10 Features to Look for in Expense Management Software

Accountants and managers within the company often used shared spreadsheets to review, track, and monitor submissions. The result was paper overload, long delays, and policy compliance errors. Unlike large enterprises, the growth rate of small businesses is very rapid.

Expense management software can exist as a stand-alone product or as part of anall-in-one HRIS. Expense management is more than simply keeping track of your employees’ reimbursement claims. Finance teams need to maintain accurate records for financial planning, while corporate leadership uses expense reports to evaluate risk management and identify cost-saving opportunities.

It helps companies correctly categorize and identify expenditures, such as for office, travel and mileage. You can also generate electronic copies of reports and receipts, which are crucial if audited. Zoho Expense’s main offering is expense management, meaning they fall behind when it comes to corporate travel. TravelPerk provides a seamless approach to both corporate travel and expense management with an innovative platform and intuitive integrations. Plus, users rate TravelPerk higher than Zoho in all key areas—such as ease of use, quality of support, and product direction. TravelBank is another platform that offers expense and travel management all in one place.

What Is an Expense Management Policy?

Figure out what does and does not work so you can more easily identify the features your company needs. Bring scale and efficiency to your business with fully-automated, end-to-end payables. All companies and their HR managers must determine whether their HRIS is to be used primarily for the following purposes the collection, analysis, interpretation or disclosure… Perhaps part of this motivation comes from their true passion for what your company has to offer. You have probably also considered benefits such as sales-based incentives or other gifts and awards for extrinsic motivation.

This is mainly because information can be shared from anywhere, and at any time. Expense management software allows you easily to aggregate all your spending into a single report, or see costs broken down by personnel, project or category. As a result, companies need an efficient way for employees to submit expenses and receive reimbursement at any time, whether they are at home or traveling. Look for an expense software that has a comprehensive approach to onboarding, or—better yet—a solution that doesn’t require in-depth knowledge to manage business travel.

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When you’ve determined your finalists, schedule a demo with each provider. Here, you’ll be able to see the products in real-time and ask any questions. The product experts can also explain how their expense reporting software will work for your business specifically. If your business is expecting major changes, be mindful of how they may impact your software needs. For instance, if you’re expecting new management, extra funding, more locations, or an acquisition, your expense management processes could change.

When you opt to use a cloud based expense management software, you’ll reap the benefits of the best cyber security. Plus, when employees can input information from anywhere, there’s less room for lost paperwork and sending sensitive information through email, amongst other things. Still not sure if expense reporting software is necessary for your business? Here’s five reasons why expense management software can bring a lot of benefit to your team and company.

Common Examples of Travel and Expenses (T&E)

In the past, a company would collect paper receipts and compile paper records that were filed on a monthly or even quarterly basis. 43% of companies, according to a 2019 study, still use the traditional manual method, and 4/5ths of businesses surveyed are willing to invest in better technologies for the job. Too much detail, and not many employees will take the time to understand it all. You shouldn’t try to excelerate things to the point where your team is making careless errors. At the same time, waiting months for a single purchase to be approved and reimbursed isn’t beneficial either. Once you are aware and have a grasp of the operating budget, forecasting future finances is much easier.

As things move at the speed of the business, an automated system can detect non-compliant expenses that you might otherwise miss. As with many other aspects of your business, technology can reduce the burden of managing and controlling employee spend, often a lengthy and time-consuming process. It is unlikely that you have given employees free access to your business checking account and allowed them to withdraw money at their discretion. Although this scenario may seem absurd, any employee with an expense management spend their money just as freely. It’s popular with SMEs, thanks to a great user experience, flexible pricing plans and affordability. There are many providers and products out there, but here are just a few of the leading expense management solutions to take a look at…

Jey is passionate about automation in payments, expenses, and back-office processes. Jey inherently understands that clients are the most valuable assets an organization can have and is driven by the unrelenting pursuit of customer-driven focus, ideas, and user experience. Jey loves the beach, meditation, learning new piano chords, and reading Voltaire. Before you start comparing providers, determine exactly what your organization needs from expense management software. This groundwork will help you make a more informed decision and ensure you choose software that can meet your requirements.

