in your organization benefits employees, accountants, managers, and CFOs to streamline the workflow, improve the bottom line, boost productivity, and organize critical business travel information effectively.
If you need corporate expense management software, visit our website, and let our experts help you today.
