Streamlining Expense Reporting: The AI Advantage
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In 2024, the travel and expense (T&E) management industry is poised for significant transformations, propelled by technological advancements such as AI, Blockchain, and predictive analytics.
The global expense management market is expected to grow substantially, reaching $13.15 billion by 2030. This highlights a clear shift towards the widespread adoption of advanced solutions across various industries.
Key trends of travel and expense management
The rising trend of Mobile era
Mobile apps are increasingly becoming the go-to tool for managing travel and expense (T&E) costs, particularly as remote work becomes more common. With nearly 100% of professionals using cell phones, apps like SutiExpense, Concur, and Expensify are more relevant than ever. By 2025, it is anticipated that 75% of businesses will utilize mobile apps for T&E expense management.
Advanced technologies
Automated tools powered by AI are revolutionizing expense management. These tools can categorize expenses, detect policy violations, and streamline the reporting process, making the entire system more efficient and accurate.
Analytics
Organizations are increasingly leveraging predictive analytics to forecast expenses and identify spending patterns. By 2025, it is expected that 80% of organizations will be using expense analytics tools.
Sustainability
Expense management is gaining traction, emphasizing sustainable travel options and paperless technologies. By 2025, 90% of businesses are expected to eliminate paper-based expense processes.
Employee experience
Expense software significantly enhances the employee experience by simplifying the management of travel and expenses. With features like automatic expense categorization, real-time reporting, and mobile app integration, employees can easily submit and track their expenses on the go. This reduces administrative burdens, ensures timely reimbursements, and increases overall satisfaction. As a result, employees can focus more on their core tasks, knowing their expenses are efficiently managed.
Block chain technology
Blockchain technology for expense reporting introduces a secure and transparent method for managing expenses. It utilizes a decentralized ledger where each transaction is securely recorded and verified across a network of computers. This ensures that expense data is tamper-proof and provides real-time visibility into spending activities. Blockchain enhances trust and accuracy in expense reporting by eliminating the need for intermediaries and reducing the risk of errors or fraud.
How AI transforms expense management?
AI has been around for many years, primarily confined to academic institutions where researchers in computer science, linguistics, and statistical modeling developed the concept. Today, thanks to OpenAI and its ChatGPT model, machine learning has evolved into an everyday, practical tool that significantly impacts various aspects of people’s lives, especially in expense management.
AI has long been utilized in finance offices, with applications like optical character recognition already being standard practice. In larger businesses, financial institutions leverage machine learning to detect fraudulent activity amidst the numerous transactions processed daily.
Algorithms can spot fraudulent expenses submitted to every department. Every misspending can have an adverse effect on the cashflow and better than worse in a large corporation.
AI can promote widespread adoption among the workforce by streamlining software selection, automating daily tasks, and eliminating mundane, repetitive steps like submitting expense claims.
Teams responsible for applying policies to expense claims must have the capability to easily upload and implement rules, with clear oversight of their effects. This functionality is equally important as having a user-friendly expense submission app or webpage.
Even a modestly sized business’s finance team can end up doing a disproportionate amount of manual work, which AI algorithms can automate. This is just one area where having the right back-end system behind a user-facing expense app is crucial for an efficient finance function.
The need of AI
The AI algorithms in today’s leading expense management software need to be adaptable since no two companies share identical policies. While AI can make decisions and enforce policies, it’s crucial for administrators to upload these policies into the platform. This enables the software to understand the rules and automatically flag or approve expenses based on the context. For instance, submitting an expense for a team dinner that includes alcohol might violate company policy, whereas a Board member taking a potential client to dinner and ordering wine might be allowed as an exception.
AI-driven software enables the implementation of complex rules and exceptions for businesses of any size without adding extra work for finance teams. This type of work is better handled by algorithms that operate quickly, around the clock, and with virtually no errors. Besides ensuring cost savings and smoother processes, SutiExpense ensures compliance with your business policies and provides accurate data with customizable reports and analytical capabilities.
