Five Main Reasons Why You Should Use Expense Report Software

Even in this day and age, there are many organizations that manage their business processes, even key processes, the traditional way without taking advantage of technology and the convenience it offers. We still see paper-based reports, long approval cycles, and fragmented data silos everywhere. One business process that will gain a lot from the adoption of technology is travel and expense management. Online expense report software, which automates and streamlines the process, can speed up the process by an exponential factor and help you enjoy a hassle-free business process. Here are 5 reasons why you should deploy online expense report software for your business:

Convenient authorization process: With this software, managers can authorize their employees' travel requests either before or after the trip, depending on the situation. If a sales rep went on a 2-day trip but had to extend it to a 5-day trip, he can get authorization for the 2-day trip before the travel and come back and update the request with the 5-day details. Pre-travel requests can be converted into expense reports with a few simple clicks, eliminating the need for multiple data entries.

Flexible approvals: In some organizations, there might be more than one approver and the approval process follows a pre-defined flow. In some others, there are thresholds set after which the request has to go through multiple approvals. This software can be configured to suit either flow. Email notifications will be immediately sent out to all the approvers as soon as the request is created. The approvers can check the requests for any discrepancies and reject any line items that contain them. A notification is sent to the user who then has to correct the line item and re-submit it for approval.

Integration: This software can be fully integrated with any existing legacy applications and/or third-party applications, be they on-premise or on-demand. Integration with the company's finance application allows managers to quickly export expense reports and make quick reimbursements.

Easy deployment: As this is a SaaS-based application, there is little to no work that has to be done by the organization during deployment. Nor do they have to worry about maintenance, support, or updates, which will all be done by the vendor from his side. This is in contrast with on-premise applications, which needed the IT manager to babysit them.

Reports -- Data to information: Travel and expense management is one of those processes which traditionally do not always stay within the budget and as actual budgets go wrong, it is hard to make forecasts for the future as well. Organizations always had a lot of data to play around with, but no means to structure the data to draw meaningful conclusions from it. With this software, administrators can pull reports on a variety of activities and analyze them to understand the situation and make informed decisions. They can understand which departments are within the allotted budgets and which divisions are overshooting them.

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How to Fit Your Travel and Expense in your Business Budget

Business travel is a necessary expense for most people. When you think of travel and expense for business, you probably think of flying off to another state, being put up in a hotel and attending a conference or two. But business travel can also include just heading to the next town over to meet with a client. All of these things cost money and you need to know how to deal with travel expense reports, expense tracking, and budgeting for these needs.

First you need to put aside a reasonable estimate each year from your business' budget. If it's local travel that you are really worried about, it'll be easier to do this. You'll want to include gas prices, car rental (unless your company has its own car) and parking costs. You'll also want to have an idea of how many times a year these trips are made. Do you drive weekly to meet with a certain client, or is it a more varied month by month basis?

When it comes to long distance travel, business expenses can be anything from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars. It depends on where flights are to, the kind of hotels your employee is staying in, any additional transportation costs from the hotel to wherever they need to be, and other small costs like a seat for a convention.

Expense management software is an easy way to keep track of these trips. You can put in all the information of the trip and have it calculate the costs for you, as well as keep track of any extra spending that the employee may have done. Your entire year's expenses can be recorded so that when it comes to filing taxes or just dealing with overall budget, you have every single trip on file ready to be accessed.

If you are unsure of whether you can afford a trip ahead of time, plug it into expense management software long before you book. You'll get an idea of the costs and whether or not it's a feasible investment. The most important thing is that you never book without knowing you have the funds to back it up. Don't pull from other business finances if you don't have to. You have to weigh what is more important to your company.

When it comes to business travel and expense, it can be daunting. But if you keep on top of figures and set aside a good amount of money, you won't be in the red at the end of the year.

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Streamline Insights Into T and E Spend

Whether you’re a traveling employee, a manager, an accountant, or an executive—there’s a good chance expense reporting has an affect on your position. With manual expense management, insights must be gathered through spreadsheet data entry and manual analysis. Not only is manual expense management a cumbersome process for managers and accountants, it can be prone to human error.

The solution? Simplify and streamline the reporting process with an automated, cloud-based system! Certify’s full reporting suite provides an incredible range of insights, catered to different roles. For example, admins can view spending trends by category, business unit, project team, or by employee across any time period. The interface is intuitive, easy to use, and designed to benefit all users.

Here are just a few of the benefits per role, when using Certify:

Benefits for Employees Meals, mileage, airfare… you name it. Business travelers need to keep close tabs on how much they're spending, what they’re spending, and whether it’s within company policy. Some companies even factor expense violations into performance reviews, making this information truly "need to know" for any employee.

Benefits for Managers Approval managers need to run reports to see if their teams are listening to their penny-pinching advice. Managers will often compare expenses between sales representatives, to see how T&E spending stacks up against close rates. Managers can opt to receive pre-trip notifications when an employee books travel. This gives the manager the option to cancel the trip within the first 24 hours for a full refund of all travel fares, including airfare.

Benefits for Executives Generally speaking, executives are interested in big-picture numbers in a broad range of reports. If necessary, they need the option to dissect a report and maintain oversight while combing the numbers.

Benefits for Accountants All reports are available to accountants to provide full integration with existing accounting software. For example, the Certify AP Report displays company-wide monthly reimbursable expenses, categorized by department, business unit or other parameters. It’s designed for direct output to many different accounting software programs for a completely streamlined process. Accountants may also wish to review travel expense metrics, to keep tabs on company spending. Certify’s reporting tools show detailed views of travel expense by category, vendor and employee, across any time period.

Automating your expense management reporting process saves time for all departments, which in turn saves your organization money. Many processes in your company are automated, cloud-based, and operating at peak efficiency. The expense report, data entry, manual analysis—the most dreaded processes of all should be optimized for efficiency as well.

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