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Why Your Business Needs Automated Expenses

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Is your business still struggling to control employee expenses? It’s a common problem as it’s a notoriously tricky area of company finances to get to grips with.

With outdated methods and overstretched finance teams, many businesses have expense systems which simply aren’t fit for purpose. It stifles growth and leaves companies vulnerable to financial losses and compliance risks.

The National Fraud Authority estimates that in the UK alone, companies are losing £100 ($130) million each year to expense fraud. That’s not including the resources lost to slow and cumbersome paperwork processes.

If this sounds familiar, it’s likely that your company still uses traditional paper-based ways of managing expenses involving Excel spreadsheets and paper receipts. It means finance teams having to manually process bundles of paperwork - a slow and error-prone task.

But there’s no longer any need for organisations to remain handcuffed to misfiring expense setups. Paper-based tasks and manual processes have been made redundant by digital systems and automated processes.

Here’s a look at the top five business benefits of moving to automated expenses:

1. Save time and money

The move from a manual to an automated system such as Webexpenses will typically reduce processing times by 25%. With information stored digitally, it removes the administrative lag that’s caused by expense-related paperwork.

With a digital system, all of the information required is automatically collated and made instantly available to the finance team. By removing the need to manually duplicate and process information, it lets finance professionals focus on more productive tasks.

2. Reduce workplace fraud

Automated systems provide the tools needed to properly police an expense policy and root out illegitimate claims. It allows real-time triggers to be set which alert approvers whenever a claim is outside of policy or breaches a defined limit.

With powerful reporting tools and accurate data on all aspects of an expense setup, it allows a torch to be shone on those areas of expenditure which would otherwise remain hidden. The switch to digital will typically reduce expense spend by 10%.

3. Master mileage costs

There’s no longer any need to rely on employee ‘guesstimates’ or map and ruler calculations when it comes to mileage claims. An automated system allows the use of a smartphone app to track the exact distance and route of road journeys via integration with bing maps for point-to-point recognition of postcodes.

It removes the grey areas which have allowed mileage expenses to become so susceptible to falsified and exaggerated claims. Even the smallest of embellishments can lead to major losses when multiplied across an organisation.

4. Smarter mobile working

Employees can manage their expenses from wherever they have an online connection - whether they’re in the office or on a foreign business trip. It unlocks ways of working which are perfectly in sync with a new generation of connected worker.

A smartphone app allows paper receipts to be converted into a digital form and account details to be updated. It’s a fast and simple process which takes the pain out of building an expense claim.

5. Reporting and visibility

Just by using a digital expense system, you are automatically generating a rich stream of data which is tracking every aspect of expense operations. From the moment a claim is made, the system stores information on each step of the process.

This is why reporting tools have become such an integral part of expense management systems. An effective setup allows reports to be created within seconds, tasks would previously take hours to manually compile.

Effective reporting allows the kind of forensic view of a business that has previously not been possible. It shines a light on a vital area of company finances that, for too long, has existed in the shadows.

Webexpenses provides a better way to manage employee expenses. Watch this short video to see how it works: