School Districts Remain Vigilant in Oversight of Travel Expenses

Public school districts nationwide are enduring some lean economic times, and they're looking to cut costs wherever possible in order to stay afloat. Some have looked to travel expense management as one area where they can trim their budgets - many educators' schedules are jam-packed with business trips, and superintendents are working to shear those itineraries down to just the bare essentials.

One example of this trend comes from Simpson County, Mississippi, where the school board recently approved over $30,000 in travel expenses for a single month. One of the requests, for an extravagant trip to a conference in Las Vegas, asked for $5,000 paid out in advance, including $1,323 for a five-day stay at Caesar's Palace. The requests were ultimately approved by a 3-2 vote, but the preceding contentious debate was a healthy one, according to the Magee Journal.

"We don't rubber-stamp everything they ask for," board president Larry Cockrell told the paper. "We want to make sure it's necessary/"

This is hardly one isolated case. St. Paul, Minnesota also recently had a lengthy discussion of its school board's travel expenses, according to the Pioneer-Press.

In these situations, expense management software can be a tremendous aid to fiscal responsibility. School boards need to new use with taxpayers' money, and software solutions can help monitor every dollar spent.

Upcoming Webinar: Leveraging Technology to Simplify T&E Expense Reporting Processes for Employees and Managers

Join us on Tuesday, July 22nd from 2:00 PM ET – 3:00 PM ET as Certify President and Co-Founder Bob Neveu hosts a webinar on the new technologies CFOs are employing to increase insight and drive growth in their organizations.

Bob will dive into the current travel and entertainment expense management practices used by leading finance professionals and organizations in the US and discuss ways finance professionals are leveraging technology to drive down travel and entertainment costs and increase visibility into employee expenditures.

Participants can look forward to learning about current trends in expense report management, utilization of expense report software to drive policy compliance rates up to 40%, strategies to reduce processing costs by 70% with automated expense solutions, and best practices of T&E automation with Certify’s platform.

Interested participants should register for the webinar early, as there are limited seats for this event. Those not able to make the live event can register and receive a recorded copy by email.

Why Your Company Needs to Use Automated Expense Reporting

For so many years the innovation of the technology in the market plays a big role in any aspect of our life. Such as in the world business technology place a big role in every transactions that happen with the use of the latest technology almost the medium and large companies have their own sites where every clients all over the world can reach them. One thing that bothers with the employee and managers are when it comes to reporting time. Reporting is a big part in the company especially if it is dealing with your expenses. Sometimes hard times with the employee are taking place since you are dealing with the numbers all day and so many things in your time table error is possible to happen. Why you need to get through to the errors all over again and again which you can use the technology through the automated expense reporting. In my opinion here are the reasons you just switch your reporting with the automation.

Accurate report on time. Since you are in the hurry with all the tasks that you have in your time table sometimes delays might happen. Eliminate this delays makes your report in the right time that you are needed it be automated.

Stay with the Paperless Reporting. Since it is automated you don’t need to waste a piece of paper all over again and again just for your report.

Organized Reporting Process. Being organized is very important to the employee so that all the works will be done in the right time. When it comes to your report you must need to be organizing so that your report will be done in the right time. Automating your reports eliminates the errors in combining with the others all you have to do is follow all the steps needed just read and click is easy right?

Saving time and money. Since you are with the automated way of your reporting you can submit your reports in the right time and your company saves the money because the employee don’t need to pay more with the overtime but somehow the employee will have every expense reports in time.

Big Reasons that your Business Benefits from Expense Reporting Software

Certify's expense management software allows business to make their expense reporting process entirely digital - and, in turn, allows them to make their expense reporting process entirely mobile. The employees at your office are likely attached to their smartphones all day - answering emails, sending texts, dialing into conference calls and much more. When employees are on their business trip, their smartphones may as well be a traveling office. They use those devices to stay connected. So shouldn't they be able to use them when creating and publishing their expense reports?

When your office implements automated expense reporting software, it'll be making the involved process much easier for employees to complete. Yet that will only be true if employees are able to make use of that software via smartphones and other mobile devices. Here are four reasons - among many others - that mobile-based expense reporting is necessary for the modern office:

1. Handle your expense reporting on the road Employees hate having to take time out of their day to arrange their expense reports, vet them against company policies, and publish the results. With Certify Mobile, they won't even need to handle their expense reports inside the office. The program automatically creates an expense report at the end of your company's dictated period, and all the employee has to do is verify and publish the results. Employees who use Certify will have their expense reports published in a matter of minutes, instead of hours - they can likely complete the entire process within the confines of a day's commute.

2. All-over-the-place access As mentioned above, Certify users can even verify and publish their expense reports during their morning commutes. That's because our cloud-based database allows for access to information from anywhere. When you're out on a business trip, you can quickly check through your costs to-date to ensure that you're not violating company policy. If you're a manager, you can watch costs in real-time during a business trip, and reallocate funds as necessary. If you're on the road and realize you need to publish your expense report from your mobile phone, you'll be able to do so. Certify Mobile allows for all-over-the-place access - which will never fail to come in handy for the on-the-go worker.

3. There's no way for data to be lost With Certify, all your expense-related data is backed up in the cloud, so you never have to worry about important data being lost in the shuffle, accidentally deleted or harmed in any other way. However, that's not the only way that mobile-based expense reporting protects your company information. Certify reshapes the way that a business approaches expense reporting - and our automated process ensures that no important documents are ever lost again.

