Better Expense Management Means Better Business

With more paper trails and manual processing, Travel and Expense (T & E) reporting has turned into a time-consuming task for accounting professionals. By transforming the expense reporting process, companies are able to gain valuable insight into spend management trends. The benefits of automating expense reporting processes can result in an overall better experience, including employee satisfaction, greater compliance, and decreased spending. Here are a few ways auto expense report solution can help accountants overcome the challenges and better support their operations within the organization.

Budgeting and Forecasting

Organizations T & E budget is often not defined accurately as it completely depends on other spending trends and projected revenue. But, by using automated expense report solution, companies can break down the T & E budget for visibility into spending by expense categories, departments, and employees. Accessing real-time data shows how company’s travel and expense budget is spent, allowing for greater accuracy when forecasting future spend. Also, this real-time data might help you negotiate rates with airlines and hotels.

When employees don’t submit expense reports on time, it causes a lot of challenges for accountants. Not tracking T & E expense reporting accurately will make it virtually impossible to maintain the records. Automated expense solutions will allow you to track expense reports on a regular basis. Also, automatic solutions will send email notifications to employees as well as managers when reports are pending or need approval, minimizing the risk of inaccurate data forecasts.

Invoice Processing

Processing invoices need a similar approach since the process of paying an invoice requires the same amount of verification as when reimbursing an employee. All invoices and payments should go for approval before processing. Purchase orders, vendors, and management approval limits should all go under consideration when making invoice payments. Automated invoice solution allows employees to capture the invoice on a smartphone. They can also follow-up with the required approvals and sync with the accounting system. You can efficiently manage and process invoices through automated invoice software solutions.

Expense and invoice solutions are to meet specific requirements for each criterion with the greatest efficiency possible. However, expense solution can effectively manage invoice payments as well. So, it is up to businesses to determine whether to use expense software to manage their invoice payments or that having a specialized invoice solution is more appropriate for their organization.

Auditing

When expense spending is a part of the corporate budget, there is high demand for transparency in T & E reporting. Moreover, if there are more out-of-policy expense claims it would become even more difficult for companies when auditing. Tracking control and measuring the effectiveness of internal control is again an added responsibility for the accountant. Accessing expense data and achieving compliance makes auditing not only easy but also simple. Unlike manual process, employees can have their expense reports verified by the system when submitted through expense software solution. The information is saved within the expense report solution and can be analyzed when required.

The manual expense management process can’t meet the requirements of every organization. However, today’s accounting professionals need easier access to data, less paper, and true automation to make travel and expense reporting efficient.