How Accountants Can Work Smarter, Not Harder

When reviewing expense reports, accountants are often tasked with numerous undesirable assignments: manually reviewing each individual receipt, ensuring all reimbursements are viable in terms of company policy, and informing employees—sometimes high-ranking staff—when they’ve spent too much. So, how can accountants alleviate some of the pain points associated with expense reports? By leveraging best-in-class technology to simplify tasks, save time and enforce policies.

Simplify tasks to save time With an automated process, all relevant data is presented in one place (for example, a web application), eliminating the chaos of multiple spreadsheets, PDFs, printed reports and paper receipts. This simplification can save accountants a significant amount of time and improve the accuracy of expense data.

Accountants can potentially spend hours each month (or each week!) reconciling expense report data, reviewing for errors and addressing policy violations, such as incorrect codes or payment amounts. “This is the definition of tedium for your talented team,” mentioned CEO of Certify, Bob Neveu in a guest article for CFO Daily News. Case Study: Holland Company LP

In 2011, Holland—a railway supply industry pioneer—implemented Certify as an expense management solution. The company began saving six hours of work every month for its accounting department by eliminating the need for manually entering data or resolving policy violation conflicts. The accounting team was able to repurpose that time toward more productive tasks throughout the month. Read the full case study here Leverage technology to enforce policies

Armed with automation, accountants can let the system handle policy violations. The software will flag the expenses that violate company policy immediately, informing the employee and preventing accountants from having to confront those who spent too much. Accountants should be able to focus on the numbers and budgets, instead of on paper receipts and company policy handbooks. Along with task simplification and immediate policy enforcement, an automated expense management system also gives accountants access to valuable insights. Company representatives can analyze organization-wide costs by department, employee and project, and through a number of comparable metrics.