Businesses with traveling employees always have to put forth extra effort where managing their information and data is concerned – the simple fact that employees are on the road means that managing travel expenses becomes necessary. Travel expense software makes this much easier to do, but not all programs are created equally. Finding the best ones generally comes down to one key thing – the features that they offer. And when you begin looking into the various features available, it becomes clear that receipt imaging is one you have to have.

On the surface, receipt imaging might not seem like much. Employees are able to use a mobile version of their travel expense software to photograph and upload their receipts while they’re on the road instead of keeping all of their paper receipts organized. But once you take a look at what that one basic feature can do, you’ll see why so many other businesses have utilized programs that offer receipt imaging.

Here are just some of the basic benefits you, your employees, and your company enjoy when using travel expense software with receipt imaging.

• The benefits begin with the employee. Once you remove the need for them to manually manage and keep track of paper receipts, you take a huge amount of stress off their shoulders. This alone is able to help boost morale and inspire your team.
• Productivity increases for those employees, too. Since they no longer have to spend time tracking receipts they are able to focus on other things like generating sales and money for your company.
• That increased productivity extends back to the office as well. The team that is in charge of managing expenses are able to monitor expenses, approve them, and archive them as they occur instead of having to deal with huge amounts of paperwork and receipt when an employee finally returns from a business trip.
• Receipt imaging also helps reduce the frequency of errors and cuts down on the opportunity for fraud to occur. As a result, your company’s bottom line improves due to the fact that only approved expenses are being processed and no clerical errors exist.
• That reduction in errors and mistakes means that your business is also able to stay compliant and avoid any fees, fines, and penalties that can come with noncompliance.

All in all, receipt imaging is the one feature you need to look for when selecting good travel expense software. Other options like data reports, credit card integration, and currency conversion are important as well, but the way that receipt imaging changes everything means that it’s the must-have feature in any program.