5 Business Benefits of Expense Management Automation

Make sure that you’re answering any queries that your employees may have regarding the new system. Expense management systems that are automated provide employees with expense management automation better visibility into their spending, allowing them to keep track of business expenses in real-time. By automating expense management system, businesses can drastically reduce the amount of manual entry and risk of processing errors, thus providing accurate and timely reporting. Expense management automation is a system that streamlines the processing of employee expenses. It replaces the traditional, manual forms of expense management which used to require heavy paperwork and labor. This is done by automating the entire process from employee submission of expenses to verification and approval of the expenses, to the payment of the employee.

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Once the approvals are collected, the finance manager can review and reimburse the expense with ease. In conclusion, expense automation offers businesses a wide range of benefits that can positively affect their processes. retained earnings With these benefits in mind, it’s evident that automating expense reporting provides positive results when it comes to improving operational performance.

Costly to sustain

You can use the policy violators report to determine the employees who are most often submitting business travel expenses outside of your policy. A manual expense management system may often seem like the most economical option, but the Global Business Travel Association claims it raises the potential for mistakes. If you’re still using the good ol’ paper receipts, bills, receipts, and spreadsheets to file and process expenses, it’s high time you switch to expense automation. Here are seven reasons you should automate your expense management – read the post and make an informed decision. It streamlines the workflow and prevents human errors during the whole ordeal. Plus, it collects all data in a single hub, which makes it easier to accountants or financial specialists to review and approve expenses.

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Having documented expense proofs saves you time and money and gives you peace of mind knowing all your financials are recorded correctly and securely. This goes without saying – always choose an expense automation system that’s worth your money and offers the best services for the lowest possible price. Automated expense management allows the system to quickly find malpractices like Partnership Accounting submitting duplicate bills, rounding up expenses, etc.

Traditional expense management vs Automated expense management

• If you’ve got a few minutes and an idea of the sort of task you want to automate, you can make it happen.
• But, the whole process is a hassle for huge companies with multiple employees traveling continuously for business trips.
• When you become serious about taking control of your financial future, understanding the three basic types of expenses can help you create a budget that fits your lifestyle and long-term savings goals.
• At this stage, the finance team will have to manually go over the report and supporting documents to check its credibility and authenticity.
• • Difficulties with compliance with local rules for multinational companies.

Adopting automation often requires significant upfront investment in tools, software, and infrastructure. Intelligent automation combines artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) with automation to handle complex decision-making tasks. This type of automation adapts over time, learning from data and improving outcomes. A bank uses RPA to process loan applications, verifying customer data across multiple systems in seconds, significantly reducing processing time. Expense management automation is a strategic solution that gives your company a competitive edge compared to companies that don’t use it. Over time, the employees learn the policy and ultimately change their behavior.

• Small businesses can start with low-cost automation tools that offer scalability, such as Nected, Zapier, or HubSpot.
• Looking at the ways your team currently incur expenses will determine what sort of tool you need.
• An easy way to rid your company of expense fraud is to automate travel expense management.
• Automated payments ensure that customers are billed on time while also allowing businesses to accept credit cards and other payment methods.
• Moreover, automating your expense management can only be successful if key people in your accounting and finance department are convinced of and happy with the chosen solution.
• Many expense automation tools include both a mobile app and web versions to simplify the expense process for your team.
• You’ll also want to break down these goals into smaller objectives to figure out how you can use automation tools to achieve them.

Step 5: Evaluate your TEM tool and travel policy

See, despite the impact it can have on cash flow and employee productivity, expense management is all too often overlooked with the view of “if it ain’t broke…”. If that’s you, allow us to introduce you to the benefits of expense management automation. No matter what industry your business operates in, automating this process can bring big benefits that will have you wondering what other parts of your business you can streamline. Automating your expense management is a simple project that can nonetheless have high rewards.

• Automated compliance checks and policy enforcement ensures that all expenses are following the business’s policies, helping to reduce compliance-related risks.
• And finally, if there are no red flags, the finance department will reimburse your employees.
• It’s clear that there are great potential gains to be had from utilizing expense automation technology within any organization’s workflow.
• As high adoption rates are crucial to the success of the entire project, it is important to get your employees excited about the new tool.
• Your finance team can check compliance and instantly approve or reject the expense request.

With automated expense management solutions, companies can make managing their expenses easier and more efficient. Automated expense management pulls data from financial systems into a central repository, optimizing workflow and providing greater insight into spending and budgeting. Many organizations out there are still following manual processes to file, verify and report employee expenses. Maybe hundreds of spreadsheets and a mountain of paperwork are getting the job done for you. But, if you compare the pros and cons of the manual expense management process, the cons surely outweigh the pros. That’s because manual expense reports are often messy and filled with errors.

Delay in approval

• Automated expense systems also make it easier to control budgets and ensure compliance with policies.
• However, it’s still important to do a routine check in case you miss any updates.
• Thanks to different permission levels, it’s possible to designate team managers with the ability to approve or reject expense requests from their assigned employees.
• See, despite the impact it can have on cash flow and employee productivity, expense management is all too often overlooked with the view of “if it ain’t broke…”.
• Watch how simple it is to automate the expense reimbursement process using zenphi and Google Workspace.

This makes it easier for employees to track their business expenses and ensures that expense reports are ready for submission promptly. By automating the expense management system businesses can generate expense reports much more quickly and accurately. Automated expense management systems enable businesses to set and enforce spending limits and policies through the help of spend limit control and policy enforcement features. With expense management automation, businesses can both streamline their processes and at the same time save money. This strategy enables faster approval and reimbursement, eliminates the risk of expense fraud, and helps enhance expense policy compliance, among others. Manual expense reporting involves a lengthy process since the finance department must thoroughly verify the information contained in each claim.

Key takeaways

You also want to discuss the implementation process with the sales and customer support teams of your new expense management automation software provider. Assessing the current expense management process is the first step in implementing expense management automation in a business organization. Often what holds back the expense management process is how long approvals take. Instead of having one document cross many desks and risking it getting lost in the process, an important feature of expense management automation that you want to have is automated approval workflows. While automated expense management is good on its own, it’s even better if you can integrate your software with tools like corporate cards and accounting systems.