Did you know that there are seven federal tax rates in 2023? How about the fact that artists may be exempt from income taxes in Ireland? And what about international tax laws for remote freelancers?
This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding things a digital nomad accountant must know. But that hasn’t stopped accounting and finance majors from taking the leap right after graduating. In the wake of the pandemic, we’ve witnessed a seismic shift in work patterns across industries.
According to recent data, 12.7% of full-time employees now work from home, while an impressive 28.2% enjoy a hybrid work model. What’s even more telling is the projection that by 2025, about 32.6 million Americans are expected to work remotely, accounting for approximately 22% of the workforce.
In this changing landscape, one profession stands out for its surprising adaptability: accounting. Traditionally tied to office spaces and physical ledgers, today’s accountants are evolving, much like the industries they serve. With the surge in remote work opportunities, a new breed of accountants has emerged—the digital nomad accountant.
In 2022, accounting was the third-most sought-after remote job role. It’s a big step away from the old office setup and shows how adaptable the profession has become.
Accountants have always been the backbone of businesses everywhere. But now, with the push of technology and the pull of a global economy, their roles are stretching beyond the usual boundaries.
One might wonder: why is there such a significant shift towards remote accounting? A crucial factor is the ever-increasing complexity of global financial regulations and tax structures.
For digital nomad accountants, understanding diverse tax regimes, like the federal tax rates in the US or unique provisions like the artist exemptions in Ireland, is not just a niche expertise—it’s a necessity.
Moreover, businesses aren’t confined to their home countries anymore. They operate on a global stage, and their financial needs reflect this. Digital nomad accountants cater to this demand, offering expertise tailored to international operations.
Their services are limited to multinational corporations, freelancers, and entrepreneurs operating in the international digital space.
Another driving force behind this trend is the palpable demand from the younger workforce. As the data shows, the age group most inclined toward remote work is between 24 and 35.
This demographic seeks flexibility, autonomy, and opportunities that break from the conventional 9-to-5 mold. They’re willing to merge work and travel, learning and earning, all while managing complex financial portfolios from anywhere in the world, with immense flexibility.
Furthermore, the nature of the work undertaken by these modern accountants is, in many ways, enhanced by remote capabilities. Digital tools offer real-time collaboration, instant updates, and access to global databases, ensuring that these accountants are never out of touch even as they roam.
A plethora of tools has revolutionized the remote accounting landscape. Here are the most crucial for the modern accountant:
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Using all kinds of tools is exciting, but there’s a problem. Given the sensitive nature of financial information, the finance industry heavily relies on data security. Thus, digital nomad accountants must adopt and/or use
With the rise of remote work, data security has never been more paramount. Digital nomad accountants are at the forefront of this evolution, ensuring both the growth of their careers and the safety of their client’s data.
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Embracing the digital nomad lifestyle offers myriad advantages:
The digital nomad lifestyle presents an enticing blend of professional growth and personal satisfaction for accountants. With the proper measures in place, it’s a venture that promises immense rewards.
This way of life offers incredible freedom and adaptability but is not without hurdles.
Now, let’s discuss some solutions to the challenges we just mentioned:
If you’re feeling isolated, consider:
If you’re struggling with time management and boundaries:
If you need help staying connected:
Lastly, let’s look at some essential tips for maintaining a routine:
Armed with these insights, digital nomads can address potential pitfalls head-on and genuinely make the most of their unique lifestyle's freedom and flexibility.
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Accounting sure has changed; more and more accountants are hitting the road as digital nomads. With all the perks and handy tools available, it’s no wonder many are drawn to this way of working.
As we look to the future, it’s evident that the role of the digital nomad accountant will only become more prominent and accepted in the accounting world. As we adapt and grow, the possibilities are boundless.
At Fyle, we've had an eventful Q3, filled with exciting updates aimed at making expense management a breeze. From expanding support for real-time feeds, to redesigning core app pages, introducing dependent fields, and streamlining integrations, we're constantly listening to customer feedback to simplify your experience.
Great news for our Canadian users! After enabling customers across the US to get real-time transaction visibility and instant text notifications for their credit card spend, we’ve now expanded support of Fyle’s real-time feeds to Canadian cards. With this, Canadian customers can directly connect their cards to Fyle via the real-time feed, instead of depending on broken bank feeds or statement uploads. See spend as it happens, collect receipts easily, and completely automate credit card reconciliation.
Learn how to set up and access RTF for CAD transactions in our guide. For more details on benefits and data insights, read our blog: What Data Do You Get From Real-time Feeds, And How Do Businesses Benefit From It?
We've introduced a powerful feature - Dependent Fields, that allows users to control values in one field based on another. For example, you can track Project-dependent fields like Cost Codes and Cost Types easily, while only showing the relevant Cost Codes or Cost Types (that are related to a specific Project).
Here's how it works: if an employee selects Project A, only the Cost Centers associated with Project A appear. This means employees no longer need to remember which Cost Centers align with each project. This doesn't just stop at Projects and Cost Centers; it extends down to many levels, simplifying data entry like never before.
Fyle is the only expense management platform that provides Dependent Fields up to 5 levels! For more details, dive into our solution article here.
Previously, admins faced a challenge when applying advanced settings for Excel/CSV exports from the Company Expenses page – the settings or preferences would reset upon logging out. With this upgrade, any advanced export settings, such as column order and formulas, are now saved even after logging out. As admins, you don’t have to reset configurations each time you log in! Watch the changes in action in this short video.
We’ve upgraded some of our web app pages with a redesigned interface to align them with our goal of elevating user experience.
Whether you use Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero, our goal is to ensure we have powerful integrations that allow data flow between the systems effortlessly.
The much-anticipated Fyle-Sage Intacct Integration v2.0 is now live, introducing key enhancements:
To learn more check out the articles here.
We're thrilled to introduce the ability to clone integration settings for QuickBooks Online. Ideal for multi-entity setups and partners with multiple client accounts, this feature minimizes manual configuration efforts during account setup. Settings are saved and pre-loaded for subsequent accounts, requiring only specific details that are different for each account. Our partners and multi-entity customers have been loving this feature, and how it saves unnecessary repetitive work! Read more about it here.
Experience a new level of flexibility with precise mapping between individual cards in Fyle and corresponding accounts in QuickBooks Desktop. Unlike before, where all expenses were exported to a default account, this update allows you to export expenses to different accounts based on your mapping preferences. Learn more about this in our guide.
Navigating mileage expenses is now a breeze with Fyle's integration with QuickBooks Desktop. Admins can effortlessly configure the account to which all mileage expenses should be exported, streamlining the process and ensuring accurate accounting. Learn more about configuring mileage expenses in our article.
Projects in Xero now auto-sync with Fyle every 24 hours. This means if any new projects are added, or old projects are disabled in Xero, it’ll auto-update in Fyle. This saves time and guarantees consistently up-to-date financial data without manual intervention.
In the case of corporate card expenses, the date of expenditure doesn't always align with the date the funds are transacted and credited to the vendor. This discrepancy, often spanning 2-3 days, is known as the business processing date or post date.
To refine your reconciliation process, Fyle now introduces Post Date Support, a pivotal feature that empowers you to select the business processing date. The ability to choose the post date makes it easy to export the expenses to accounting systems. This enhanced capability extends across all accounting integrations in Fyle. Opt for the Post Date as the transaction date for Corporate card transactions, and enjoy seamless reconciliation.
As we move into Q4 2023, we have a number of exciting initiatives and updates planned. In this section, get a glimpse of the roadmap ahead, including integrations with Sage 300 CRE and MS Dynamics Business Central.
Our upcoming integration with Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate (CRE) is set to simplify expense exports from Fyle, catering specifically to the needs of the construction and real estate industries. The 2-way integration will allow for the smooth export of reimbursable and corporate card expenses in the form of AP Invoices and Direct Costs. Learn more about the integration and join our beta program for a more efficient era in construction and real estate finance!
Fyle will also integrate with MS Dynamics Business Central in the next quarter. Experience a bilateral data flow between the two software, importing data and exporting accurately coded expenses to MS Dynamics.
For companies managing employee reimbursements related to business travel, our Deduct Mileage Commute will automatically deduct regular commute distances, ensuring compliance with IRS guidelines and tax regulations. With flexible admin customization settings, including auto-deduction preferences, this update makes mileage expense management more automated.
Building on our existing structure for restricting cost centers, mileage rates, and per diem rates at the employee level, and in response to identified concerns and user feedback, we are extending similar controls to expense categories. Admins can now have granular control over the categories accessible to employees, minimizing the risk of exposing sensitive information and ensuring correct expense tagging.
At Fyle, we're dedicated to delivering a user-friendly, automated, and customer-centric platform to help you manage expenses better. Stay tuned for more updates next quarter! Learn more about the platform and get a demo today!
Let's start with this. Corporate travel is not like it is portrayed in the movies. Many corporate travelers who regularly travel for work know there is much more to it than just packing their bags and jetting off.
From start to end, the entire corporate travel management process can be a tiring and time-consuming ordeal for everyone involved. How? Let's break it down.
