Employees often think that they have a tedious job ahead of them when they return from a trip and it’s time to file an expense report. What most of them don’t understand is that the tedium doesn’t just belong to them, especially if many people have gone of the same trip. Accounting and/or finance staff now have the job of waiting for every report to come in, checking it, verifying all the purchases and seeing if everything is compliant with company policy, and, if things all check out, re-entering that data into a database to ensure that all company records are kept up to date and financial transactions are accurate.

That’s a lot of record keeping and administration for a part of the company that has a very important task, which is ensuring the overall financial health and a company’s finances. Taking time away to make sure that travel expenses are properly reported and entered into the system is using these valuable resources for largely mechanical tasks that—while they are competent at—fall below their true value and qualifications in the company.

Automated Expense Reports Free Up Your Staff

With automated expense report software like ExpensePoint, the necessary task of processing expense reports goes from daunting and time consuming to efficient and easy. Because employees find it faster and easier to use the software on their computers or mobile devices, expense reports are filed as they happen, rather than at the end of a trip. Because image receipt capture systems take photos of receipts, there’s no need to attach them or photocopy them and submit them with a report.

This means that for finance staff, there’s no need to wait until a trip is over and an employee has finally submitted a report. Reports can be checked online, as each expense is made, quickly verified and approved, or investigated if the system flags an expenditure as non-compliant. No longer do staff have to wade through physical reports, PDF files and spreadsheets that are all saying the same thing. The information is instantly available online and can be accessed by anyone with permission.

This means that rather than hours, days and weeks spent simply reconciling expense reports, automation can handle much of the accounting itself, leaving staff free to investigate and resolve problems on a much faster basis, and ensure that the staff that are diligently making accurate reports are quickly, efficiently processed. And that means that your accountants and other financial staff have more time to focus on the important aspects of keeping your company running, rather than chasing after employees to fill out expense reports properly.