The word expense immediately draws negative feelings. One reason, because yes, it essentially means cost. But, what if we shifted that story – and used it as a way to visualise new ways to save?
Traditional expense policies are created with two main goals. First, to reduce expense fraud amongst employees. Second, to have complete control over all employee spending. These goals are often set with good intentions, but the follow through ends up costing businesses way more than they know.
If you ticked any of the above boxes and/or grimaced recalling some bad memories – looks like you’ve seen the dark side of expense management (we have too.) And, even worse, these convoluted processes are not just headache-inducing but are hard on your company’s pockets.
Lets imagine you’re on a work trip and you’d like to expense a cup of coffee. Here’s how it would be expensed using a traditional expense management system:
If you’re the employee with the expenses to claim and you skip a step you fear not getting a full refund. If you’re working in finance and don’t get all the forms completed correctly or enter the data incorrectly it could lead to a bigger error. Either way – most businesses stick to this process to feel safe, keep a tight budget, and reduce fraud. But do they?
In short. No. Traditional means of expense management have both direct and hidden costs.
What a modern expense management platform looks like
So far we’ve established that the traditional way of managing workforce travel expenses costs your business money and employees a whole lot of time. Let’s begin with the data. According to research by The Aberdeen Group report that explored what CFO’s are looking to change about their current expense management practices:
- 50% of CFO’s had the goal of improving compliance with compliance policies
- 41% wanted to enhance business reporting and analytics
- 55% wanted to automate expense management practices
Let’s task the modern spend management system with expensing that same cup of coffee:
Notice, there’s no manager track with a modern system. For your employees, there will be no more need for the collection of receipts, paying out of pocket, submitting reports on time, or waiting for reimbursement.
The benefits for the finance team include simplicity of the entire process, less manual checks, no reimbursements, and no expense reporting. For managers, there’s less time spent approving expenses and no onboarding time or cost. All this trickles down to your bottom line and what your investors are looking for.
Here at Roomex, we offer an end to end expense management solution called RoomexPay. It’s easy to get set up, and we promise to help with any questions directly concerning your business as you get going.
RoomexPay offers visibility and control to finance teams when all company spend
can be monitored and analysed in real-time.
- Prepaid company cards with customisable limits and top up schedules
- No more paperwork, false claims, or manual errors
- Employees will never be left out of pocket with prepaid company cards
- Expenses claimed in seconds when employees can simply snap a picture and categorise their expense on their mobile phones
- Best in class account management to guide you through best practices and the
drafting of an expense policy