Imagine doing all the above tasks with a manual system! If your business goes about these processes with traditional means, it will result in wasted time and effort and open doors for errors and potential fraud. This could be detrimental to the financial health of your business.
This is where a travel and expense management software comes into play. The software eliminates all the undue stress and headache that comes with your T&E process and automates and streamlines the entire process from pre-trip to post-trip reimbursements while ensuring visibility and transparency throughout.
Are you interested to learn more about how a T&E software can benefit your organization and employees? If yes, this is the ultimate 2022 guide to helping you pick the best travel and expense software that fits your business needs. Let's get started!
A travel and expense management software is designed to automate, simplify and streamline travel and expense management for businesses of all sizes. In addition, most travel and expense management software are device-agnostic, which means traveling employees can access the software using any device and keep track of their expenses. Thus, it is safe to say the software is built to do the heavy lifting for both your Finance teams and employees, freeing up time for them to go about other important tasks.
The software can also:
Using the software, Finance teams can also have complete visibility and control over all business expenses across departments, cost centers, and more. As a result, they can also identify cost-saving opportunities and optimize costs wherever necessary.
The travel and expense management process requires numerous stakeholders to work in sync to get the job done. As a result, there are many moving parts when it comes to streamlining the entire process.
Below, we have compiled a list of pain points that businesses with a broken T&E process face. If you relate to any of the challenges below, maybe it's time for your organization to consider switching to a travel and expense software.
Reimbursement delays can occur due to several reasons. It can be due to:
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An over-reliance on people to be actively engaged with their expense reporting and management duties can cause a choke-hold in the process. When companies use offline tools for things like approvals, the entire process is at a standstill because they need the manager's approval, and he/she might be unavailable to take action immediately.
Let's say a travel manager needs to book a flight for an employee. And his current travel booking method or tool has no connection to the company accounts. He now has to go through multiple tools, software, and possibly agents before he finally completes the task. At the same time, he has to keep going back and forth between the approvers and the travelers so that everything is under the company guidelines.
This decentralization is another cause for creating a bottleneck in travel booking. The dependencies on these outdated approval processes can cause substantial damage to your cash flow and also your employee's morale.
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If you're still incorporating spreadsheet and Excel-based reporting in your expense workflows, it can pose a threat to your financial health in the long run. Additionally, relying on outdated methods means:
Having unclear T&E policies can impact business spending later on. Here's how.
One of the biggest challenges organizations face is figuring out what their company is spending on and missing out on.
Simple spreadsheets don't provide enough, as they are singular data points that have difficulty showing their connection with everything else. An organization needs a solution where an individual can view how all types of expenses interact and affect each other. This is one of the critical areas an automated expense management software can help.
An automated T&E software comes equipped with features that help track all expenses and allows users to view detailed reports and the status of expense reports in the reimbursement cycle. With all the expense data coming under one travel and expense management dashboard, Finance teams can view spending trends and patterns based on real-time insights. As a result, they can make informed decisions and develop a solid financial plan by leveraging their company expense data.
With a travel and expense management software like Fyle, corporate travel can be as simple as the image shown above. Fyle covers all your travel requirements, from pre-trip arrangements to employee expense reimbursements.
Some of the common features and benefits of an ideal travel and expense management software are:
Corporate travel booking can become tedious if your Finance team has to go back and forth with your employees and travel managers. This is because, even after making the bookings, Finance teams still have to manually collect and consolidate the details into their system.
But with an T&E management software that offers integration with a corporate travel booking platform, Finance teams can have tighter control and visibility into the travel expenses. They can also reduce the unnecessary back and forth and eliminate manual data entry work.
Additionally, with expense management automation, employees need to simply fill in the necessary details and make travel bookings before a trip. The reimbursable expenses get automatically created in the travel and expense software, and they can simply send the trip report for review. Finance teams can also review and approve trip reports right from their T&E software. With all the travel-related details under one platform, Finance teams can easily access, view, and draw valuable insights from the reconciled travel expense data.
While on a business trip, the last thing your employees should be worried about is missing receipts or losing track of their expenses. Having a device-agnostic travel expense management software can help traveling employees track their expenses right from their mobile phones.
Additionally, a travel expense software like Fyle offers multiple ways to track employee expenses and receipts.
Duplicate claims, data entry errors, and missing receipts are just a few policy violations that can pass unnoticed if your Finance teams are not thorough with their reviews. But checking for T&E policy violations on all employee expense reports can not only be tedious but also consume a lot of valuable working hours.
But thanks to the real-time policy check feature available in a T&E software, Finance teams can have tighter control over their expense limits, rules, and guidelines. They can also configure the software as per their T&E policy to guarantee no policy violations get by. This ensures any errors or anomalies in an expense report are corrected before the employee even submits it.
