The traditional expense processing method is flawed. Yes, you heard it right.
The existing paper or spreadsheet-based process of manually scanning, recording, storing and submitting expenses is depleting your time and resources. And what’s more, it’s really frustrating your employees. Especially, your finance team!
Take a look at Rahul...
Rahul Mishra, finance manager, at XL Pro Pvt. Ltd. is having a tough time at the end of this month. Just like last month’s end.
Frustrating manual process
He has to verify and approve multiple expense claims, especially from XL Pro’s sales team members. Before approval, he has to verify whether the claims and bills submitted for approval match what each team member is entitled for.
- If yes, then he has to verify that the bills submitted match the claim for each employee. Then, calculate differences, if any, and reimburse the desired amount.
- If no, he has to inform those employees (who submitted bills more than what they can claim for) to produce only those bills that match their respective entitlements.
During this tedious and time-consuming process, he encounters few redundant challenges every month.
Rahul’s challenges
Last-minute expense claim submissions
Every organization has few employees who always do everything at the eleventh hour! Just before the deadline or extended deadline! These employees don’t submit their huge backlog of expenses until hours or a day before the expense claim submission deadline.
We understand that sometimes there could be genuine reasons for delayed submissions, people are busy, and expenses are the last thing on their minds.
However, this causes a BIG spike in workload for Rahul. This is a significant problem in large organizations. Especially, when added to his regular end-of-month activities like payrolls and accounts.
Misplaced or lost receipts and bills
Few employees have lost their original receipts and bills. This is a highly stressful thing to happen both to the employee who’s claiming the reimbursement AND Rahul.
Poor Rahul has to inform those employees that they won’t be reimbursed their due amount because of lost receipts! He needs original bills and receipts during internal and external audits and without those bills in place, he’ll be in a soup. It’s a catch 22 situation for him and therefore, he has to take a tough stance. This is never a good situation for the morale or motivation of either employee.
It may also lead to friction between Rahul and those employees and may lead to adoption of fraudulent methods.
Errors in submission due to ignorance
Few employees submit expenses with incorrect purchase amount, currency or merchant information! Then, it’s Rahul’s job to play detective and spend time identifying and rectifying inaccuracies where they exist.
Rahul also encounters a few ignoramuses! They don’t know XL Pro’s exact expense policy or rules and entitlements set for events, business travel and daily allowances...
Checking expense claims is a vital part of the expense process. Rushed submissions and lack of understanding of expense limits, expense-related rules and entitlements lead to mistakes. Just think about the time that Rahul spends fixing these claims and chasing employees, which in turn leads to delayed reimbursements.
The stack of expense claims and attached bills grow at his desk even though he clears quite a few every day. He’s also awaiting few claims and original travel bills from remote and currently traveling employees, which he can process only after he receives them via courier.
Don’t be like Rahul. Be smart.
‘Get settled’ with your expense claims by switching over to an expense management software that helps you manage multiple claims.
Enjoy multifold benefits
Enjoy the benefits that a cloud-based expense management software offers:
- No logistics costs or delays: No more reliance on external courier services or internal snail mails (with heavy attachments of scanned bills) to send original bills and claim forms. No petty expenses, such as courier charges or long waiting periods. No more ‘lost in transit’ claims!
- Accessible soft copies of original bills: All original bills and claims will be accessible always. This makes auditing a breeze for your accounting team.
- Faster submission and reimbursement cycles: It makes a lot more sense to submit and process expenses in real-time over the space of the working month, rather than submitting all at one go. This means that your employees get reimbursed quicker too. Cloud-based expense management software makes this a reality.
- Reduced instances of misplaced or lost bills: With an expense management software, misplaced or lost bills and receipts will be a rarity as employees can upload and submit original bills/receipts and claims faster in real-time without waiting to courier a bundle of them together at a later stage. This reduces the chances and time period during which a bill or receipt can get lost or misplaced.
- Reduced errors in submission due to ignorance: Expense management software allows you to set up expense rules and configurations based on your organization’s expense policy. Once setup, the software will ensure that employees will not be able to submit expenses, which are above the limits set for them. This, in turn, will reduce errors and verification time required by your finance team before reimbursement. The software empowers your employees and managers to accurately upload, save, submit and approve expenses, respectively, while enforcing company policies, approval limits, and other business rules.
- No more location or distance-related constraints: The icing on the cake is that your final finance approver/ accounts personnel can be located anywhere: either in your head office, registered office, either in the same city or another! As greytHR is on the cloud, there won’t be any delays due to distance and location constraints.
Experience how greytHR enables you to process paperless expense claims in max four steps:
- Upload bills and submit claims (by the employee).
- Review and send for next-level approval (by first-level reviewer; could be set up as immediate manager or supervisor).
- Review and send for final approval (by second-level reviewer; could be set up as head of department or location).
- Approve and disburse (by final reviewer; could be set up to be finance manager/controller for the company).
