Manage Remote Labor Force with Expense Solution

Work from home has become the new normal amidst the Covid-19 outbreak. Many organizations are still hiring remote workers to boost flexibility, save overhead expenses, and foster creativity with global labor force.

There are several benefits for managers and employees, but this will bring new challenges as well, such as various time zones, living costs, tax laws, and so much more. But the biggest task faced by companies is handling staff expenses. Employees who are working from home/remotely may find it daunting to acquire business funds for mandatory costs, and the finance department may find it difficult to handle the expenses.

Here we present the major challenges of expense management for remote employees and how cloud-based expense tracking software can resolve it.

Common Challenges

With remote workforce offering several advantages, it also brings various challenges.

a. Lack of transparency in spending leads to security problems
b. Temptation for overspending
c. Trust issues because of poor visibility over spending
d. Slow reimbursement

No matter whether your company is working remotely or heading towards it, you can keep moving fast and handle your staff expenses without compromising on the security.

1. Making Policy Compliance a Breeze

Many businesses have failed to bring an effective and seamless way to ensure policy compliance when it comes to the costs of remote workers. They find it challenging to process costs fast and with trust. In order to solve problems, organizations with remote employees can use the automated policy compliance.

With the help of right expense software, you can set up policies which consider the various tax structures for the remote workers costs, role, designation, and more. Plus, the system can notify your workers whenever they submit any non-compliant expenses, eradicating fraudulent activities while managing expenses.

2. Combat Expense Reimbursement Fraud

The workers can submit fraudulent expense claims while working remotely. It has been observed that in spite of eliminating paperwork for many business workflows, a few companies still follow conventional method of managing expenses. They enable the staff for physical receipt submission in order to claim expenses, thus making them prone to commit more fraud.

Deploying expense automation platform can streamline the process, thus making it simple for your staff to claim the correct amount and follow the policy, as due to the automated checks intact and approval workflow can be configured into the software.

3. Employees Can Claim Expenses from Anywhere Easily

With remote working, monitoring receipts and sending timely and correct reports can be next to impossible at times. You can empower the corporate travelers to submit expenses remotely, from any work location, during commute, or straight from their workplace by digitizing expense management procedure.

With automated T&E management system workers can easily access their accounts from their mobile device or desktop, scan receipts and directly submit the expenses. Here are a few other aspects that can aid your workers record expenses without any hassle.

a. Workers can instantly scan receipts using the auto scan feature from their mobile phones. They can upload receipts to the solution’s e-vault so the software can take critical details from it like supplier data, taxes, and more and automatically prepare the expense report.

b. For salespeople who usually drive to meet clients, the distance travelled can be easily measured leveraging the GPS feature and fuel reimbursement can be processed instantly.

4. Quick Reimbursement Approval

The expense reporting system will aid you to expedite the expense approval workflows with accurate policy enforcement, thus preventing overspending and developing accountability for staff. Your manager can revise and approve the expenses immediately whenever you submit them.

Whenever an expense is out-of-policy, the employer or the finance department can validate the receipt attached to the expense report and immediately decide if you need to process reimbursement in a matter of few minutes as opposed to the multiple days it used to take for the claim to get processed.

Plus, the finance department and employers can approve the spending limit extension and pre-approve expenses without the staff having to visit the workplace.

The Bottom Line

Companies can handle remote worker’s corporate spending with automation and transparent policies around the expenses. A robust expense automation platform can strike a healthy balance between flexibility and control. Automate and digitize expenses to save money and time with the smart features. Automation helps companies to simplify finance so they can focus on expanding their business.