Your employee travel expense reports hold a lot of information to help your Finance teams gain better insight into your company’s business travel spending and trends. But if you are managing your travel data manually or using an age-old solution, it can be a painful task to compile and make sense of all the data.
A travel and expense management software not only helps store all your employee travel bookings and expenses under one platform but also helps Finance teams make better data-backed business decisions. Using the data analytics feature available on Fyle, Finance teams can toggle and see information like their top spenders, spend by project/department, top category spend, and more. This ensures they always stay on top of all things business expenses.
Using a T&E management software, your Finance team can ensure speedy payments to employees and close the reimbursement cycle on time. Fyle comes equipped with the next-day ACH feature that can streamline your reimbursement process and help you track the statuses of each payment in real-time. Plus, with Fyle’s single click reimbursement feature, your Finance team can make payments to employees in bulk saving time and increasing productivity in the process.
If you search for the term "travel and expense management software, " several TEM software will probably pop up on your search browser. However, if you're looking to invest in the tool, you probably want something to help you scale and streamline the process seamlessly.
The ideal expense software should be flexible and have configurable features, with plans and packages tailored according to your company size and needs. Thus, while choosing the tool, you'd ideally want to stick with a software that you and your employees can use for the long term. An easy way to start is by considering the current challenges your employees and teams face and how the tool can solve them.
No matter why you're looking to switch to a T&E management software, the right software is the one that can match all your needs.
Source: G2
The potential travel management software shouldn't make you break your bank. The best options are those reasonably priced tools that still offer features necessary for you to simplify your T&E management process.
At Fyle, we make sure we charge only for users who create at least one expense report in a month. We call them active users.
Like most software subscription tools, our travel and expense management software has three different service tiers that you can choose from to meet your requirements.
You can choose to pay for the plans either monthly or annually.
You can choose the subscription package based on your budget, expected usage, and active users.
Our travel and expense management software is built to simplify business travel bookings and expense management. At Fyle, we understand the pain points of T&E and aim to create a tool that’s user-friendly, intuitive, and can be accessed from anywhere, anytime, and by using any device. Our Fyle app is available as a web app and is also available for Android and iOS devices.
We also come with a best-in-class customer support team that is available 24/7 with a turnaround time of less than 4 hours to help your team with any changes, travel emergencies, and questions you may have. With Fyle, stay rest assured that your travel manager, employees, and Finance teams always stay on track.
Check out what our customers have to say about us here. Additionally, if you’re interested to see our product in action, feel free to schedule a demo with us!
Are you paying attention to your corporate travel and expense management?
You should. Because according to GBTA (Global Business Travel Association), annual corporate travel spending will reach $1.4 trillion by 2024.
If you are struggling with your travel and expense management due to your manual setup, it’s time to take a step towards digitization. This is because if you leave your expense management woes unattended, it can significantly impact the growth and scale of your business in the long run.
This article highlights some of the top corporate T&E challenges and how businesses can embrace corporate T&E software to make expense management less frustrating.
As a necessary means of staying compliant, businesses should always ensure employees submit their expense reports with corresponding receipts. This is because expense receipts serve as proof of spending and are crucial during audits. Receipts may either be paper receipts or e-receipts, and a single expense report can often come with multiple receipts. In these cases, the onus of collating, verifying, and documenting these receipts and reports would fall entirely on the Finance teams.
While some businesses believe using expense report templates may solve the problem, the truth may vary. With templates, employees are to manually enter expense details and attach photocopies of receipts as proof of spending. This may result in receipts all over the place and in varying formats. For example, with a car rental for work, you have receipts from the rental agency, gas stations, and parking validation - that’s already three different types of receipts for just one corporate travel expense.
To add to the confusion, these templatized expense reports make it easy for missing, incorrect, and exaggerated entries to slip by. In these cases, Finance teams are to manually identify and address issues with multiple employees over multiple expenses. Further, all clarifications and justifications for these business expenses go unrecorded as they happen over emails, calls, or word of mouth. This translates to zero clarity and a highly ineffective means of managing business expenses and receipts.
How can a travel and expense management software help manage receipts?
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Is your travel and expense policy clear and comprehensive? Is it easy to understand and document every step of your travel reimbursement process in detail? If not, then the chances are that it may be contributing to employee expense reporting frustration and poor reimbursement turnaround time.
Unclear T&E guidelines can lead to policy violations, out-of-policy expense claims, and finance teams spending more time going back and forth with confused and frustrated employees. This translates into productive time wasted over something that could have been curbed from the beginning.
