Guest Posts

How does a remote team benefit from expense management automation

December 13, 2022
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7
Min Read
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In this Article

Expense management presents its own set of unique challenges for businesses while facilitating remote work. A good expense management software is something that can emerge just the right solution for an organization’s unique problems.

Remote work culture has dramatically changed the employment landscape and emerged as the new normal. According to Buffer’s State of Remote Work report, 72% of professionals operate under a fully remote or remote-first work structure. 

Image via Buffer

The same report shows that  a whopping 97% of people would like to work remotely, at least for some time. Thus, remote work is a clear choice for workers as flexibility of time and location makes it a win-win situation for them. 

Employers too, can reap multiple benefits and produce better results when their employees are working remotely. Not having to pay for utilities and office rent would just begin to describe some of the expenses they save on. But when people are working from different locations, managing business expenses manually becomes extremely difficult.  

To mitigate this challenge, business leaders can use an expense management software to streamline the process for employees and accountants. 

But is an expense management software worth the investment? 

We’d say yes, but don’t just take our word for it.

This blog has been crafted to help you understand why, by exploring all the major benefits that expense management automation brings for remote work.

Read on to find out!

What is an expense management software? 

Expense management is a complicated process of managing business expenses initiated by employees. It has several stages, including reporting, submitting, approving, and reimbursing these expenses to the employees. 

An expense management software is an advanced solution that automates the entire process with the highest safety standards

Finance teams can also customize the software to align with your company’s expense management policy to boost financial productivity without compromising on the quality of employee experience, spurring employee advocacy

The benefits of expense management software are many, especially when your employees are working remotely. Their expenses may range from electricity or internet bills to business travel expenses, purchase of additional equipment for work, and so on. With the help of expense management software, your finance team can look into all these claims and expedite the reimbursement process without human errors.

How an expense management software benefits remote teams

A dedicated expense management software offers plenty of benefits for your business and can improve remote work productivity

Here are 8 ways an expense management software benefits your remote organization

1. Automatically record expenses from anywhere

When employees work from an office, it is relatively easy to track and record their expenses. But when remote teams work from different locations, traditional legacy systems can not track and manage business expenses efficiently. 

One of the significant benefits of expense management software is that it can access employee expense accounts online from any location. 

You can allow remote workers to upload their expense details in the tool, which the accounting team can automatically review and approve. It eliminates the need for employees to come to the office to submit the receipts or even email them. 

As the tool helps you to automate the entire process, it is a lot easier for your accounts team to stay updated about the status of your budget and avoid any surprises while generating reports. 

This in turn enhances the trust and transparency between employees and employers, as both can be on the same page regarding expenses by providing clear visibility to both parties.

2. Simpler and faster approval and reimbursement 

Let’s face it. When your finance team is flooded with receipts, they might have to motor round-the-clock to manually review them based on the company policies and approve them. 

But when you use an advanced expense management solution, it can help you simplify the process to a great extent. This means you can process more approvals in less time and reimburse the claims faster

One of the other benefits of expense management software is that it can automatically review the receipts and fast track the approval process. As a result, your finance officials will be able to refund employee expenses much faster. In fact, organizations like Laguna tools claiemd that they reduced their reimbursement TAT by 70% by automating their expense reimbursement process with Fyle.

To truly understand if you’re process is improving, you can organize an employee survey. Pick appropriate feedback form templates, customize it, and send it to the stakeholders to know the pulse of your reimbursement procedure.

Trust me, their change of heart will come as a pleasant surprise. 

3. Minimize errors 

Manual handling of receipts and their verification is prone to errors. You might even lose physical receipts. 

What’s more? 

When your financial team is working under pressure, data duplication, errors, and delays are some of the common challenges of expense management. 

A good business expense management solution can help you quicken the process of approval and reimbursement and enhance your accounting accuracy. 

These tools are designed to identify errors, flag duplicate entries, and keep a check on overpayment. In addition, as the software is capable of verifying all kinds of digital receipts, financial statements, and QR code scans, the chances of errors while verifying these documents are minimized to a great extent. 

4. Track spending in real-time 

Accuracy is one of the major benefits of an expense management software. Not only can such a tool detect errors in calculation or duplicate data entry, it can also track variations in remote employees’ spending in real time. 

Overspending or out-of-policy spending is a significant challenge when your teams work remotely. But with expense management software, all such expenses will be red-flagged so you can intervene immediately. 

You can quickly identify individuals who often violate policies or have a habit of overspending and suggest measures to reduce expenses. 

To keep a check on such expenses and expedite the refund process, you can mandate pre-approvals which can also be automated using an expense management solution. 

For instance, let’s say you have set a specific budget for your social media marketing team, and their campaign is over budget. The team can get such expenditures pre-approved to avoid confusion or complication at a later stage. 

Learn more about how Fyle enables you to track your corporate card expenses in real-time.

5. Better enforcement of expense policy 

You might periodically update your business expense policy to comply with changing tax policies and federal guidelines. 

