Expense Management Software
Expense management software is an application that simplifies the receipt-to-reimbursement procedure by automating the majority of it. It also automates every aspect of T&E management to eliminate the risks associated with manual expense management. The firms can handle their travel bookings, automate expense report submission, streamline approvals, accelerate reimbursements, and track expense claims in real-time with the help of this software.
The procedure of an Automated Expense Management
Even though the procedure differs based on the company and the expense management application that is used, given below is the basic workflow:
– The employee suffers an expense and pays out of their pocket.
– This expense is instantly recorded in the expense reporting application along with a picture of the receipt uploaded from the employee’s device.
– The employee either submits the expense claim or groups various expenses into a report and presents the information.
– The approver is automatically notified of the expense report, then they review it and either accept or reject it.
– If they accept, it’s automatically forwarded to the finance team.
– The finance team validates the report for compliance and authenticity by using receipt management.
– The approved claims are refunded immediately or at the end of the month through the application.
Why businesses should switch to cloud-based expense management software?
Some of the advantages of switching to expense management software are as follows:
1. Streamlined expense report approval
In the traditional way of expense reporting, even if you submit the reports and receipts on time, it takes time to view and accept them. But if you have an expense management app, you can make automated approval workflows to decrease manual intervention and lessen the approval procedure. These various workflows can be customized based on your firm’s organizational hierarchy. You can make different workflows for every department if you have other departments in your firm. You can also set up automatic report submission reminders and auto-approve or auto-reject reports. For instance, a line manager may set a condition for expense reports with many policy violations to be rejected immediately, eliminating bottlenecks and saving time for both the approver and the employee.
2. Simplifies credit card reconciliation
Handling card expenses is elementary with the help of expense management software which prevents overspending, enhances transparency, and curbs fraudulent costs. Travel or finance administrators can allot purchasing cards to employees and explain spending limits for them. The expense management software can be integrated with the card providers to get the card feeds straight into the application. And when the card feeds are synced, transactions are drawn from the supported bank into the software and shown on the dashboard, where employees change them into expenses and reconcile them, which removes the need to spend time manually to match card statements to receipts and then have the finance team manually examine them for compliance.
3. Accelerates expense reimbursements
Expense management software speeds up the process of expense report submission, processing, and approval, leading to timely reimbursements. And because reports that took about a week or more to get approved are processed in a few clicks, finance teams can now quickly push approved pieces into the payment processing cycle and give the exact day reimbursements.
