Achieving ROI With Your New Expense Management System

In most companies and organizations, building a business case and projecting return on investment is a critical part of the procurement cycle. Whether it’s authorizing the purchase of a new software platform or a simple switch in materials suppliers, finance executives and managers need to know what the expected benefits of any change will bring. This often includes the timeline and ways in which the company will realize a return on the upfront hard dollar costs, be it through increased productivity, reduced costs, improvements in quality and efficiency, and many other factors.

After all, change can be incredibly disruptive to people and process, and a positive upside goes a long way to justify the reasons for making a change in the first place.

It’s no different for companies investing in a cloud-based expense management system, especially those currently using a “free” manual process. For these businesses, tracking the hidden costs inherent to any manual process is extremely difficult if not impossible. And because there’s no cash outlay beyond the actual travel and entertainment budget, pen and paper or spreadsheet-based processes are often considered good enough, or at least better than any system that charges a fee per user or per report.

Unfortunately, manual systems can cost companies more than four times the amount to process a single expense report compared with a fully automated system like Certify. Here’s why.

You can’t measure what you can’t see According to PayStream Advisors 2015 research, the average cost to process a single expense report using a manual process is $26.63 compared to $6.85 per report with a fully automated system. Adding another layer of challenge to those organizations that employ a manual process is the near complete lack of visibility. That’s because processing costs are often “hidden” in the form of postage, paper and office supplies, and lost employee productivity from repeat data entry and inefficient processes. As a result, the same PayStream Advisors report found that 80% of companies do not track expense report processing costs at all.

Putting the return in ROI Companies making the switch to cloud-based expense report automation can realize an immediate return on investment in several ways. This includes the near elimination of costs for paper, postage and other office supplies, reduced administrative headcount required for time-intensive manual front- and back-end operations, and a significant improvement in employee productivity that comes from a streamlined, integrated electronic workflow. With access to features that reduce the risk of T&E expense fraud and automatically enforce policy compliance, plus complete visibility into reporting analytics, companies on a cloud-based system are also able to track process and control costs.

Certify recently published its 2016 Annual Expense Management Trends report detailing, among other findings, exactly how companies are realizing an ROI with their new expense management system, and how long it takes to start seeing results. Here just some of what we discovered:

• Nearly two-thirds of all companies reported a positive return on investment from a new expense system in 12 months or less, with 92% achieving full ROI within 2 years

• Improved efficiency in the expense reporting process was cited by 58% of companies as the number #1 source of ROI, followed by a reduction in paper, postage and storage costs (53%)

• Integration of accounting systems, credit card feeds, T&E policy and other critical expense management functions are key to reducing data entry and improving process efficiency

• Mobile expense reporting apps were the #3 feature for delivering ROI; in 2014 Aberdeen Group reported mobile apps can reduce expense report processing costs by as much as 65%

• Addressing both potential fraud and human error, 22% of companies saw a return from the elimination of payment for duplicate expenses; an automatic feature within Certify.

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Makes Your Expense Tracking Software Digital

A decent expense tracking software ought not require any note-taking. What's more, in present times, one ought to say farewell to spreadsheets, equations and cells and leave past those receipts in the reuse container. There are numerous simple to utilize expense tracking devices accessible in the business sector.

Such apparatuses make it simple for workers to catch their expenses with the goal that they can minimize time spent on recording and bookkeeping. Money expenses like taxi admissions can likewise be effectively added to an expense report, receipt pictures can be caught and transferred with a camera as additionally Visa charges, which can be transported in and connected to the proper expense report.

An online expense tracking software gives e-receipts that can catch electronic exchange information straightforwardly and afterward effectively and rapidly transfer it into an expense report. One can likewise effectively take a photograph of the receipt with any cell phone and afterward transfer the picture to such software framework progressively.

It makes programmed exchanges and is simple for others in the organization to see precisely where the cash is being spent. This permits organizations to repay workers, screen venture costs, charge customers, and streamline spending.

An expense report permits your organization to consequently track costs of doing business according to sort, division, undertaking or customer for continuous perceivability into organization spending. Furthermore, all spending information is put away for any further inside and out examination.

No compelling reason to stress over your records or receipts being lost or demolished as they are safely put away online in a flash. You can be certain that every one of your records are protected and accessible when you require them if there should be an occurrence of a review, if your PC accidents or you lose your telephone.

You can likewise effortlessly download and redo business reports. This can offer you some assistance with achieving your business and individual budgetary objectives quicker. You can alter records, include new data, make spending plans and produce reports.

Expense tracking innovation helps you settle on more brilliant investing choices at an energy of monetary instability when different business associations are feeling the anxiety of not being effective.

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The beneficial effect of Expense Report Software for You

For any organization whose employees travel on business, employee travel and expense management can be a big hassle, especially if they use manual processes and spreadsheets. The main problems with this approach are that there is very little visibility into spending and the amount of time it consumes. Using expense report software, these problems can be solved convincingly, with organizations getting complete visibility and reducing the time spent on expense management. In this post, we'll see how beneficial this software can be for organizations.

