Are you looking to replace your traditional expense reporting methods with a modern one that can meet your business needs? 

Receipts and expense reports help businesses evaluate if they are utilizing their company’s finances appropriately. Especially when you have a growing number of employees making business-related expenses, this becomes all the more crucial. 

But if your business is still using the traditional method for expense reporting, it can prove to be a challenge. The entire ordeal can take up a considerable amount of your finance team’s productive hours as well as your employees.

Consequences of using the traditional means of expense reporting:

• Employees can put off reporting expenses on time due to the cumbersome process. Even worse, they may feel demotivated to even travel for business. This leads to a decrease in the productivity of your employees. 
• Due to the time crunch, finance teams may tend to slack off the validation of business expenses. This can open doors to fraud and falsely claiming expenses. This could severely affect your bottom line in the longer run.
• The finance team also has to make sure employees submit their expense reports on time. This could lead to multiple back and forths for all the stakeholders. This also results in crucial data being distributed across platforms, causing more confusion.
• When the process comes with various bottlenecks, it could lead to delayed reimbursements, thereby also decreasing employee morale. 
• The finance team has to make sure each expense adheres to the company policies. This means they have to go through each report to check for any discrepancies manually. This further adds to the delay. 

If the above challenges resonate with your business, maybe it’s time to switch to a modern approach. Below we discuss how expense reporting can be made easier with mobile-based receipt data extraction. We will also look into its benefits in-depth to understand how it can fit with your business. Let’s get into it!

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Benefits of online receipt management over traditional methods

The new standard in mobile-based receipt data extraction

All of us know how time-consuming expense reporting and submission can get. We also know it involves a lot of manual tasks that employees dread. Despite it all, there's no escaping from expense reporting. Hence, developers have come up with solutions to address the issue. 

• Advanced technology such as OCR (Optical Character Recognition) wipes off the task of manual data entry and eliminates human prone errors. 
• Finance teams can easily extract relevant data from a physical receipt, eliminating manual data entry.
• It also increases the efficiency and accuracy of expense reports.
• OCR technology is integrated into mobile applications such as receipt scanners and receipt management apps. These apps enhance the task of expense reporting. 
• With the help of OCR, employees are provided with the flexibility to report their expenses in just a few clicks. 

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How can accurate receipt data extraction help with expense management?

Why is mobile-based receipt data extraction taking over?

• With the help of mobile technology, the tasks related to expense reporting has been made more convenient for both the employers and the employees. 
• It automates a large part of the manual work, which cuts down the time taken by all stakeholders to complete the process. 
• Employees do not have to spend time printing and collating receipts and expense reports. 
• Having an alternative to report expenses directly from cellphones translates to timely submissions of expense reports.  

Let’s look into the benefits of switching to a mobile-based receipt data extraction method:

Use your cellphone camera as a receipt scanner

One of the significant challenges in expense reporting is receipt management. Collecting, printing, and collating several receipts takes up a large portion of your employee’s productive hours. Also, employees have to enter details of every expense in their reports. With the involvement of manual data entry into expense reports, errors and inconsistencies can occur. This further leads to inaccurate reports of expenses.

• In a mobile-based receipt management app, you can eliminate the worries related to data entry errors. 
• Receipt scanners use the camera of the cellphone as a scanner. The user can use the app to click a picture of the receipt directly. 
• In doing so, valuable data is extracted automatically and filled into the expense report. 
• This reduces error and time taken for expense report creation. 

Report expenses from anywhere

For a company that doesn’t use a mobile receipt scanner, employees do not have the flexibility to report expenses immediately or on-the-go. For example, for an employee traveling for business purposes, he/she doesn’t have the luxury of time to print, collate, and report all expenses. This can result in misplaced or damaged receipts. Further, it can also result in employees losing out on their personal money, due to loss of receipts or missing out on deadlines for expense report submissions. 

• Businesses that use an automated expense management solution, give their employees the leeway to report expenses at their convenience. 
• Whether an employee is traveling in a cab or waiting for their meal, they can report their expenses within a short timeframe. 
• Employees do not have to wait to get to a printer or fill a physical expense report form. This streamlines and simplifies the process of expense reporting for all the stakeholders. 
• Employees can scan the receipts with their phones and click to submit an expense report. This makes the process of expense reporting a matter of just a few clicks.

Store all your receipts in one place

Receipts are an essential component for expense reporting; without it, the validity of an expense report can be questionable. But paper receipts are fragile and can be easily damaged and misplaced. With multiple receipts, keeping track of all of them can prove to be a challenge.

• With the help of a receipt management app, businesses can store all the receipts under a unified system. 
• Employees can minimize the chances of receipts getting torn, misplaced, or lost with the help of a receipt scanner. 
• Finance teams can easily track and manage all reported expenses and receipts with the help of the app.
• Automated expense management apps like Fyle, also come with an extensive digital audit trail that helps keep track of all conversations around a specific expense report or claim. 

Report all business expenses in bulk

When employees make business expenses on a business trip, they’re left with a pile of receipts that they need to sieve through to get their reimbursements on time. In a traditional method, details from all the receipts have to be entered and reported manually. This can take time and also opens the flood gates for duplicated entries or false submissions.

• Some receipt scanner apps give the option to its users to report their expenses in bulk. 
• Fyle comes with a feature known as Bulk-Fyle, that empowers your traveling employees to report and submit expenses in bulk. This drastically helps cut short the time involved around expense report submissions.  
• With the help of this feature, users can take pictures of their receipts and report them all together at the same time. 
• Data from all the receipts are extracted with accuracy, saving time, and reducing entry errors.

Turn to an expense management phone app

When an organization hasn’t moved to an automated solution, all the expense reporting tasks are done physically. Receipts have to be collected and stored, and expense reports forms have to printed and filled. Losing any of the items can mean delay or no reimbursement for employees. It also becomes challenging to keep all the physical receipts so that they’re not misplaced, damaged, or lost.

By switching to a mobile-based expense reporting method, employees do not have to carry around a bulk of receipts. They can report their expenses as soon as they receive the receipt. The receipt data extraction technology also fills the expense report form automatically. 

This reduces the manual work for the employees and also ensures the form is filled accurately. When redundant routine work is taken care of, it can also encourage employees to report their expenses on time. This means the finance team receives expense reports in time and with greater accuracy.

Does a mobile app for receipt data extraction sound right for your business? If so, schedule a demo with Fyle to see how all your burdens of expense reporting can be taken care of.