Why Switching To An Expense Report Software Makes Sense –Part1
Today, most businesses realize the added value of a cloud-based expense reporting system. While cloud-based accounting has been popular, expense reporting is still considered of second-tier importance. Cloud-based expense reporting solutions are quickly becoming the standard across all industries. The reasons are countless, which include:
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The finance department can easily connect add-ons to other parts of the internal processes.
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Corporate travel is on the rise, allowing more employees to travel to different parts of the world, making it necessary to streamline the expense reporting process.
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Accountability and transparency areof high priority for every organization. Cloud-based expense reporting solutions allow expense policies to be enforced diligently. Additionally, it allows for faster approval of expense claims. Real-time insights and reporting tools have become more important than ever.
The following are some reasons for why expense report automation is must:
Improved Accountability and Transparency
Good expense management starts with transparency. Expense policies have to be clear and need to be enforced consistently. The expenses filed for reimbursement should have all the expense details and receipts attached. Receipts should be captured digitally, preventing them from getting lost. Cloud-based expense reporting ensures maximum accountability by mandating important details and receipts. This way you will have access to every detail and don’t have to worry about any being missed.
Better Insights into Expense Reporting
Making the expense reporting process easy and convenient allows employees to submit expense reports quickly. Knowing employee spending information early will prevent the finance department from overloading all the expense reports at the very end of the month. The expense reporting software should give you a detailed view right from the moment the receipt is captured, submitted, and approved.
Users should be able to use the data from cloud-based expense report software to better understand business expenses. Expense report software will help you determine spending tendencies segmented by expense category, employee, and location.
Automate Expense Policies
Transparency and accountability start with a clearly defined expense policy. In a nutshell, expense categories tell which employees are allowed to file and for what expense categories. Employees with different categories and roles have various rules set to submit expense claims. Every employee has one or more approvers assigned to them, and the expense submitted has to go through the approval workflow standard defined by your company. It can be difficult to enforce expense policies without a cloud-based expense reporting software. All the managers including approvers have to be aware of the rules. Improving compliance with company rules is seen as a top pressure commonly faced by companies.
Cloud-based expense software systems make policy enforcement easy by setting predefined workflows and business rules. Thus, employees will not be able to submit expense reports violating the policy. Moreover, if the mandatory information is missing, it cannot be submitted. Therefore, finance managers and accountants do not need to check expense reports for wrongly filed expense claims. This leaves the finance department more time to focus on their strategic tasks.
