For employees, the process of processing expense reports is not always known or clear. Finance teams frequently receive statements with filling errors, and approvals and processing require a lot of manual effort. The best solution for both categories of process participants is automation. Even the best spending policy can't prevent bills from being a bit of a hassle. But successfully managing the process with an app can make things a lot less painful.
- Difficulty tracking employee expense reimbursements
- Solution
- Expense reports simplified with Oraroo
- The Oraroo advantage
For most companies, the hard part isn't defining the types of expenses that employees can claim reimbursement for. These are mostly classic company categories (travel expenses, transportation, accommodation, customer protocol, etc.) and employees will mostly be able to use their common sense to identify them.
The hard part – both for employees and the company as a whole – is to stay in control of these costs.
For the employee
It is difficult for employees for several reasons:
- The way they pay at work is different from the way they pay in their private lives
- Costs can be small and irregular and therefore easy to forget
- Employees need to understand the correct way to report expenses and especially what types of documents are required
In general, the biggest problem is that the process is not always well formalized and communicated and most employees are not familiar with it.
For the company
In this case, we are talking about the finance team. They are the ones who have to handle every employee expense claim.
For them, the problems are more impactful:
- Expense reports are often incomplete and full of errors
- Bills can arrive anytime during the month or quarter, and employees expect to be reimbursed promptly
- Processing statements requires a lot of effort with manual data entry, which is even more aggravating when there are errors
To overcome these challenges, changes must be made. And the best way to improve expense report processing for both employees and finance teams is automation.
This approach starts with a good expense management tool to help employees make claims. Most of these start with a mobile app that guides the employee through the process. There are mandatory requirements to ensure that no information is missing.
The employee can simply take a photo of their receipt. They don't have to dig through their wallets once a month and try to remember what each payment was for. Which is excellent.
But the major benefit of these systems is the impact they have on finance teams. First, there is no more manual data entry. The employee has already filled in all the information.
The manager as well as those responsible for finance can quickly check the employee's statement, and then approve for payment (or reject). This process takes a few seconds.
No need to search through your inbox and open attachments.
Receipts are digitally attached to the expense reports.
Approved expense reports are then sent for payment and registration to accounting applications.
It is alarming to think about the number of hours spent on manual processes. Processing expense reports is probably already costing employees and the finance team valuable time, simply because the current process is inconvenient.
Unfortunately, even the best expense policy can't prevent expense reports from being a bit of a hassle – for the finance department it's a big administrative burden, while employees often have to wait a long time to be reimbursed.
But managing the process successfully can make things a lot less painful.
We have created special tools in Oraroo to manage the entire expense reports process for employees and financial teams. Employees can create a expense report, receive manager approval, and send the complete request to the finance team in seconds.
Once an expense has been incurred, the employee can take a photo of it with his mobile phone and upload it to his own "gallery" of expenses in Oraroo in order to include them in the expense report.
Once an expense has been incurred, the employee can take a photo of it with his mobile phone and upload it to his own "gallery" of expenses in Oraroo in order to include them in the expense report.
Upon returning from a business trip, the employee decides to make the appropriate expense report. In Oraroo, he can create a statement and select the expenses that are part of it. It then initiates the expense report approval flow.
Upon returning from a business trip, the employee decides to make the appropriate expense report. In Oraroo, he can create a expense report and select the expenses that are part of it. It then initiates the expense report approval flow.
Beyond the general aspects related to the processing of expense reports in any company, there are those related to the re-invoicing (at least a part) of expenses to customers, in service companies.
The integrated approach of the operational aspects of the project with the commercial ones offers very good traceability of the expenses on the project and at the level of the contracts.
Oraroo allows re-invoicing of expenses per project. Press the "Reinvoicing" button, manually select the expenses to be re-invoiced and create the invoice.
This then follows the review flow. The generated invoice can be viewed in contract details.