5 Steps to Automate Expense Management Reporting

Get analytics on the actual spending vs the budget initially set and stay on top of your spending. Set up policies for different branches, departments, or cost centers, and ensure no employee expense is outside the policy limits. This type of reporting empowers organizations to gain actionable insights into expenses, helping https://www.bookstime.com/articles/trust-accounting-for-lawyers them to make more informed decisions, identify areas for cost savings, and leverage process improvement. If your employees often travel for work, you’ll want to have a system in place to manage all expenses they’ve incurred. Securities are offered through Brex Treasury LLC (“Brex Treasury”), member FINRA/SPIC.

Why should you automate expense management?

Expense management capabilities are often found within broader accounting products, as well as in standalone tools. You may also be able to find these features bundled with tools for procurement, invoicing, budgeting, and other financial processes. BigTime IQ is time and expense tracking software from Chicago-based BigTime Software. Some employee expenses are approved as prepayments, expense management automation with employees receiving cash advances before taking a business trip or incurring moving expenses. ExpensePath does well as an expense tracking solution for small and midsized businesses with an intuitive interface, decent customization, and a nice price, too. So employees save time when they file, and financial controllers save even more they process expenses.

• You click a picture of the bill you just spent on, select the relevant expense head and hit submit.
• If your employees ever need to pay out of their own pocket, you’re legally obliged to pay them back.
• Just like any other function in finance, fewer hands means fewer mistakes.
• Most applications charge based on the number of active users per month, but there are variations, such as ReceiptBank charges based on the number of transactions practiced.

Learn More About Expense Management Software

Larger organisations require more comprehensive solutions that can handle higher volumes of expenses and integrate seamlessly with other business systems. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, it highlights some of the best options based on features, user feedback, and industry relevance. Each of these tools has unique strengths and can cater to different business needs.

Why automated expenses reports are so exciting

Tipalti offers a virtual or physical corporate payment card called Tipalti Card for managing employee business expenses without requiring upfront payments or expense report submission by employees. If submitting expense reports takes too much time, employees delay submitting their travel expense reports until they’re back in town and have time to focus on the task. Or, they’ve been reminded by their supervisor that the expense report hasn’t been received and requires submission. Meanwhile, the employee may have misplaced essential expense receipts, causing further delays in expense report submission to get replacement receipt copies.

It should also be able to slice and dice expenses in currencies the company and employees use. Today’s businesses are increasingly global and distributed, creating operational complexity. You may have overseas vendors, employees and contractors in different countries, or global subsidiaries subject to local tax regulations. Historically, manual expenses involved a large amount of paper, from receipts to printed spreadsheets and beyond, which naturally introduced inefficiencies.

Out with the old, in with the automated

• Once completed, they make an initial request to their manager to approve the purchase.
• The walkthrough process is so quick that what used to take hours will only take seconds each time.
• Employees can also log in to the system to see where an expense report is in the approval process and receive notifications if anything requires their attention.
• Make employees happier with quicker expense reimbursements, delivered directly to their accounts.
• They can create expense reports with all the important details they need.
• Set up policies for different branches, departments, or cost centers, and ensure no employee expense is outside the policy limits.

Which Expense Management Tasks Can Be Automated?

Improved policy compliance