Four expense management tips
Businesses of all sizes need to always be on the lookout for how to reduce their costs, and this is especially true for medium sized businesses during expense reporting.
Small tasks such as defining compliant reimbursements and reviewing receipts can quickly add up to wasted time and money on business resources that could be better used to drive growth and profitability.
Fabian Calle, general manager, small to medium business, ANZ, SAP Concur said if processes within a business are complacent or non-existent, it can leave employees feeling lost and even angry at delayed or rejected reimbursements.”
According to SAP Concur, four expense management tips to better manage business costs and approval processes are:
1. Audit your existing process
Reviewing the expense process can offer insights into what employees deal with on a day-to-day basis whenever they submit, review or approve an expense report. Individually examining the processes in place to see how easy or difficult they are can help businesses identify bottlenecks, or even a potential opportunity for fraud.
2. Evaluate for change
Areas of ambiguity identified during a business audit need to be assessed to see how they can be changed. It is no use identifying areas that slow down the expense process if no change is to be done. New online tools are continuously created and easily available to businesses of all sizes to support a smoother expense process. Mobile apps in particular improve workflow by letting employees submit expenses while on the road and giving the finance team access to real-time expense information.
3. Focus on saving time
Unclear processes can lead to wasted time on recreating reports, sorting through receipts and multiple rounds of review from a range of people. Cleaning up and streamlining the expense report process does more than save employees time, it reduces business cost and lowers the potential for fraudulent expense claims.
4. Automate
Businesses should automate their processes. Automation of the expense process reduces the risk of fraud, increases compliance and maximises finance staff efficiency so that they work on more value adding tasks for the business.
Fabian Calle said, “By ensuring that the expense process is clear and everyone who reviews and approves expense reports knows the rules and how to spot red flags, businesses decrease the chances of fraudulent claims and save on the bottom line.”
