Employee expenses; every company has them and every member of staff wants the money reimbursed quickly. However, the travel expense management process is one of the most time-consuming processes for employees and the finance department. Expense management software removes this time consuming and often complex work.
For any business trip, employees need to document where they were and when, and produce a receipt for every item they have bought. Depending on the size of an organisation, finance departments may process hundreds of claims each month.
Many companies resort to paper forms or excel sheets for expense management reporting as a way to capture all the required information. However, these are often unsuccessful as rules around expenses requests change so frequently and employees don’t always complete the forms correctly.
Paper-based processes come with a variety of challenges and are often the reason our clients and prospects get in touch with us to begin with. We regularly hear about:
As a result of these, questions pile up with back and forth messages between employees and finance, long processing times arise, and errors occur. The effort for employees and administration staff still remains high even with digital templates. Paper receipts have to be found and submitted and often expense forms have to be printed out. Expense management software addresses all these issues.
Our expense management software makes processing employee expenses easy. We create simple electronic templates which are available to all departments involved in the expense process. The system can handle calculations and currency conversions, as well as split money across various cost centres as required.
Receipts are captured digitally and attached to expense line items, with the ability to validate against any parameters set by your business – i.e. a lunch expense shouldn’t total more than £10. Managers can approve or decline expenses from within the system before anything is processed.
You can read more in our blog - Managing Employee Expenses.
If you're organisation is looking to implement expense management software then understanding the features and benefits will be instrumental when making that final decision.
A Digital Form
An employee can enter their expense information straight into a digital form, it can provide default answers or it can transfer data from and existing business trip request, making regular trips that bit easier to manage.
Submitting Receipts
Paper receipts can still be used but to make things easier, employees can upload them digitally or take a photo and submit it with the form. It doesn't matter if the paper receipt is lost or damaged, which works out well for those employees who accumulate lots of receipts.
Cost Splitting
Costs can easily be assigned to a specific cost centre or split across a variety of different cost centres as required.
Managing Tips And Extra People
Should an employee have a working lunch with another member of staff, this can be easily included. Likewise the expense management software has the functionality for staff to report on any tips they have given to restaurant staff.
Expense Limit Management
The software offers a greater control over internal guidelines and expense limits than paper or excel forms can, along with compliance of these guidelines.
Mileage Allowance
Mileage allowance calculations can be made with limits that can be easily altered in the system by management when any changes occur.
Payment Methods
Employees can choose their preferred payment method where different choices are offered to staff.
Security
Security and transparency are enhanced regarding responsibilities, documents and approvals.
