What to Look for in Modern Expense Management Solutions?

Expense submission is a tedious and inefficient task for both employees and finance departments. Business owners should evaluate how travel and expense (T & E) solutions improve the user experience and add business value to the organization. Here, we list out the significant trends that businesses should consider when evaluating vendors:

SaaS Solution

Most travel and expense solution vendors today offer public cloud solutions, meaning that the application is run, maintained, and upgraded by the vendor. Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions offer a host of benefits to organizations, including less deployment time and increased savings. Organizations that hold sensitive data can go for other alternatives such as a private cloud or a community cloud.

Capturing Receipts Using Smartphone

Using mobile phones to capture a receipt has now become a standard. The captured image will get automatically converted into an expense line item, and matched to a corporate card feed ready for the expense report. Generally, organizations use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to read receipts, however, this technology does not guarantee 100% accuracy; therefore, some solution providers have added machine learning to its list to improve accuracy.

Policy Enforcement and Automation

The traditional expense reporting process is tedious and time-consuming for employees. Today, automated T & E solutions come with various features such as credit card feeds, receipt capturing with OCR, and mobile applications. Additionally, automated expense solution also features:

• Calendar integration to capture meal data

• GPS mileage tracking

• Strategic tie-ups with airlines, hotels, and food establishments

Automated solutions continue to improve the processes from expense entry to approval flow. Organizations moving to modern expense management solution will see gradual improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and user satisfaction.

Leverage Expense Data

The first-generation solutions focused on automation and policy enforcement. The second- generation solutions focused on improved user experience and streamlining the process. Today, vendors are focusing on solutions with the following features to deliver great insight and add value to their business:

• Machine learning to make expense data more meaningful

• Allowing for integration with Enterprise Resource Applications (ERP) and financial systems for a real-time view

• Integrating with a CRM system to analyze the cost of acquiring and maintaining a customer

Additionally, integrating with travel booking solutions will allow you to leverage travel and expense data further. So, consider these factors when choosing a travel and expense software solution for your business.

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