Your travel and expense policies work as your one source of truth when it comes to employee reimbursements. Unfortunately, most companies pay no heed to their policies, and as a result, so do their employees. This results in out-of-policy expenses and other policy violations, which cause unnecessary financial leaks in the system.
How can a travel and expense management software help enforce policies?
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Expense management tasks can be frustrating for both employees and Finance teams. For example, employees need to keep a tab of their travel expenses and correctly enter all the information into an expense report template to be reimbursed on time.
After employees submit their T&E reports, Finance teams need to collate all the trip reports from managers and manually identify claims that are not supported by your travel and expense guidelines. Then, in case of a policy violation, the Finance team needs to send back the travel report to the employee in whole or in part for necessary changes or clarification.
This can translate into a costly and time-consuming process. Additionally, due to stringent timelines, they may not thoroughly verify the submitted expense reports and may end up missing claims that might be fraudulent in nature. This behavior over prolonged periods can prove detrimental to the financial health of your business.
How can a travel and expense management software help review and approve expense reports?
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Insight into expense trends occurs when Finance teams have historical and real-time data in hand. But, businesses who use traditional expense management means gain little to no insight as they have no data to refer back to. As a result, you can end up making ill-informed business decisions.
Expense analytics and real-time insight into expense data play an important role in cost optimizations and preventing financial leaks in the system. But, this can happen only when businesses have the numbers to speak for them.
How can a travel and expense management software help with spend insight?
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Delayed reimbursements in a manual travel and expense management setup can be due to a number of reasons. It can be because of:
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The business world is continuously evolving to become highly receptive to the needs of employees. While the choice to automate your travel and expense management software may benefit you as a business, it also is a boon for your employees. Addressing employee challenges has a direct impact on employee morale and productivity. Thus, also impacting the overall financial productivity of your business.
All this and more without your Finance team slogging it out.
Do you want to hop onto the bandwagon of digital change? Fyle does more than just expense reporting. Schedule a demo today to witness how Fyle helps you put an end to your expense management woes.
Only people who have dealt with a travel expense report know business travel doesn’t always mean business class flights and fancy restaurants.
Employees, managers, travel managers, and Finance teams juggle with multiple things to ensure business trip expenses are within the specified budget and comply with the travel and expense policy laid out by the company.
A travel expense software makes management of per diems, trip budgets, mileage, and trip expense reports easy for all the stakeholders involved. In this article, we list the top reasons why businesses should switch to a travel expense software to manage business travel expenses.
A travel expense software helps employees and managers streamline and automate all business travel-related expenses like cash advances, hotels, flight bookings, per diems, and employee travel reimbursements.
A modern travel expense software also helps Finance teams gain real-time visibility and complete control over business expenses. Read on to understand how your business can benefit from a travel expense software.
Business travel is not all fun. It requires stakeholders to do a host of research and work even before the business trip.
Additionally, there is a high chance of non-compliance or even deliberate expense report fraud in case:
This is where a travel expense software can help.
SUGGESTED READ: How to detect and prevent expense report fraud
Travel expense management is a complicated process for employees, managers, and finance teams alike. It involves hours of either manual entry and compilation of expense receipts and expense reports or manual verification and approval of submitted business expenses.
A travel expense software helps cut costs, save time, and provide valuable insight into expense data that can be used to further streamline your organization’s corporate travel management. Let’s dive deeper.
Problem: Travel expenses occur even before the trip does. Therefore, employees are issued cash advances for travel and accommodation bookings.
Travel bookings are generally either done by the traveler (employee) or the travel manager. In either case, your employees, manager/approver, and travel manager must understand your travel and expense policy, preferred vendors, and budget allocations. Additionally, the travel booking preferences and booking confirmation back-and-forths, all happen during billable hours.
Solution: A travel expense software automates this process and allows the employee to directly raise trip requests and submit a list of preferred vendors to the travel manager. This can then be forwarded to travel vendors for booking.
Once the details are in place, the vendor sends the trip request back to the approver/traveler for confirmation. Travel bookings can be confirmed immediately on approval.
Fyle offers 360-degree trip reports that bring all business expenses incurred for a particular business trip/project under one single trip report.
SUGGESTED READ: How to use Fyle as a travel approval software
Problem: Traditionally, traveling employees save receipts for all business expenses so they can fyle for travel reimbursement post-trip.
Safekeeping of receipts, ensuring expense policy compliance, and submitting the expense report on time is much unproductive work for your globe-trotting employees. This can be especially hard in case of sudden changes in the itinerary.
Solution: A travel expense software makes it easy for employees to track, scan, and save business expense receipts - from wherever and whenever.