Enforcing these changes manually may take some time and, in turn, create gaps in your business expense management process.

With the help of a business expense management tool, you can easily upgrade the employee expense policy and implement it automatically. You can even create explainer videos for the convenience of your employees and better understanding. This can ensure that everyone’s on the same page.

The software can also send automated alerts and notifications to your remote employees to ensure they are up-to-date on all the changes you have made to your expense policy. 

When your employees are well aware of the policies, they can be mindful of new expense limits and spend accordingly, leading to fewer issues.

6. Ease of report generation 

Generating business expense reports using traditional methods is a tedious process. For example, your finance team might have to spend hours manually creating spreadsheets and attaching all the relevant receipts. 

And when you have employees working remotely, it only gets more challenging as there are greater chances of delay in submitting the receipts or misplacing them. 

That's where expense management software can be highly beneficial. It can simplify business expense report generation like never before. 

Employees can quickly enter their expenses into it. The tool can then help you automatically segregate expenses based on projects and categories, which can be easily consolidated into an impressive digital report. This saves valuable time for your finance team, allowing them to focus on more productive operations. 

7. Enhanced fraud protection 

Fraudulent expense reimbursements are a significant concern for organizations when your employees are working remotely. However, when your finance team is working hard to manage expenses manually, fake entries or altered receipts may get overlooked and approved. 

That's where one of the most noted benefits of expense management software lies. Such a tool comes with advanced features to check altered or duplicate receipts and any other anomalies that may lead to cost leakages. 

Whenever the tool raises a red flag, the auditors can investigate the claims in detail and eliminate expense fraud to a great extent.

8. Integrations with other tools

Your business might be using multiple tools to handle several operations. And to ensure better coordination and transparency between your accounts department, approvers, and remote employees, all your tools must be well integrated. 

One of the major benefits of expense management software is that it can easily integrate with your ERP, time tracking, project management, and accounting solutions

This ensures that expenses from other tools can easily be reflected in the expense management solution. In addition, it eliminates the need to go about the process, aiding productivity manually.

In Conclusion

A good expense management solution is essential to strengthening your business’ financial position. In addition, it can help you stay focused on your budget and comply with federal rules and tax policies. 

By integrating an expense management software into your organization, you can reap several benefits and build trust and transparency between your finance team and remote workers.

If you’re wondering where you can start your search for the right expense management tool, feel free to sign up for a demo and check Fyle out today!

Trust me, this might be the only demo you’d need. 

Guest Posts

8 Ways an expense management software benefits remote teams

December 13, 2022
|
7
Min Read

Expense management presents its own set of unique challenges for businesses while facilitating remote work. A good expense management software is something that can emerge just the right solution for an organization’s unique problems.

Remote work culture has dramatically changed the employment landscape and emerged as the new normal. According to Buffer’s State of Remote Work report, 72% of professionals operate under a fully remote or remote-first work structure. 

Image via Buffer

The same report shows that  a whopping 97% of people would like to work remotely, at least for some time. Thus, remote work is a clear choice for workers as flexibility of time and location makes it a win-win situation for them. 

Employers too, can reap multiple benefits and produce better results when their employees are working remotely. Not having to pay for utilities and office rent would just begin to describe some of the expenses they save on. But when people are working from different locations, managing business expenses manually becomes extremely difficult.  

To mitigate this challenge, business leaders can use an expense management software to streamline the process for employees and accountants. 

But is an expense management software worth the investment? 

We’d say yes, but don’t just take our word for it.

This blog has been crafted to help you understand why, by exploring all the major benefits that expense management automation brings for remote work.

Read on to find out!

What is an expense management software? 

Expense management is a complicated process of managing business expenses initiated by employees. It has several stages, including reporting, submitting, approving, and reimbursing these expenses to the employees. 

An expense management software is an advanced solution that automates the entire process with the highest safety standards

Finance teams can also customize the software to align with your company’s expense management policy to boost financial productivity without compromising on the quality of employee experience, spurring employee advocacy

The benefits of expense management software are many, especially when your employees are working remotely. Their expenses may range from electricity or internet bills to business travel expenses, purchase of additional equipment for work, and so on. With the help of expense management software, your finance team can look into all these claims and expedite the reimbursement process without human errors.

How an expense management software benefits remote teams

A dedicated expense management software offers plenty of benefits for your business and can improve remote work productivity

Here are 8 ways an expense management software benefits your remote organization

1. Automatically record expenses from anywhere

When employees work from an office, it is relatively easy to track and record their expenses. But when remote teams work from different locations, traditional legacy systems can not track and manage business expenses efficiently. 

One of the significant benefits of expense management software is that it can access employee expense accounts online from any location. 

You can allow remote workers to upload their expense details in the tool, which the accounting team can automatically review and approve. It eliminates the need for employees to come to the office to submit the receipts or even email them. 

As the tool helps you to automate the entire process, it is a lot easier for your accounts team to stay updated about the status of your budget and avoid any surprises while generating reports. 