Certify's automated process means that employees never even have to handle the paper receipts that regard the costs they've rung up. They simply have to take a picture of the receipt - our program culls all the necessary data from that receipt image automatically. Every office has been beset by confusion when a big-ticket receipt or another expense-related document accidentally goes missing. With Certify, that'll never happen again - because there's no need for the paper receipts to be stored in the first place.

4. Make things easier for your employees In short, automated expense reporting programs with mobile support - such as Certify - simply make life easier for employees. It cuts down on the number of documents they need to save while simultaneously allowing for far easier access to expense-based materials. It improves an office in innumerable ways.

Sync Corporate Credit Card Transactions Using Expense Reporting Software

A corporate credit card is a major responsibility that an employee should not take lightly. While this card is frequently provided to staff members to help them make business purchases when necessary, it can be problematic if company leaders ignore expense reports.

Top-of-the-line expense management software helps businesses deal with corporate credit card transactions. Business leaders who require their work teams to supply receipts can use Certify to simplify the expense reporting process thanks in part to a first-rate platform.

The importance of quality corporate credit card expense reporting Offering a corporate credit card to an employee is a difficult decision for a business, particularly for those that have strict budgets. Company officials will consider all of their options before providing a corporate card to a staff member, and their decisions could have far-flung effects.

A corporate credit card is designed to make it easier for businesses to manage on-the-job expenses. However, businesses that fail to devote the necessary time and resources to their expense reporting processes could struggle. In fact, some companies might even find that corporate credit cards can be costly and time-consuming if these firms do not manage them properly.

With Certify, business leaders can minimize the challenges they might otherwise face with corporate credit card transactions. This intuitive system accepts information from major credit card companies such as American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and Diners Club, along with issuing banks. Meanwhile, companies can quickly sync corporate credit card transactions with Certify and reap the rewards of the solution for years.

Certify is a user-friendly system A fast, effective expense reporting process is crucial for companies, especially for businesses that want to optimize their productivity. By using Certify, companies can help employees manage their corporate credit card transactions and submit accurate, timely expense reports.

For example, a worker who makes a purchase with his or her corporate credit card will see the transaction appear in his or her Certify Wallet within one to two days. This employee can take advantage of Certify's electronic capture methods to provide numerous details about the expense and submit an expense report to his or her supervisor for review.

Certify matches credit card charges with receipts to deliver a clean expense report to managers. The system is worthwhile for companies that issue corporate credit cards to workers and may help firms noticeably boost their efficiency.

Expense Reporting Process Goes Automated

As an industry leader, a company sets itself apart from rivals by investing in state-of-the-art tools regularly. Additionally, a business that wants to improve workplace productivity could depend on first-rate systems to ensure that employees can finish tasks quickly and efficiently.

With Certify CloudConnect, a firm can automate its expense reporting process. In fact, an organization may be able to profit for years to come, as it will be able to streamline expense management.

Handling business challenges with a quality expense reporting solution In the past, a business that used manual expense reports may have needed several hours each day to monitor its operating costs. If workers were required to track expenses on the go, these team members might have struggled if they needed to provide manual reports.

However, a company can become more efficient if it depends on Certify. By incorporating this expense reporting software into its everyday operations, a company could help its staff members every day. Certify enables employees to snap photos of receipts on their smartphones and camera-enabled tablets, making it incredibly simple to submit timely, accurate materials to their superiors. Meanwhile, this platform automatically creates expense reports, allowing workers to send details to managers from multiple destinations.

Auditing Problem Use Expense Management Software

When it comes to business there are a lot of things that is on your time table to make the tings in the right time. Logging travel and expense reports can be a meticulous task. For employees traveling on the job, on the road or overseas, almost every moment is always booked up: a dinner here, a meeting there, a conference call here, and a meet-and-greet there. Finding the time to intricately record each and every dollar spent isn't just challenging. There are times when it approaches the impractical. But with cloud-based, automated expense reporting software, the struggle to keep up with every spent cent can be let go. Now all it takes is the moment needed to take a photo of the receipt – the software can take care of the rest.

The need for expense reporting software Public officials in Ottawa are certainly wishing they had taken greater precautions against improper expense management. Senator Pamela Wallin was audited as a result of questionable expenditures, according to a report from The Star news outlet.

Wallin was the fourth Canadian senator to be audited. While three of her peers were cited and reprimanded for annual costs of $22,000 used to pay for their homes, Wallin was facing accusations that she misplaced almost $60,000 in expenditures, according to the source. She had already paid back $38,000 to the state, illustrating the high costs of incorrect expense reporting. Especially within politics, the need for every cost to be accurate is nothing short of integral.

"We are very mindful that we don't want to be perceived as if we're doing anything that is not correct," said Gerald Corneau, the senator in charge of the internal economy committee, which tracks budgets and administrative costs.

Track every cost with Certify With the help of top-of-the-line expense management software, you can ensure that not a single dollar is used incorrectly. Yes, your employees will love the fact that they can log their expenses from their smartphone, with the click of a button – but you and your team of managers will love the oversight abilities you gain just as much.

Thanks to Certify, you can verify each expense in real time, ensuring that individual costs and the overall trip budget remain in line with projections on a day-by-day basis. Don't wait to look at your expenses until it's too late. You would never allow employees to spend recklessly on location. With Certify, you can ensure that it doesn't happen anywhere – not on business trips, not on conferences, and not anywhere else.