Once the trip is finished, your employees can submit their travel expense reports with just a click. The ease that an expense reporting software brings to traveling employees saves them a lot of frustration, time, and hours.
Fyle allows employees to send business expenses to expense reports from within everyday apps like G-Suite, Outlook, WhatsApp, text message, slack, and many more.
SUGGESTED READ: Five ways to make expense reporting easier for employees
Problem: One can not always be expected to remember the nuances of their company’s corporate travel and expense policy.
Employees can sometimes forget what expenses qualify as business expenses or spending limits, and managers or Finance teams may sometimes miss fraudulent or out-of-policy expenses. This puts the organization and the traveler at risk with the tax authorities.
Solution: A travel expense software comes with a robust policy engine that detects and prevents any non-compliant expenses from even being claimed.
In cases where the employee submits an expense despite automatic flagging, the expense is sent to a reviewer to validate the expense. This prevents any fraudulent expenses from being fyled.
Fyle’s policy engine automates and enforces policies on anything your organization might need. It also maintains a digital audit trail that helps track actions taken on every single expense.
SUGGESTED READ: Check expense report frauds with Fyle
Problem: Finance teams are tasked with manually verifying receipts with expense claims, ensuring expense policy compliance, and processing travel reimbursements.
In cases of non-compliant expenses, the report is sent back to the traveler for rectification or justification. Finance teams also have to check and weed out out-of-policy expenses, or fraudulent expense claims. This time-consuming task ultimately results in delayed travel reimbursement, which takes a hit on employee morale.
Solution: A travel expense software ensures real-time policy compliance by raising flags for any non-compliant expenses or expense reports at the source of expense creation itself. This allows travelers to rectify errors without the Finance team having to chase them. This saves a lot of time and effort for all the stakeholders involved in the process.
Also, when it comes to travel booking research or employee travel reimbursements a travel expense software automates the entire process of travel expense reporting while ensuring real-time expense policy compliance and audit readiness.
Further, a T&E software allows approvers to initiate multiple transactions to different employee bank accounts from the centralized expense management dashboard.
Fyle’s travel reimbursement features allow approvers and Finance teams to track the transaction status of any expense reimbursement right from the dashboard. This allows for an overall view of all business expenses that can help Finance teams gain sight of the larger picture.
SUGGESTED READ: Balancing expense policy compliance and happy employees
Here’s a list of excellent reasons why you should consider Fyle as your travel and expense management software:
Fyle’s innovative and employee-friendly expense reporting features make travel and expense management a breeze! In the words of the folks at IDC,
“Fyle is intelligent, employee-centric, scalable, and delivers significant value to growing businesses without any impact on user experience and quality of support.”
Ready to upgrade your T&E management? Schedule a demo with us today!
This post was originally published in 2020, but the content has been updated for 2023.
Post COVID-19, businesses have seen a massive surge in credit card transactions for incoming and outgoing payments. While this made the payment process easier, it also meant a looming nightmare for finance teams at the end of every month – reconciling credit card expenses.
But where do business owners and finance teams start regarding business credit card management?
This blog discusses everything you need to know about credit card reconciliation, how it works, and why it’s crucial for businesses in 2023. We’ll also address some challenges accounting and finance teams face with reconciliation, after which we’ll give you the easiest way to solve your reconciliation woes. Let’s dive in!
Credit card reconciliation is the process by which accountants ensure that the transactions in a business’s credit card statement match its general ledger. For accurate and efficient financial reporting, companies need to know that these transactions took place and that the expenses on both sides are correct and valid.
If done manually, accountants sit and compare an organization’s credit card statement against its general ledger. If every payment on both sides matches, they can determine that the ledger was recorded correctly and can close books for the month.
However, if there are discrepancies, the responsibility of clarifying these values would fall on the financial controller. They need to find out who made the additional payments manually.
The reconciliation process typically occurs at the end of every month, while a more significant financial closing happens towards the end of each quarter or financial year.
As mentioned earlier, a credit card transaction can impact two sections of your business finance: income and expenses. This means companies will have two types of reconciliations:
This would include all your business expenses – payments your organization makes for goods or services. For example, if your business is habitually issuing cards to its employees, they must be reconciled individually.
This would include all your incoming payments. Reconciling these transactions takes a little more effort than your outgoing payments, but there are defined ways to make this easier.
In this blog, we’ll only be looking in detail at the business expenses side; that is, transactions made by you or your employees to purchase goods or services for your organization.
Making a payment for your credit card statement without a second glance may not be the wisest thing to do. Big financial institutions make mistakes too, and it can end up costing you a lot more than what you should be paying.