Centralized solution: One of the most important benefits of this software is that it is a centralized platform that can be accessed by everyone who needs it. All the work pertaining to travel and expense management can be handled with just this software. Additional capabilities can be gained by integrating the software with third party solution providers or other ERP systems that are in place or will be in future. For example, if the organization wanted travel booking capabilities with the expense management solution, they can integrate a travel booking automation portal with the software and have seamless data exchange between them. Same is the case with accounting software if the organization intends to add finance capability to the software.

Centralization of the process with adequate access points ensures that the solution allows for as much flexibility and control as necessary.

Visibility: Having visibility into a business process is very important from the organizational point of view. From making important decisions that affect the entire organization to ensuring that unwanted practices like reimbursement fraud don't take place, visibility plays an important role for any organization. In a decentralized system where each business unit or location has its own expense management approach, organizations can have at best limited visibility. This kind of half-based visibility does no one any favors.

In contrast, because of its centralized nature, expense software affords you complete visibility into every aspect of expense management. Whether it is amount of the allocated budget that is being spent or the number of employees making a particular expense, you get the whole picture with this software.

Policy enforcement: Perhaps no other benefit exclusive to expense software can be bigger or better than policy enforcement. It is no secret that every organization has a travel and expense policy that they find very hard to enforce. Employees who know the ins and outs of the organization and the policy always find clever ways to avoid the company policy and still get reimbursed.

Instead of making your company travel and expense policy as an afterthought, how would it be if your expense policy led the way for your travel and expense management? With expense report software, this is what you can get. Using the software, you can ensure complete enforcement of your policy. This software, which is essentially a set of rules, practices, and procedures, will reflect your travel and expense policy.

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The Things About your Monthly Expense Reports

The companies around the world deal with expenses in large proportions every day and such transactions will get accumulated every month to a larger number than what we expect. This should be subjected to a detailed research every month and the results can be used for the plotting a trend calculation between the inflow of money and the expenses we meet per month. This will in turn help us in making sure that the company is on the falling side of the financial reserves curve. Many graphical representations will be possible by using the data collected for filling up the monthly expense reports. The details can be useful in finding out the departments and about the personnel involved in wasting fund resources and other forms of fraudulent activities including embezzlement of the funds provided for this purpose.

For example, by using monthly expense report, every penny spent for the department of transport of a company will be accounted for and the unbalanced calculations will receive an inspection from specially designed methods of finding out the reasons for this. The monthly expense report will provide columns to be filled with details about the nature and amount of expenses made by and for a single vehicle operated by the company. Each report will tabulate the number of hours in which it had remained unused, the used timings and duration, the length of each journey, the amount of cargo loaded onto the vehicle and so on, in detailed tabulation. This being the case, the money being spent for the single company owned vehicle or the vehicle which has been hired from other agencies can be calculated freely. The details will provide exact inferences for the management to take decisions in this regard. The funds which have been separately allotted as a whole from the total available funds, just for being used by this department will either be increased or decreased only after examining the contents of these reports in full.

The reason for the usage of monthly expense report will be that the company will not only have employees who work genuinely and in the best possible of ways of gaining support for both the company as well as themselves, but will also have selfish natured persons too. The same aspect might be found among the personnel working in the top level board of the company too. Such differences in opinion and cunning plots to embezzle the company's funds can be shown to all by discussing the aspects shown by the monthly report among everyone in that specific department.

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Being Aware Of Expense Managing For Your Company

When you're looking to find the way to get your corporation within the black, you no doubt know you need to get costs in balance. An expense report helps you understand from where the money is going for every department of your company or firm, and also the best way to reduce what doesn't actually matter. Using expense report software, you will be capable of examine your business with a fine tooth comb, and even make sure that people are not producing superfluous rates and cushioning their accounts with absolutely nothing to do with their own work. It happens in every organization, and it's better if you're ready for this as soon as it does.

Expense Report Can Help You Save Money While there are numerous strategies to put together your business expense reports, the final outcome is the same: it can save you money that you did not even know you possessed. Expense reports can certainly simply breakdown just one department of one's business or even break down exactly what you're having to spend on your company all together. When you can actually observe how much you are shelling out for man power every single day, you'll have the capacity to figure out if you have to hire new staff, or if you might want to lower working hours for your employees.

As well as maintaining a keen eye on your labor costs, it will help you keep tabs on your own employee's expenditure accounts. You'll have enough knowledge to keep track of those prolonged lunches and also dinner appointments with clientele, in addition to the amount they are charging for their cellphones, and fuel for the car. Everybody knows employees can pad the bill somewhat, however, if you'll find enormous differences every week, you'll have the possibility to detect it. Say farewell to the times when individuals can potentially put smaller expenditures by you that frequently mounted to a significant bill month after month.

