Managing and monitoring the expenses incurred by employees for company transactions and activities used to be one of the most cumbersome business processes. It typically took both employees and accounting clerks a lot of time just to submit, read, and review claims for expenses.
Fortunately, in Australia, numerous companies have already adopted expense management software systems and applications to boost their efforts to automate their finance processes. If you’re looking for ways to increase your finance automation, you might want to consider visiting these sites on expense management software in Australia and other similar sites.
Here’s a short article on how expense management software can be used in finance automation.
What is Expense Management Software?
Expense management software is a computer application that enables individual employees of a business organization to do away with some manual, redundant, and repetitive elements and tasks in managing, monitoring, and reporting their work expenses. It’s a software application that replaces the paper journals and reports that accounting clerks maintain and prepare for all the expenses incurred by the employees of a business.
Expense management software also replaces the use of spreadsheet claims filed by employees when they request reimbursement of the expenses they incurred for official or company purposes using their personal or out-of-pocket money. Prior to creating and developing expense management software, employees had to submit spreadsheet files of their reimbursable expenses. But they still had to submit the receipts as proof that they spent such amounts.
How it Can Be Used in Finance Automation?
Below are some of the ways by which expense management software can be used in finance automation:
Logging Entries Of Expenses
One of the most tedious, time-consuming, and repetitive tasks is logging expenses incurred by an employee. This used to take up a lot of company time because both the employee and the company’s accounting staff had to maintain records of the expenses of each employee and then of each department.
Employees in the past had to submit an expense report at the end of a work period (week, month, quarter). The accounting department would then have to enter these claims into their journals on expenses, considering whether or not receipts supported the claims for reimbursement. The receipts should contain expense items that the employee was authorized to incur or claim for reimbursement.
An expense management software application can be used in finance automation to do away with all the paperwork or spreadsheet files involved in this manual and cumbersome process. Instead, employees may directly log their expenses in the expense management software application.
Providing Scanned Copies of Receipts
Another tedious, time-consuming, and cumbersome element of expense management is the liquidation of money given to an employee as part of their budget for company-related activities and transactions. For example, some employees, especially field sales personnel, are given monthly allowances for transportation.
This is particularly useful for marketing and sales personnel who have to do a lot of moving and talking to people to promote the company’s products. Businesses that don’t have their expense management software would typically require their employees to submit the original paper copies of the receipts to support their claims.
Employees can now upload scanned copies of their receipts to support their expense claims with expense management software. They can save and store the scanned files in their user accounts of the expense management software app. This saves both the employees and accounting clerks a lot of time since they can easily refer to the scanned copies. Hence, accounting staff can use the expense management app to parse the scanned receipts for their contents.
Notifications and Approvals
One of the most important aspects of expense management that a software application can address to automate finance is the process of getting approvals. Claims for reimbursement were invented precisely because it took a lot of time in the past before their request for a budget for company expenses could be read, reviewed, and then approved by the managers given the power to support the costs.
Some expenses could be immediately approved because they involved merely petty cash amounts. As long as the nature of the expenses falls within those expense items permitted by company policy, the claims for these were usually approved without much thought or discussion.
However, some expenses need to be thoroughly reviewed by approving managers and controllers. This happens when the costs involve substantially considerable amounts or expense items that aren’t specifically allowed by company policy.
With an expense management software application, the employee’s claim for expense could be sent right away to the manager, who has to read it before considering whether or not to approve the claim. The supporting scanned copies of receipts saved in the app could also be checked and reviewed by the manager, who has to approve or disapprove of the expense.
The expense management software app can also be used to send notifications to the manager who has to approve the claims. Instead of waiting for any response from the manager, the employee who posted a claim for expense approval may also use the app to send out a notification to the approving manager. Moreover, the user can configure the app to request notifications if their approving manager has already decided on their request.
Uploading and Deposit of Funds
Finally, an expense management software app can be used in finance automation to streamline the process of uploading and depositing funds to the employee’s account after they request reimbursement of expenses.
The logging of expense entries, the scanned copies of receipts supporting a claim, and the notifications and approval parts already handled within the app would enable the accounting and finance clerks in charge of cash to upload and deposit the needed amounts to the employee’s accounts. They could then send out notifications to the employee through the app that the reimbursed cash amounts have already been uploaded and deposited to the employee’s accounts.
Conclusion
Expense management software apps have proven to be highly useful, as discussed above, in streamlining the ways that employees and accounting staff handle and monitor expenses. With this, companies can increase productivity while minimizing the cost of various resources.
Be the first to comment