The reconciliation process starts when a business receives statements for its expenses. The expense details are then manually matched with the company's internal finance records and checked for discrepancies.
This process ensures:
Reconciliation, as we know, involves the process of matching expenses with your internal finance record. But how do you go about the entire process?
Receipts are proof of expenses. It comes in several forms and helps account for money spent. For example, a purchase made using a credit card comes with an invoice given to the customer at the time of sale. These receipts should be collected from all the cardholders and stored for future reference.
Companies ideally use expense reports to collect and store employee receipts. This can be done manually using paper-based excel sheets and reports or by automation-driven tools like an expense management software.
Finance teams should match credit card statements to reported business expenses with the receipts. Businesses can do this with the help of any preferred system for reconciling.
Pro tip: Ensure that other than fees and interest charges, there shouldn't be any other unmarked items in the credit card statement.
There are always chances of error, either with or without intention. Thus, your finance teams need to be careful in identifying and notifying the bank authorities in cases of mistakes. In addition, ensure timely action by reporting any unauthorized activities or fraudulent behavior.
Some examples of commonly occurring errors with business credit card reconciliations are:
Most companies reconcile credit card expenses with paper-based and spreadsheet-driven methods. Unfortunately, this process is inefficient and forces employees to work long hours of manual labor. This also results in more inefficiencies and loopholes in the process. Given below are some challenges that can hinder your finance team's progress:
For employees, reconciling corporate credit card expenses means entering data without making an error. Even a single missing number or double entry can put the employee's reimbursement on hold. Also, routinely submitting expense reports to get back their own money can affect employee happiness.
For finance teams, inaccuracy and inefficiencies in the credit card reconciliation process make the company vulnerable to financial exposure. Also, the traditional reconciliation methods include a high involvement of employees but do little to remove human-prone errors.
Corporate credit cards have helped revolutionize the speed and efficiency of business payments. But this also implies a high volume of transactions. Moreover, the ever-growing number of transactions increases the chances of missing human errors, duplicate submissions, and inaccurate information.
Your accounting team has to sieve through all the transactions and reconcile one-to-one and one-to-many transactions. This can prove to be a costly and cumbersome expense for your company and employees.
According to a survey by Ernst & Young, financial departments spent up to 59% of their resources on managing transaction-intensive processes. Of this, 95% of the effort goes into already matching transactions rather than ones with entry-related problems.
The traditional approach to credit card reconciliation offers no quick and coherent method to find policy violations. Instead, employees must painstakingly go through every transaction to ensure expenses follow the company's travel and expense policies. This further adds to the delay.
Whenever an employee uses the company's credit card for personal expenses or overspends, there is no way of getting notified unless checked manually. Additionally, a loose policy framework coupled with weak enforcement of T&E policies can misinform employees and cause unauthorized purchases. This also increases the chances of fraud and claims of multiple duplicate expenses.
For employees who use the card for personal expenses, there must be a way to flag violations accurately. For example, when matching the expenses with the bank statements, the finance team has to identify and address personal expenses. While reconciling, finance teams also have to make sure that no errors by vendors or credit card issuers get by.
Do your accountants still rely on broken bank feeds and delayed statement uploads for credit card reconciliations?
Just imagine how much easier their lives would be if these transactions were recorded and matched in real time. Well, Fyle’s real-time credit card feeds let you do exactly that.
By connecting directly to credit card networks like Mastercard and Visa, real-time credit card feeds bring credit card transaction data directly to your expense management system as soon as a card is swiped. This means accountants don't have to wait for bank statements to arrive or chase employees for receipts.
Since the transaction data is available instantly, accountants can track credit card spend, reconcile card expenses, track budgets, and identify unauthorized spend in real-time.
But this is just the beginning; here’s what else you can do with Fyle’s real-time feeds:
Fyle's integration with credit card networks like Visa and Mastercard allows employees to receive instant SMS notifications of all their credit card transactions. This helps them submit receipts for reimbursement quickly and easily, ensuring accurate and timely expense report submissions.
SMS receipt collection allows accountants to collect receipts instantly, which has reduced the time our customers spend on receipt collection by 48%. This simplifies the process by eliminating the need for employees to scan and upload receipts, reduces back-and-forth communication between accountants and employees, and eliminates the need to send reminders.
Depending on your card program, accountants need to wait until the bank makes card data available to manually match transactions.
But now, Fyle's real-time credit card feeds automatically reconcile transaction data with receipt data as soon as the receipt is uploaded by the user. The credit card reconciliation process, which takes days to finish, can now be completed in less than 2 minutes with Fyle. All this without changing your existing credit cards!
