Expense Management Trends Every Business Should Know

Surprisingly, around 49% of companies rely on manual expense management process. The expense management trends have helped organizations understand the industry trends and best practices. Let us see some valuable insights into the expense software industry.

Manual methods are painstaking

Enterprises are leading the way in adopting the technology, around 39 percent of companies are using web-based expense report solution, and 32 percent are relying on ERP for expense management. Companies that adopt can benefit from automating manual processes – allowing employees to focus on other productive areas.

Manual expense management is risky and would result in poor visibility. And, without having proper visibility into expenses, the finance department can’t negotiate better contracts with vendors.

Consistency

The most significant pain point for the finance departments were missing receipts or submitting reports without a receipt. Around 50% of employees fail to submit reports on time. It is easy to determine why finance departments would be frustrated for holding up reimbursements, and accurate reporting is a nightmare at all times.

Time spent in reconciling, reviewing and approving expense reports is again the biggest concern. With the average number of expense reports being 50% of the employee workforce, manually reviewing and approving expense reports can be tedious and require process improvement.

Another pain point is errors on expense reports and around 30% of respondents citing this issue. Considering employees who submit reports on time and within the policy, the finance department wants to spend less time expense policing and more time on strategic activities.

Areas of improvement
Reducing expense reporting costs cited to be the top organizational pressures to automate T & E management. Improving the expense reporting process was cited as the most critical aspect for organizations all over the world. Poor visibility into employee travel and expense reporting was the second biggest challenge driving transformation with finance departments. When finance departments don’t have visibility into T & E expense reporting, it is difficult for them to make strategic decisions that help organizations move forward. With the right integrations, automated expense solutions can provide real-time insights into expense data that finance departments can use to plan budgets.

Corporate travel booking is the third biggest area for improvement. About 90% of organizations have a corporate travel policy in place, but only two percent use technology to enforce policy – putting the company at huge risk with manual policy checks or weak policy enforcement.

Allowing corporate travelers to book itineraries without any tracking tools leaves the company at risk for overspending. Having a corporate travel booking solution that is user-friendly for employees, travel managers, and everyone can help improve compliance and budget while keeping employee expenses under control.

If you are experiencing any struggles or inefficiencies, SutiExpense can help you overcome the obstacles by incorporating business rules in the application. The expense reporting solution flags out-of-policy booking and notifies approvers or finance department if expenses go beyond corporate policies.