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You will also have control and visibility over employee spending, enabling you to derive accurate cash flow data for better forecasting and financial planning. As your company grows, each new employee comes with expectations and How To Choose The Best Expense Management Software habits when it comes to booking travel and claiming expenses. Acceptable practices in their previous company may not comply with policies for your company—and with more people on the team, you could easily lose the overview.

• However, you cannot get the insights to optimize the expense process by handling expenses manually.
• According to a study conducted byAberdeen, it costs about $20.65 to manually process a single expense report.
• Automated expense management systems virtually eliminate the risks around regulatory compliance.
• Better reporting facilitates financial planning and analysis as companies evaluate current costs and find ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
• Consolidated expense data helps in improving efficiency, identifying spend patterns, and recognizing areas that drive cost savings and areas that need improvement.

The solution uses OCR technology in order to scan, extract, and fill the mandatory details automatically. With several available options, employees do not require waiting to report expenses. The application makes it simple for them to submit expenses via any smart phone on the move. But not every staff has the same type of cell phone, or the person may not be comfortable with all types of mobile applications. So, here the key is to have an easy-to-use expense solution which can be used by employees across a company.

That is, every expense report must reach the right person in the right time frame to minimize frustration and delays. Procurement largely has to do with negotiating with suppliers and contracting goods and services. A procurement team spends a lot of its time discussing contract terms and optimizing rates but doesn’t necessarily think too much about the total expense or budgeting.

Continuous compliance

Negotiate better deals with suppliers, where the business may be a victim of fraud, or indicating possible breaches in statutory compliance. It also helps to identify spending trends by mode of transport, by client, by country, or by employee, which help when managing spend going forward. Greater transparency gives managers the ability to recognize and eliminate areas of inefficiency, improving the overall budgeting and spending process. Unlike traditional expense management practices, you do not have to safely store countless paper-based and digital receipts on our platform. Volopay lets you upload an image or PDF of your receipt and attach it with the necessary transaction for efficient receipt management.

If your business is international, you’ll need expense management software that supports multi-currency transactions. Through the benefits of Payhawk, expense management can make closing the month feel easy for your employees and for you. If you’re ready to hear about nailing easy expense management in your company, book a demo now. Now, let’s dig deeper into the business benefits of expense management automation. Under global, only one approval policy will work for all kinds of bill payments made in the company.

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Plus, with cloud storage, the finance team can easily access digital receipts and expense reports on any device at any time. Dashboards are a key element of almost all expense management software. They help finance teams identify areas where they can gain efficiencies, tighten spending controls for cost savings and strengthen the bottom line. It’s important to find a software that covers all the key data you will require. Automation removes the need for manual data entry and meticulous manual supervision, which is the major time-consuming part of expense management.

In many companies, employees enter their expense claims onto spreadsheets and mail them to the line managers and finance team for approval. The approvers spend a lot of time manually reviewing each expense and passing the spreadsheet from one approver to another. The excessive time spent in reviewing and approving these expense reports is expensive and often leads to delayed reimbursements.

If you’re a business owner, a CFO, or a finance team member, then this will allow you to explore all of our software’s key features and benefits to see if they work for you. Our aim as a provider is to give you all the business expense management benefits and power you need to scale your business with robust expense control. For instance, expense automation software can enable employees to submit receipt photos from their smartphones for the finance team to compile and process. This functionality allows for faster claims processing while reducing human errors. Expense management software supports companies to follow the proper compliance with every tax agency at all levels.

The solution integrates with other tools including many popular expense management solutions, including Rydoo and Circula. This ensures you’ve got everything you need on one easy-to-use platform. It’s not difficult to see why so many businesses and companies are choosing to make the switch. If they https://globalcloudteam.com/ usually make purchases with a company-owned credit card, you may want software that can check expense reports against a corporate credit card. If employees typically purchase items with personal credit cards, software that lets them take photos of their receipts may be essential during travel.

Every manager is not up to date with the tax change and latest spending policies. With the addition of custom rules in the business, the automated expense management system eliminates out-of-policy travel expenses from the system. For instance, an employee submits an expense report based on an earlier expense policy, the expense management system automatically rejects this report.