The Power of Metrics in Business Expense Management

Visibility plays a key role in expense management. If you can’t see what’s going on with business expenses, you cannot manage them effectively. Visibility has always been one of the key challenges businesses have faced when trying to control employee-based expenses.

Trying to pull out any information other than the most basic data is a time-consuming task as reports have to be compiled from multiple sources. However, the emergence of an expense reporting system is helping businesses overcome the problems and giving businesses the ability to see exactly what’s going on with their expenses setup. The digital system automatically generates data on every aspect of expense system, starting with who, what, why and when to the exact route taken when on business travel.

Data offers a new ability to start using metrics to better manage and monitor expense reports. You can use accurate and up-to-date data to understand how the system works and figure out other ways to improve the system.

These metrics will help companies set measurable goals such as reducing processing time or setting specific targets for departments. Managers can use these metrics to monitor the effect strategies and decisions have on performance.

By tracking key expense metrics, businesses can gain valuable feedback on spending decisions made by the management. Also, data can be represented in graphical and pictorial formats to show the critical working areas of the expense system. This creates a new way to highlight patterns and trends, which may otherwise remain hidden in paper receipts.

These powerful metrics give early warning signs of future problems to be identified and fixed rather than having to wait till they turn out as business-critical problems. Particularly, these metrics will be useful for SMEs to identify bottlenecks or pain points in their expense reporting system.