How you can Compile Your Expense Reports There are numerous ways that you may create expense reports, but the easiest method is usually a computer software solution. This will enable you or even an accountant, to input in bills for every little thing, as well as the numerous amounts presented to you from your workers with regards to their accounts each month; you'll manage to verify if the figures match up, or if you're employee's are charging for extra income. This is really the best way, because it allows you to manage all facets of the business, without having to worry that you're missing a little bit of document someplace. You can even keep track of every thing the old fashioned way, by gathering statements and writing everything down.

Expense management for your organization is vital to trying to keep your corporation more competition. In this economy, you can' afford to lose virtually any funds from your coffers, so ensure that you keep working in direction of conserving money inside areas which are just inefficient, and perhaps transform that waste matter right into a completely new opportunity to make money! Expense reports will assist you to manage labor, charges, and individuals much more effectively, and software can help you save funds on the need to bring in costly specialists.

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Why Expenses Software Becomes Important With Reporting

Indeed, income and expense spreadsheet is something really important. But, to complete things, you must also have the leading budget software program that can give you the reporting choices that you need.

Are you aware of how the expenses software gets to communicate with its users? Reports would be the answer to this, the main reason behind expense software being set afar from the ones with mediocre quality.

For this, you can also say that the budget software is really good if it is friendly enough to users and there are no hassles when entering information. When you have completed the first step of the setup, you can expect an automatic processing as well as recording of transactions.

Aspects of Good Reporting

There are certain reporting elements that financial software must have. Features like these must both be straightforward and intuitive to use, the genuine hallmark of better software's reporting features.

Spending and Income's Basics Without these two, you can simply leave your software to gather dust in the corner for its futility. Income as well as spending must be easy to enter and receive by just a click of a button.

Expenditures' Breakdown Software that is good enough must be able to give exact and detailed expenses' breakdown which will be essential for you to track things easily. These should be correctly categorized and easily defined basing on the time frames: per day, month or year. Personal finance spreadsheet can summarize the mentioned things easily.

Reporting and Its Adaptability Due to the different ways of lives of individuals, there is a must for customizable software for better reflection. Software that is too rigid might result to some usability issues and might just even turn out to be futile if this will not be fit for the expenses as well as user's lifestyle patterns. Software which can measure expenses and income of the users can also facilitate their current way of life, so that problems can be avoided.

Cloud Computing Report If your current software can already be accessed from wireless gadgets such as smartphone, another bonus will be the ability to pull up the reports using that very device. Through this, reports on expenditure that are real time will be of big help in managing your finances even if you are not within your home.

It is true indeed that the reports that are coming from expense software can be regarded as the lifeblood of the software. With its usage that comes with ease, the features that are highly customizable, an personal finance spreadsheet and a lot more nice applications, there is really no need to say why software like this is worth to be used.

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Managing your Company Expenses with Expense Report Software

Running an organization is a costly and unpleasant try. In spite of the fact that it will definitely pay off at last, you can't prevent the sum from securing diligent work and commitment it requires. In some cases it can be hard to see where your cash is truly going. You know you're turning a benefit, yet you need to know where you can slice expenses to transform a little benefit into a more respectable one.

In spite of the fact that there are a large number of approaches to spare cash in your organization, such as uniting undertakings and spending less on superfluous office supplies, one straightforward path is to put resources into expense management software. The motivation behind expense reports is to, actually, stay informed regarding your organizations expenses. What amount did Tom spend on his inn and rental auto on that last business trip? Did Susan place that supper bill to charm a customer on the organization's charge card? The bigger your organization, the more monotonous and tedious rounding out and overseeing expense reports can be.

You can put in hours every day sorting through. Valuable hours that could have been exceptional spent. What's more, in case you're endeavoring to make your own particular technique, your own particular spreadsheet, the errand can be considerably all the more overwhelming. One wrong recipe in the cell and the whole spreadsheet is destroyed. Rather, take a stab at putting resources into expense report software. It appears to be illogical isn't that right? Burning through cash keeping in mind the end goal to spare cash? Be that as it may, doesn't the adage go, "You have to burn through cash to profit,"? At first it will cost you to buy the software, and if there is a month to month charge, however consider how valuable it will be. You can without much of a stretch track each expense to see exactly how the organization truly is spending its well deserved cash. When it's all laid out before you, it's simpler to oversee.

Whoever is responsible for handling the expense reports, whether it be you or another worker, can now invest far little energy sorting receipts and entering in line after line of numbers and figures. Different errands can be appointed and more vital work can be finished in an auspicious manner. Now that is positively an incredible approach to spare cash and build efficiency. Furthermore, how about we not neglect to specify that chopping down the season of such a repetitive assignment will make the employee(s) to a great degree upbeat. Documenting expense reports is basically not a fun work. Taking out the squandered hours will unquestionably fulfill somebody exceptionally.

Let expense reporting software be an interest in your organization that permits you to spare both time and cash.

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