What is Expense Management Automation?

SAP Concur Team | 24-03-2020

When organisations manage expenses manually, it can take a toll on everything from productivity to employee satisfaction. By upgrading to software that automates expense management, businesses of all types and sizes can streamline operations, cut costs, and reduce tasks that waste time and cause frustration.

Why Should You Automate Expense Solutions?

Businesses leverage all sorts of tools and technology to operate as efficiently as possible. Yet, for various reasons, companies often overlook expense management or put it on the backburner. For instance, some businesses:

Don’t believe they’re ready to automate expense management
Have obsolete technologies or processes that “work just fine” and therefore aren’t upgraded
Feel more comfortable with the familiar like spreadsheets and paper expense claims

Whatever the reason may be, every business should understand this fact:

Manual expense management can hinder your organisation.

Obsolete processes may get the job done, but they’re time consuming, error prone, and don’t provide the visibility into spend you need to do your job effectively. And when your expense process is slow and cumbersome, it can really add up.

Who Benefits from Automated Expense Management?

Manual expense processes are frustrating for managers and employees alike. However, not all priorities within a company are the same, and different teams have different goals and desires. Here’s a sample of who can benefit from automating expenses and how.

Financial Teams

What they want: To simplify processes and save money.

When a business uses manual processes to manage expenses, valuable data about how much is being spent, by who, and where is often overlooked or exists as “hidden costs.” Through automation, financial teams can see where every penny goes, which means bills and reimbursements are paid on time, errors and fraud are eliminated, and business decisions are based on complete and accurate spend data — not to mention a clear view into overall cash flow.

IT Managers

What they want: To extend IT’s influence and reduce the burden on tech support.

A recent Forrester study found that legacy technology and poor alignment between IT and finance teams is a root cause for poor spend management. When IT and finance work together to automate expense, travel, and invoice management, it can lead to greater employee satisfaction and compliance.

Additionally, IT leaders need a seat at the table to help plan and shape the future of their organisation. When automated, cloud-based tools are implemented, it can also reduce the burden on the internal IT support teams and allow them to support employees in other ways.

Employees

What they want: The latest tech tools and as little frustration as possible.

In the age of digital everything, employees expect the technology they use in their personal lives to carry over into their work. By providing employees with cloud-based tools that take away the pain and boredom of expense reports, you can give them what they demand, help them stay productive, and let them focus on the jobs they were hired to do (rather than wasting time on expense reports).

CEOs and Business Leaders

What they want: To run the best business possible and maximise profit.

This one is easy. And it comes down to three big points:

Business leaders want what’s best for their employees
Business leaders want to keep costs low and profits high
Automated expense management can take care of these simultaneously

It just makes business sense.

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What Capabilities Should Automated Expense Management Have?

While automating expense management is good for any company, not all expense management systems are created equal. And once you have a good system in place, it’s important to establish an expense policy and process to make it work well.

Here are a few considerations to help you choose a suitable expense management solution and create policies to support it.

Good automation software should:

Streamline expense management with e-receipts
Automatically populate expense reports using electronic receipts from airlines, hotels, restaurants, and transportation services
Integrate with your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
Reconcile expenses with card integration
Track your expense data securely
Manage business expenses easily with mobile apps

Good expense policies and processes should:

Make it simple to follow and easy to comply with
Encourage managers to push back on inappropriate or non-compliant expense submissions
Collect the right amount of expense information
Make it easy to submit and approve expenses from anywhere
Reimburse people quickly and keep employees satisfied
Analyse data routinely and find opportunities for more cost savings

What's Next?

You now know that automated expense management can have a positive impact on every part of your business. Not just in monetary value, but productivity, compliance, fraud prevention, employee satisfaction, and more.

If you want to learn more, download our Essential Guide to Expense Management, or check out our self-guided Concur Expense demo to see for yourself how automated expense management works.