This in turn enhances the trust and transparency between employees and employers, as both can be on the same page regarding expenses by providing clear visibility to both parties.

2. Simpler and faster approval and reimbursement 

Let’s face it. When your finance team is flooded with receipts, they might have to motor round-the-clock to manually review them based on the company policies and approve them. 

But when you use an advanced expense management solution, it can help you simplify the process to a great extent. This means you can process more approvals in less time and reimburse the claims faster

One of the other benefits of expense management software is that it can automatically review the receipts and fast track the approval process. As a result, your finance officials will be able to refund employee expenses much faster. In fact, organizations like Laguna tools claiemd that they reduced their reimbursement TAT by 70% by automating their expense reimbursement process with Fyle.

To truly understand if you’re process is improving, you can organize an employee survey. Pick appropriate feedback form templates, customize it, and send it to the stakeholders to know the pulse of your reimbursement procedure.

Trust me, their change of heart will come as a pleasant surprise. 

3. Minimize errors 

Manual handling of receipts and their verification is prone to errors. You might even lose physical receipts. 

What’s more? 

When your financial team is working under pressure, data duplication, errors, and delays are some of the common challenges of expense management. 

A good business expense management solution can help you quicken the process of approval and reimbursement and enhance your accounting accuracy. 

These tools are designed to identify errors, flag duplicate entries, and keep a check on overpayment. In addition, as the software is capable of verifying all kinds of digital receipts, financial statements, and QR code scans, the chances of errors while verifying these documents are minimized to a great extent. 

4. Track spending in real-time 

Accuracy is one of the major benefits of an expense management software. Not only can such a tool detect errors in calculation or duplicate data entry, it can also track variations in remote employees’ spending in real time. 

Overspending or out-of-policy spending is a significant challenge when your teams work remotely. But with expense management software, all such expenses will be red-flagged so you can intervene immediately. 

You can quickly identify individuals who often violate policies or have a habit of overspending and suggest measures to reduce expenses. 

To keep a check on such expenses and expedite the refund process, you can mandate pre-approvals which can also be automated using an expense management solution. 

For instance, let’s say you have set a specific budget for your social media marketing team, and their campaign is over budget. The team can get such expenditures pre-approved to avoid confusion or complication at a later stage. 

Learn more about how Fyle enables you to track your corporate card expenses in real-time.

5. Better enforcement of expense policy 

You might periodically update your business expense policy to comply with changing tax policies and federal guidelines. 

Enforcing these changes manually may take some time and, in turn, create gaps in your business expense management process.

With the help of a business expense management tool, you can easily upgrade the employee expense policy and implement it automatically. You can even create explainer videos for the convenience of your employees and better understanding. This can ensure that everyone’s on the same page.

The software can also send automated alerts and notifications to your remote employees to ensure they are up-to-date on all the changes you have made to your expense policy. 

When your employees are well aware of the policies, they can be mindful of new expense limits and spend accordingly, leading to fewer issues.

6. Ease of report generation 

Generating business expense reports using traditional methods is a tedious process. For example, your finance team might have to spend hours manually creating spreadsheets and attaching all the relevant receipts. 

And when you have employees working remotely, it only gets more challenging as there are greater chances of delay in submitting the receipts or misplacing them. 

That's where expense management software can be highly beneficial. It can simplify business expense report generation like never before. 

Employees can quickly enter their expenses into it. The tool can then help you automatically segregate expenses based on projects and categories, which can be easily consolidated into an impressive digital report. This saves valuable time for your finance team, allowing them to focus on more productive operations. 

7. Enhanced fraud protection 

Fraudulent expense reimbursements are a significant concern for organizations when your employees are working remotely. However, when your finance team is working hard to manage expenses manually, fake entries or altered receipts may get overlooked and approved. 

That's where one of the most noted benefits of expense management software lies. Such a tool comes with advanced features to check altered or duplicate receipts and any other anomalies that may lead to cost leakages. 

Whenever the tool raises a red flag, the auditors can investigate the claims in detail and eliminate expense fraud to a great extent.

8. Integrations with other tools

Your business might be using multiple tools to handle several operations. And to ensure better coordination and transparency between your accounts department, approvers, and remote employees, all your tools must be well integrated. 

One of the major benefits of expense management software is that it can easily integrate with your ERP, time tracking, project management, and accounting solutions

This ensures that expenses from other tools can easily be reflected in the expense management solution. In addition, it eliminates the need to go about the process, aiding productivity manually.

In Conclusion

A good expense management solution is essential to strengthening your business’ financial position. In addition, it can help you stay focused on your budget and comply with federal rules and tax policies. 

By integrating an expense management software into your organization, you can reap several benefits and build trust and transparency between your finance team and remote workers.

If you’re wondering where you can start your search for the right expense management tool, feel free to sign up for a demo and check Fyle out today!

Trust me, this might be the only demo you’d need. 

Effortless expense management for all business spends. Earned time, saved costs, improved productivity, happy employees - achieve it all with a single software.

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