Last Updated on July 24, 2022 by
An expense management tool can be referred to as a system that enables your staff to report their respective business expenses. This way, your senior managers in the accounts department can get a holistic view of where your cash flows out. At the same time, finance teams can use an expense management software to manage their expenses, reimbursements, and travel requests. Since these are completely automated systems, they can reduce human intervention and do away with associated risks of faulty inputs.
In a nutshell, an expense management tool would help your organization process reports related to business expenses seamlessly after receiving them. These powerful tools can also flag possible policy violations once you program them with your desired criteria.
What is the function of an expense management software?
Tracking your receipts
Every business needs to have a detailed account of all their expenses. With an expense management tool, you can remain abreast with every transactional detail. So, the system does away with the necessity to submitting a hard copy for every transaction. The users even have the liberty of uploading a photocopy of the document. This pacifies the overall functionalism of the department significantly. You need not keep a track of the physical receipts when you have this kind of a tool in place.
Besides, you can track these receipts from different locations remotely. This way, you can reduce your dependency on paper receipts, that you can lose or damage any time.
The advanced process also facilitates external and internal auditing, serving as an organized medium. You can track all the reimbursed expenses easily to their source.
Enforce policies on travel expenses
With a robust expense management software, you can automate your policy enforcement work. You have specialized features in the best expense management tools that can track possible violations of the policy by the employees. So, you can detect the policy breaches as soon as they take place and detect the offender.
Besides, some of these tools come with the provision of integrating corporate programs like credit cards. You can send direct feeds from the bank to your employee in order to reconcile all the card expenses that are reported. In case the system detects any information mismatch, it would update the authorities.
You can also modify the policies from time to time, depending on your budgetary goals. So, business owners have the liberty to define the relevant parameters based on which the tool examines the entries.
Streamline the approval process of expense reports
The expense management software is responsible for scrutinizing the business expenses when you upload them into the system. Next, the tool sends these reports to the relevant department or stakeholders. In case it finds any violation based on the policy, the approver would get a notification. This way, you can refine and strengthen your expense report approval mechanism.
Besides, when the tool flags an entry, it also states the corresponding reason for the same. This pacifies the approval and verification process. The admins would also get the liberty to configure approval workflows.
What are the advantages of using an expense management software?
- With one of the best expense management tools, you can significantly slash manual work and channel your human resources to more productive avenues.
- For finance teams and employees, it becomes easy to approve respective workflows and customize policies as they require.
- You can integrate some of these smart tools with accounting tools, card programs, and dedicated systems for travel expense management. Ultimately, you would have a single platform containing all the details.
- You can check the spending trends periodically, scrutinizing past data and statistics. So, the finance teams would be able to make informed decisions.
- An automated tool would also keep a track on violations of your organizational expense policies. This empowers managers to deal with fraudulent claims related to expenses. In a nutshell, you would be able to maintain your productivity.
Should you use an expense management software?
With competition mounting, you cannot afford to waste your productive hours. Competitive businesses are automating most of their tasks, so that they can save time and money. With a robust expense management software, you can easily upgrade your operational mechanism of expense reporting, reimbursement, and approval. This way, your organization benefit from reduced errors and enhanced productivity.
