Let me start with the big question.

Does your company use an automated system to manage and report the expenses of their employees?

We have conducted a survey on many professionals working across different industries. What we found out is nothing short of a revelation. Most of them seemed really confused about necessity of a dedicated solution for expense management!

Do you fall within the same group of confused people? Then I have something to tell you.

On average a company spends $20.18 for processing a single expense report manually.

Can you believe it?

$20.18 for one report! If your company has a team of more than 50 employees, how many reports you need to generate each year? Please go on and do the sum.

But there are ways you can spend much lesser amount and cover everything from expense reporting to reimbursement. Would you love to know the tricks? Then keep on reading the next sections of this blog.

Why You Need Expense Reporting and Management System

So, I hope you have done the maths and found out how much manual expense reporting costs you each year. But money is not the only downside involved here. Workplace efficiency, employee motivation, process accuracy are a few other aspects that take a major hit. Let me tell you briefly about how an automated system can help you out!

Saves time to report expense claims

Traditionally employees are required to submit a written account of their expense with valid proofs. It will then go through several bureaucratic steps to get final approval. With an integrated expense reporting solution, it will take only minutes instead of weeks!

Eliminates the scope of error in data input

Whenever you are required to give manual input repetitively, it increases the chance of error. But this kind of automated solution does not leave any room for inaccuracy. Once the claim is submitted with necessary documents, it will be reviewed systematically.

Validate the expense claims with preset rules and conditions

Every company has their own terms of conditions for expense reimbursements. Again, these rules often vary according to the job role and status of an employee. An expense management system ideally allows you to preset these rules to differentiate valid and invalid refund requests.

Reduces the steps for request approval and reimbursement

These steps are huge productivity loss for any company. Not just that, employees start to get frustrated if they are not refunded on time. Why make a process complicated and time-consuming when that can be done with just a few clicks? An expense management system gives you that leverage.

Integrates with the system to ensure direct payment

This is not a must have feature for the kind of solution we are talking about. However, it is a delighter. A top quality expense solution should allow the company to send the refund directly to the employee’s bank or other accounts. To do that, it should integrate seamlessly with the main system.

Your all-in-one solution for expense management

Remember the promise I made earlier? A solution that will make your refunding process super-easy? Something that delivers a great value for money?

Let me present before you Reimbursement– an amazing extension of WP ERP’s accounting module. In the following section, I will talk about how you can use it to automate those functionalities.

Create receipt with necessary details

To create a new expense claim, employees have to log into WP dashboard. Then they need to click on Reimbursement under the HR Management plugin. After that, they have to click on “new receipt” button that will take them to the following page.

In this page, they have to fill in necessary details to submit an expense report. For example, select employees name in the “receipt from” option. Then they have to insert receipt date, reference no, expense account, amount, memo etc. in respective fields.

Attach files to support the claim

You can make it obligatory for employees to provide a supporting proof for each expense claim. In that case, they will have to upload the files from ‘attachment’ option. After that they need to press “submit for approval” which will instantly send you a notification in both your dashboard and email.

After employees click on that button, an invoice will be generated for them. Now they can view all their requests and approval status from the user dashboard.

Approve request from admin dashboard

Now it is your turn to view all the expense claims from your dashboard. Check out the details and approve the ones that meet company’s compliance.

All you need to do is navigate to your reimbursement dashboard under the accounting section. Find out the submitted claims from “awaiting for approval” page. If the refund claim is valid, click on “submit for payment” button. It will automatically generate an invoice against this claim.

Generate voucher and confirm payment for approved requests

To generate a payment voucher for the expenses, you have to click on payment button on the top of the screen. Then fill in relevant fields for example who reported the expense, date of the receipt, reference number, memo etc and click on the payment button on right bottom corner. Your payment voucher is ready now.

You can start by clicking on “awaiting for payment” option in your dashboard. Just fill in the payment info and click on ‘payment’. It will create a voucher for you. You can also cancel a voucher anytime by hovering on a receipt and selecting the ‘void’ option.

Real time overview of the expense requests

The admin dashboard gives you a real time overview of all your employee’s expense requests. You can check everything at a glance from there. How many receipts were created, how many of them are due or partially paid. You can also filter the requests that are yet to be reviewed or approved.

Business benefits of the dashboard

Interestingly, this dashboard gives you a solid idea about your business expenses. You can check out the status of expense reports in real time and take necessary interventions. If someone is claiming exorbitant amount of money compared to others, you need to investigate it further. Also, if you find out certain business process is costing you a lot of money, then you can consider redesigning it. These are the benefits that comes with the smart reimbursement dashboard.

Print vouchers and receipts

Last but not the least, you can print all your payment vouchers and receipts directly. Many solutions require you to convert these data into .csv before you can print it. Reimbursement eliminates this hassle and saves up your time!

Let me sum it up for you

I believe there is no point of incurring extra costs for manual expense reporting. Apart from the financial hits, it has a negative impact on your work culture as well. So it is time you should embrace a solution that automate expense reporting in your organization. Reimbursement is highly recommended for several reasons. It is feature rich, it is user friendly, it is inexpensive and it comes with a powerful ERP suite named WP ERP.

Check Out How Reimbursement Works!