Expense Report Automation Alleviates Pain for Business Travelers

Tracking supplier credit terms and paying invoices on time helps accounts payable department manage cash flow efficiently. But, this doesn’t work for travel and expense reimbursement. To provide better internal control and simplify the workflow, organizations should consider having an expense report software system.

Facing The Consequences

Inefficient travel and expense reporting process can affect reimbursement cycle time and would result in employee dissatisfaction and decreased productivity. Inefficient expense report process will result in:

• Lengthy reimbursement cycles

• Payment bottlenecks

• Unpaid expense reports get piled up

• Employee morale will suffer, causing corporate culture to go down

Inefficient expense reporting process and late payments pose significant problems for employees and employers. Certainly, this would affect company’s bottom line.

The Manual Process

When taken the outdated approach, creating an expense report is painstaking and time-consuming. Employees need to collect all the receipts, enter data into spreadsheets, scan the copies and take printouts. All these processes are labor-intensive. On the other hand, someone in the AP department has to check for accuracy, ensure receipts and documents are attached and send through an approval cycle.

Again, the paperwork takes a long time to get reviewed and approved. The report should get manually entered into accounts payable solution for payment processing.

Quick Processing With Automation

Automated expense report system will streamline the entire process and allow business travelers and accounting department to automate every step of the reimbursement process. Expense reports can be submitted with the supporting documentation. Approvals can run smoothly and payments can be issued using this faster method.

AP departments should process supplier payments faster to keep the company running. Using expense report tools to automate the processes can fend off the struggle that AP departments face. Also, you can gain insights into the employee spending patterns and thus help you in making informed decisions.