Empower Your Business with Automated Expense Management

Finance leaders must maintain financial stability while steering through choppy waters, with new responsibilities and expectations appearing all the time. With visibility into spend obscured by different payment types and new business challenges on the horizon, many are asking how to manage company expenses.  

Finance teams need to collaborate more closely with other departments to strategically balance near-time results with longer term goals. The answer lies in automated business expense management. 

In this blog we’ll explore how automation gives finance leaders the tools to see all spend clearly, in the moment, offering them the best chance of navigating whatever comes their way.  

 

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What Does the Ideal Expense Approval Process Look Like?  

For many, it’s currently comprised of time-consuming manual financial processes and disconnected systems. Is this you? There are four main questions you need to ask yourself. Can you: 

• See all business spend?

• Control all business spend?

• Reclaim maximum tax and VAT?

• Allocate enough time for projects that improve profitability and optimise performance?  

If you have answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, it might be time to automate your business expense management.  

Even if you think you’re doing enough, there is a lot more you could be doing. A mobile app that allows employees to submit expenses as they go is great, but what about approvals and audits?  

As a finance leader, your role is to provide strategic insights that drive business performance and growth. Without automation, you could be missing an opportunity to deliver on these demands. 

Why Do I Need to Automate Business Expense Management? 

Clearer visibility into spend supports quick decision-making and certainty, which enables scalability for sustainable growth, fewer disruptions, and the ability to meet evolving employee and customer expectations. 

Crucially, it removes many of the hidden costs of using manual processes to manage expenses, factors that are holding your business back from reaching its full potential. 

These costs could be in the form of employee frustration, as time spent on tedious tasks leaves less time for more fulfilling strategic initiatives. Then there is fraud and non-compliant spend that can slip through more easily when processes are manual. Inefficient tax reclaims leave money on the table and outdated reports hinder decision-making.

What is the Best Way to Keep Track of Business Expenses? 

The best way is with an automated solution. This allows employees to work more flexibly and efficiently, by making the expense management process accessible anywhere, at any time. It frees up everyone in the chain — employees, managers and finance teams — to focus on important work.  

Let’s see what this looks like. 

• Automatic receipt capture: The employee receives a receipt and takes a photo on their mobile phone using an expense app that automatically attaches it to an expense report and intelligently reads line items, copying the information into the report.

• Flexible, on-the-go expenses: Everything from mileage to corporate card payments are automatically recorded in an expense management system and this can occur anywhere at any time.

• Built-in compliance: If a purchase is out of policy, it’s automatically flagged for additional information which eliminates the need for approvers to chase people. 

• Faster reimbursement: Employees can track reimbursement status, while finance easily schedules payments and reconcile spending. Everything happens faster and with less stress. 

• Optimised tax reclaim: AI and machine learning built into the solution automatically validates receipts and optimises tax reclaim potential without additional manual checking. 

• Integration and collaboration: Employee spending records are stored digitally and seamlessly connected to other ERP and accounting systems. With everything in one place, you can report on spending across teams, departments, or the organisation.  

• Wider visibility and control: Connecting travel and expense spending with supplier invoice data, payroll, marketing, sales, and HR gives you a holistic view of spending. 

Is Automated Business Spend Management Right for My Business?

Automation is right for any business. If you think your business is too small for an automated expense management solution, think again. Cloud-based solutions don’t require lots of IT resources or infrastructure making them ideal for you, and businesses of all sizes.  

Manual processes might seem adequate for smaller businesses but streamlined digital processes free up people in any sized business to do more of the tasks that lead to growth.

Worried about people being left twiddling their thumbs while automation does their jobs? Don’t — they’ll be busy focusing on strategic initiatives with all the tedious work being done behind the scenes.

Automation provides financial clarity, compliance assurance and operational efficiency. With visibility comes certainty and with certainty comes strategic insights that drive your business forward, scale for sustainability, avoid disruptions and meet changing employee and customer expectations.

For further help in answering your questions about automated expense management, read our Essential Guide to Managing Expenses Guide