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Fyle automatically checks expense reports for policy violations as employees create them. Depending on the organization's settings, the following may happen:
Fyle's duplicate detection and implicit merge feature automatically checks for duplicate expenses. If two submitted expenses are found to be the same, the user is instantly notified and given the option to merge the two expenses. This helps to ensure that expenses are not duplicated, which can help to prevent fraud and improve compliance.
In today’s world, information is at your fingertips. But when it comes to your business credit card transactions, you’re stuck in the dark. You have to wait days or even weeks to get visibility into where your employees are spending money.
That’s where Fyle comes in. We let you see it all in real-time, from anywhere in the world and it’s changing the way businesses manage and reconcile their credit card expenses. With Fyle, you get real-time insights into your credit card spend so you can make informed decisions about your finances.
Want to see how Fyle can help you? Schedule a demo today!
Does your finance team have a trusted credit card management system to manage all employee corporate credit card expenses effectively?
Corporate credit card usage is on the rise due to its ease of use. With these cards, employees no longer need to worry about using their own money for business expenses. But with these cards, it becomes all the more critical to effectively track, monitor, and stay on top of things. If ignored, it can rack up extra chores for the entire team. Even worse, it could severely affect your company's bottom-line due to prolonged financial leaks.
But how does one go about picking the right credit card management system for their business?
In this article, we talk about how Fyle as an expense management software can help your finance team tackle challenges related to credit card management and more. Let's dive in!
Credit cards as a payment method have their own set of pros, but keeping track of spending can be difficult. Even a simple task can become demanding, taking up time and effort from your finance team and employees. Traditional methods for managing credit cards, bring with them a set of challenges that could pose a threat to the financial productivity of your business. Here’s why:
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Best Practices to manage Corporate Credit Cards
Fyle has several features that can help you ease your corporate credit management woes. Our automated solution makes sure all the monotonous routines around expense reporting and corporate card management are taken care of. This spares extra time for your finance team to do more intuitive work and put their skills to better use. This also increases productivity and boosts the morale of your team as well.
Fyle as your credit card management system can help you achieve multiple goals in a short period. Here’s a look at some of them:
Irrespective of whether you’re a small business with few cardholders or a large enterprise with multiple cardholders, Fyle allows you to manage all your corporate credit cards with ease. Once your organization’s card feed is set-up, you can easily assign your company’s credit cards to your employees. Additionally, your finance team can also track and monitor all assigned and unassigned cards. This provides for a wholesome approach to effectively managing business credit card expenses.
On assigning cards to users, all the expenses incurred will be directly reflected in your Fyle account. The finance team can then view all the payments made using credit cards. They can also see which of the corresponding expenses are yet to be reported. Additionally, the team can filter and view expenses for desired timelines. Lastly, finance folks can also customize and send timely reminders to employees to match their expenses on time.
When multiple employees are assigned to various credit card providers, tracking all the transactions in their bank feed can be a demanding task. Fyle takes care of this problem by syncing all your corporate credit card details with direct bank feeds. By integrating directly with the bank providers, you can expect to get a clean feed in real-time. Additionally, we provide a reliable data flow of all your corporate card expenses. This ensures complete protection over your company’s bottom-line.
Sometimes a merchant may unintentionally charge twice for a purchase made through the corporate’s credit card. While it may not be a significant loss, it is necessary to make a note of for accounting purposes - duplicated charges can cause confusion and imbalanced records.
At Fyle, we understand finance teams can easily miss transaction reversals, leading to accounting errors. This is why we created our feature that seamlessly matches every expense to its corresponding transactions.
Pro-tip:
In cases of extra charges, employees need to support their claim with the help of receipts and relevant expense entries.
With a better credit card management system in your hand, you can stay prepared for the tax season as well as for audits. Fyle makes sure that your finance team stays ready without rushing or worrying at the last minute. Our expense management software comes loaded with features that can help your finance team tackle the challenges of accounting. Here are few such instances:
Choosing to handle your corporate credit cards in the old-fashioned way brings numerous challenges tied to it. You may have cards from multiple card providers to suit your needs, but tracking its usage through disparate systems becomes a whole other problem. When you do not own a centralized software to track all cards, identifying assigned cards can be confusing as well. Additionally, when it comes to staying audit-ready, tasks such as reconciliation can become taxing on your finance team.
At Fyle, we understand the challenges that come with managing corporate credit cards for your business. Thus, we have come up with features that will ease the burden on your finance team. This means automating mundane tasks, easy integration, providing direct bank feeds, and matching expenses accurately. With our features available at your disposal, your finance team’s productivity can be optimized and enhanced to help meet business goals.
Want to know more? Schedule a demo with us today to see how Fyle magic works!