Delegate your expense management tasks to an AI powered expense software.

You can automate expense reports by using an automated travel and expense management software. This modern expense software usually comes with an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanner, automatically capturing relevant data from an expense receipt and completing the business expense report with little to no manual intervention.

An expense report is an itemized list of all business expenses incurred by an employee. This includes cabs/parking, meals, or hotel expenses, some of which are reimbursable by the company. What expenses employees are reimbursed for depends on the company's expense policy.

The four most common examples of reimbursable expense categories are - travel, meals & entertainment, gifts, and transportation.

A travel expense report is an organized way for businesses and employees to track and report business expenses . An expense report can either be a hard copy or digital.

A travel expense report helps Finance teams and employees track, report, and store business expense receipts for corporate travel. Although travel expense reporting has traditionally been a paper-dependent process, modern businesses are actively adopting expense management software to automate and streamline their expense management needs end-to-end.

Travel expenses for business trips are reimbursable to employees and qualify for tax deductions. Hence, if the IRS decides to audit your business, you should be able to submit proof of expenses, be it paper or electronic.

An expense software not only helps with expense receipt compliance, regular expense tracking, and accurate expense reports, but also offers insight into the most up-to-date financial data. As a business owner, you can use this data to analyze your company’s spending, identify financial leaks, and plan accordingly to maintain your bottomline.

An expense report typically includes fields like name, department, project name, and contact information. Here’s a handy checklist of mandatory fields for the expense report:

Name/code for employee.

Names/codes for expense categories

Date when the expense was incurred

Purpose of expense

Receipt as proof of expense

Actual expense amount, i.e., how much the company has to reimburse.

However, it is advisable to customize your expense reports according to your expense policy, or business needs to gain more in-depth insight into expenses.

Expense categories and subcategories on business expense reports commonly found on tax forms for claiming your business’s expenses adhere to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Businesses can further create custom subcategories to accommodate unique expense reporting needs.

You can see a detailed list of deductible and non-deductible expenses on the IRS’ Publication 535 page.

Managers/Finance teams must keep the following key points in mind while reviewing and approving travel expense reports:

Validate expenses under every expense report according to your corporate travel policy

Check expense receipt data accuracy with the mandatory business expense receipts

Check for any inconsistencies in data entry/ expense policy compliance

Approve and process expense reimbursements for employee expense reports that are accurate and have attached expense receipts

Send back/ reject expense reports in case of non-compliance/need further clarification

Store paper/digital expense receipts safely and efficiently, in case the IRS decides to audit your business

Understand employee spending patterns, cost-saving opportunities and ensure budget compliance

An expense management software can help eliminate manual data entry, verification, and processing while also increasing control over employee business expenses, expense report data accuracy, expense policy compliance, and overall financial productivity.

Expense reports are filled out by employees and sent to their managers/Finance team for approval. Once approved, expense reimbursements are initiated. This entire cycle is known as expense reporting.

The expense reporting process refers to the structure, levels, and procedure involved in the verification and approval of business expense reports. Here’s how expense reports works:

Employees’ tasks:

Choosing the appropriate expense report template

Entering itemized expenses with costs

Attaching corresponding expense receipts

Adding all amounts to get a total

Submitting the expense report as a hard copy/ email on time

Approvers’ tasks:

Collecting & cataloging expense receipts

Manual verifying every single expense receipt

Scrutinizing report for policy violations

Approving/disapproving the expense report

Processing expense reimbursements on time

Consider automating expense reporting for your organization to save billable hours your employees spend on this repetitive, and error-prone task.

The main reason employees do not submit expense reports on time is because expense reporting is a complicated and labor-intensive task requiring keen attention to detail.

You can encourage employees to submit an expense report on time by facilitating easy, one-click expense reporting. A device-agnostic expense software drastically reduces the time and effort required to fyle business expense reports on time.