5 Goals An Expense Management Tool Can Help You Reach

Building a business in a digital era means keeping up with the latest technologies, including updates related to your employee expense management tool. Like it or not, technologies move fast as new ones appear and business tools become more powerful than the ones you and your teams are familiar with.

Your expense tool is outdated when...

But when your company struggles to meet its goals regarding expense management, using an up-to-date tool becomes imperative. You know that the employee expense management tool that you are using is outdated when:

• Your employees are drowning in a sea of paperwork while your controllers struggle with numerous errors in expense reports.
• The increasing amount of time spent on manual work is preventing your teams from focusing on their core responsibilities.
• Your business travellers are consistently late in submitting their expense claims, leading to cash flow problems for your company.
• Your travellers are frustrated with delayed reimbursements for their out-of-pocket expenses, as manual compliance checks slow down the process.
• Your expense reports lack accuracy and you lack sufficient data to identify the root causes of rising travel expenses, except for factors beyond your control such as rising airfare and accommodation prices.

In order to future-proof your expense management strategies, you need an expense management tool that has all the features and updates that will help your business thrive, while reducing costs and offering support for expense management improvement. Here are just five goals that you can achieve with an updated expense management tool.

1. Automate time consuming processes

If you find yourself with an expense management tool that still requires a lot of manual tasks for your employees, it's clear that you're using an outdated solution. By automating these processes, you can save time and money in the long run and immediately increase employee satisfaction. With features such as automated pre-approval and approval processes, as well as automatic prevention of out-of-policy submissions, your employees on the go and your financial team will greatly appreciate a user-friendly solution that allows them more time to focus on more engaging tasks.

2. Take control of employee spend

When corporate expenses - especially those related to travel - continue to increase, taking control of employee spend becomes a real challenge if your financial team does not have the tools to identify, evaluate and correct employee behaviours. An updated expense management software automates internal processes and integrates with other software in your company to help your financial team identify trends and take immediate and relevant action.

3. Increase expense policy compliance

You understand that business travel can be exhausting for your employees. And when they're away, their main focus is on generating new business opportunities or maintaining good relations with partners, not on preparing expense reports.

An expense management tool that helps you prepare for the future allows you to not only automate processes, but also submit expenses on the go with cloud-based apps for your travelling employees. That means your employees can submit their receipts as they receive them. Furthermore, by integrating your expense management solution with your company's policy, you can guarantee the adherence of all your travellers to the established regulations.

4. Improve employee experience and satisfaction

To maximise the benefits of your expense management tools, it is crucial to prioritise user-friendliness and ensure that your employees are not only willing but also excited to use them. Remember that your employees require guidance, clear corporate policy travel tools, as well as transparency and visibility into their business trip data.

By updating your expense management solution, you gain the ability to make informed decisions that reduce costs without compromising traveller benefits or the quality of travel.

5. Take data-backed, informed decisions

Integrating your travel and expense management tool with various corporate systems, including the ERP system, has a measurable impact on your travel and financial management. An updated tool not only ensures enhanced compliance and streamlined processes, but also boosts employee satisfaction and provides a wealth of valuable, readily accessible data. Importantly, it is both precise and dependable. Armed with this valuable information, your managers can gain invaluable insights and make well-informed decisions regarding business expenses.

You are constantly watching trends in your company's field of activity in order to keep your products and services as high quality possible and to prepare your business for the future. As travel expenses are the second largest cost in most companies with global activities, you want to keep travel expenses under control. Doing so in the future means updating your expense management tool now.