Overseas business trips have become an inevitable part of frequently traveling employees today. Organizations are thus going the extra mile to make the employees’ business trips hassle-free. But expense management has been one of the biggest tight spots to organizations. Submitting travel-related bills is cumbersome for an employee, and equally daunting for the manager and the finance team!  

Managing employee expenses may sound elementary with gazillions of employee expense management tools and services in the market today. Yet, organizations, and especially their employees, are found complaining about the organization’s ability to efficiently manage expenses and pay their dues on time. One of the most basic yet biggest challenges faced by an organization and its finance team, despite having an expense management system implemented, is manually validating the claims and bills submitted by employees.

The obvious question to ask here is – how can the expense management process be bettered even when the organization has documented policies, processes, and to top it all, an expense management tool selected after a rigorous shortlisting process? Well, the answer lies in expanding the horizon and reforming the process and the tool used to help:

• Increase efficiency in the overall expense management process through real-time capture and update of expenses
• Implement a dynamic validation process
• Improve the overall employee experience with automated expense management
• Reap maximum benefit from the expense management tool

Let’s look at a ‘3 – 2 – 1’ strategy that will help in revamping an organization’s existing expense management ecosystem.

‘Triple’ the power of your expense tool by integrating with your payroll and finance system

How about looking at a holistic solution that includes the integration of the expense tool and the organization’s payroll system? The approved and validated claims can automatically be fed into the payroll system that eliminates duplication and errors due to manual intervention. Additionally, this allows an organization to reimburse its employees accurately and on-time!

This solution can further be strengthened by integrating the tool with the organization’s finance system. With such a holistically integrated system, the accounting and finance teams can get an accurate overview regarding the expense information. They need not hunt down and comb through expense reports to extract and sum up figures. You can also eliminate a considerable amount of paperwork since all reports move online. Altogether, this will make the process comprehensive, scalable and efficient in the true sense.

‘Double’ the validation process by effectively leveraging the mobile app

Let’s tackle one of the biggest areas of concern in the expense management process –validating the bills and claims submitted by the employees. With more and more employees on the move, having a mobile app and interface that is simple to use and available for employees on the go, becomes paramount for any expense management solution.

Customizing and configuring the mobile app so that it can help validate, accept or reject bills right when the employees are submitting them is the key. This can be possible when you set up limitations on the expenses that employees can incur while they are in-line with the organization’s policies. So, when employees raise expenses outside their limited allocation, the tool automatically rejects the claims, thereby, reducing the finance team’s load significantly.

A dedicated mobile app-enabled with GPS will be able to capture the expenses of an employee anywhere and anytime, which will, in turn, be synced to the cloud. This will uncomplicate the expense submission process and reduce the efforts of the employee. Moreover, such apps powered by automated logic, smart algorithms, and an OCR scanner can help in digitalizing the entire expense management process. A sophisticated mobile expense management app can also include an FAQ section that will aid first-time travelers with the overall expense process.     

‘Singular’, effective control and audit of the expenses

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reported (Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse) that approximately 11% of all asset misappropriations investigated involved expense reimbursement fraud and thus, there is a need for the inclusion of a strong security, validation, and audit governance & framework to safeguard the organization from pilfering employees and practices.

These features are no longer far from reach! New-aged technology companies have moved away from the traditional way of managing and monitoring employee business expenses. Furthermore, tools like NeeyamoWorks Expense fill the whitespaces and provide organizations cutting-edge and holistic solutions, covering all aspects of expenses. Such tools can provide your employees an experience of a lifetime filled with enriching stories and that of a successful business trip. With an effective expense solution, you can ease the burden of your finance team and help them focus on what truly matters!

Speak to our experts before the next business trip of your employees! Find out how we can help manage your employee expenses without costing your employees’ happiness.