Expense report compliance is an important topic at any time, even more so in challenging times. It helps keep your accounts in order and increases your profitability if done well. It can also represent a considerable cost if done wrong.
Checking receipts and verifying compliance are time consuming tasks with very little direct return. And yet, they are essential to ensuring that your business is running smoothly.
In the era of automation and digitisation, expense management software is an important tool in your cost control arsenal. Find out how expense software can increase compliance within your company, and help ensure it going forwards.
Business expense management software reduces the time you and your team spend submitting, verifying and archiving paper receipts. Technology such as OCR allows your business travellers to capture a digital copy of their receipts as soon as they are handed to them. A hotel invoice or restaurant receipt is instantly photographed and saved with the help of a mobile device and requires only a cursory check.
Digitisation and automation also make it easier for stakeholders in your company to access the data they need, whenever they need it and from wherever they may be. The immediacy with which data is saved and accessed considerably speeds up the entire expense process, shifting the priorities of your financial team from tedious daily checks to higher added value auditing and control.
Non-compliance is often due to human error which can happen even to your most scrupulous employees. Between collecting receipts, trying to remember dinner attendees and entering multiple expense items at once, people make mistakes. And yes, sometimes these "mistakes" can be wilful.
A lot of these mistakes can be avoided with a mobile app that captures expenses on the go. Taking a picture of the receipt at dinner and adding the attendees on the taxi ride back to the hotel makes it easy.
And with automated approval based on spend categories and limits as well as automated compliance notifications, your employees have near-instant policy and compliance feedback. This simplifies the lives of both your travellers and controllers.
Finally, what better travel tool than automated pre-approval? It allows you to enforce your corporate policies hassle-free while supporting cost savings. Your employees' travel plans are automatically approved if within budget, meaning they can grab that Eurostar special now rather than pay full price later. You enjoy better control on spending without affecting the quality of travel making it a win-win.
End user experience is important with expense software, but equally as important is the user experience of controllers. While end users benefit from automation with features such as travel pre-approval and OCR expense creation, controllers enjoy automated control features which reduce the time they spend verifying expense claims.
These control features automatically flag inaccuracies and discrepancies in claims for review, meaning controllers can concentrate on these without wasting time on compliant claims. This setup allows them to save up to 90% of the time they would otherwise spend on control.
Besides, even controllers tire of looking at lines and numbers all day, leading to potential mistakes. Automated systems don't get tired, and they don't make mistakes.
Expense management software integrates your travel policy within its automated processes. This frees your business travellers and controllers from the need to memorise the policy and ensures that every claim is compliant from the moment it is input into the system to its payment.
While international travel slumped for a few years, it is now well on its way to surpassing the levels of 2019. Expense software guarantees that your salespeople are receiving correct allowances and mileages when travelling to local customers or other, further flung places.
An automated expense solution is an added value for your entire company, from travellers to approvers and controllers. It supports your organisation in achieving compliance with spend policies, travel policies and even regulatory requirements, gifting you with a more hands-free approach to employee expenses.