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.

Managing Business Expense Report in a New Company

Managing employee expense reports don't just only make it easy for you to increase productivity but also help you boost your visibility into your company expenses in a clean, precise way. When it comes to traditional ways of expense recording, no one looks forward to filling out tedious amounts of paperwork after a long business trip or exhausting project. However, with the latest cloud based technologies you can easily maintain crisp records of employee expenditure for better accountability, which is critical to the success of a newly established business.

Here are a few ways you can promote ease and transparency in management of employee expense reports in your startup company: Make Sure Your Employees Understand Your Company's Travel Policy Guidelines Before you move onto recording employee expense reports, publish your company's travel policies on your intranet or any other platform which is frequently visited by employees. This is specifically critical for startups. It is good to explain the policies upfront rather than breaking it to the travelers with a rejected expense claim. Added to that, the guidelines you promote should also be an integral part of your expense tracking system.

For example, if your organization requires a receipt for all expenses made over $30, your employees should be required to give an explanation in case they fail to present a receipt. If your organization doesn't reimburse any expenses made over 90 days ago your expense system should be able to enforce that policy for you.

Also consider automating expense entry procedures to make it easy for employees to create reimbursement requests. Choose an online expense tracking software that is straightforward and provides a simple user interface. Keep in mind that most employees don't want to feel like they work in the accounting department when filing an expense claim therefore; implicate default general ledger accounts so that travelling employees find it easy to claim their expenses. Focus on reducing the number of decisions your employees need to make when filing an expense claim to promote the idea of filing them as quickly as possible.

As a startup you need your employees to be fully dedicated to the growth and success of your business and by making the process simple you an easily manage employee expenses.

Another way you can ensure that employee expense report claims are managed efficiently is by using mobile technology. There is a number of business finance software available on the market that can help you integrate GPS mobile technology in your business operations for better accountability. You can setup policies like taking snapshots or scanning receipts as soon as expenses are incurred while the GPS technology can keep track of travel logs with complete details.

When it comes to startups you need to ensure that employee expense claims are managed effectively so that you can lay the foundations to future business success and promote employee career growth.

Expenses Software's Reporting Feature: What Is It?

The expenses software must have a reporting feature. This is no doubt the most essential feature since this will be the very thing that will let the user review the report regarding the present financial situation. For users to have correct access to the situation and come up with suitable adjustments when needed, the report must be something accurate and comprehensive so that all relevant information can be presented. The report's organization can actually be customized depending on the user so that every aspect of the life of the user or even single circumstance can be given appropriate focus. This is the very feature that gives users the chance to review and reflect on the things happening in their investments, accounts and budget.

The reporting features on a budget software will allow report customization so that the awareness of the user about his finances will be maximized, the very essence of management software in expenses. Actually, these reports might be customized so that users will find what they are looking for. For instance, if one user will need a monthly expenses report, excluding those spent for the mandatory expenses like bills, he or she can organize that report so that it can be easily reflected.

Different persons live diverse lives, which just mean that the information in their software will also be different. Customizable reports are the very proof of this since only the needed information will be collected, organized and reflected. The users can also request for the daily, weekly and monthly expenses or they might also narrow things down to specified life categories like bills for the grocery. The results will just show those needed by the users and they can also be altered in no time to show an entirely different information set. This can be broader in range with similar information or something that is much smaller.

Since budget software like this is created to track and manage the user's financial activities as well as that of his or her relatives, it will also be easy to be overcome by all information that can be gathered by the software within a single week. Reports are also designed in such a way that they will be easy to be understood and read for users to locate whatever they need on the time that they need it. Users can also ask for reports that will provide them with just necessary information for the bills to be paid in that specific month or even decide if it will be good to sell or buy some stocks. Since reports are customizable in unique and different ways, the user will not have to dig through all pages of tiring numbers just to locate what the he or she will need. By a mere click of the right button, the needed information can already be seen on the computer screen.

The expenses software is something that will help the users to easily and simply track all of their finances. With the customizable reports, time will be saved for all information will be easily accessed. Works that used to be tedious will now be sweat-free. Frustrations can be avoided and all things will be accurately and instantly be acquired by the users of this unique budget software.

Accurate Way in Tracking Your Expenses

Most small businesses and sole proprietorship find it a challenge to keep accurate records of their regular expenses, as well as the expenses of their employees. The easiest way to do this is to make an expense report template that employees can fill out to record any expense that they pay out. It does not matter if you reconcile and file these reports on a weekly or monthly basis, or whenever you need to. The most important thing is that every bit of expense is on record.

It is not enough to have an expense report template ready, though. This can be easily done, as there are websites that you can download it from. These downloadable templates will usually have all the details that you need for your report. The more important thing is to make the filing of the forms a routine. Your report should necessarily include receipts of what you paid out, mileage documentary for your travels, even logs of phone calls that you made to overseas clients and suppliers. To make sure you don't leave out anything important when you make your expense report template, it is always better to have a checklist in mind. For example, your template should bear the signature of the person filing it. It should also include the dates when the expenses were incurred and paid out, as this would be useful when checking against available receipts. It should also ask for receipts to be attached, if there are any. Finally, it should also ask for accurate client information in relation to whom the expenses were made. You will need this when charging the expense back against the client account.

The sooner you get your expense report filing system in order, the better you can track your expenditures. If you allow your unreported expenses to pile up, thinking that you can always recall them when you need to, expect to fail to do so. Especially when running a business, remember that it is always better to be sure than to risk it.

Time Saving with Expense Software

Organizations are implied for making benefit and contribute something towards the improvement of the general public. In the event that it were not the specialists then it would have never been feasible for the world to reach where it has come to today. Each business needs to be overseen in such a way, to the point that it makes a ton of benefit and brings about least cost while fulfilling its partners. On the off chance that you are a worker of an organization then you know how you can assert different sorts of expenses from your organization.

The matter of business is to work together and nothing else. This implies that business ought to focus on its center exercises and it ought to attempt to diminish the time which it spends on different exercises. For this reason, outsourcing of work has come into the scene. Such a variety of software and projects are utilized by organizations to spare their time and cash. You may have caught wind of expense report software on the off chance that you are connected with an organization in any way. Expense report software is utilized for following the cases which are made by the representatives of associations.