Managing Expenses and Reimbursements

A small firm in the business of installing the security and surveillance system having a few sites working simultaneously at any time, each site managed by a team of two or three technicians. Technicians incur expenses for travelling, fuel, meals, and small accessories. They submit these bills to the accountant on irregular intervals depending on their need for cash. The accountant then sorts these bills which are enormous in numbers, makes entries in an Excel sheet, prints the statement and attach with the bills, makes reimbursements to the technicians, and then make entries for these expenses and payments in the accounting system. Terrific, isn't it?

Recording, reporting and managing expenses by the field staff like site technicians and supervisors, sales and marketing staff is a big challenge for small and medium enterprises.

Problems with this way of working

As seen in the above scenario, the traditional workflow in expense reporting has many disadvantages and often create problems.

It is time-consuming for everyone.

The field staff has to submit the bills personally to the accountant for reimbursement. The accountant has to go through the pile of bills submitted by field staff, prepare the statement, and then again enter in the accounting software.
It is prone to error.

With duplication of entries and the stress of entering many bills, there is a big chance of making errors. The bills can be lost in transit by the employee or accountant, as these bills will be small and different in size. The technicians will be in a hurry to take cash and leave when they submit the bills. These all add to the stress for the accountant and tends to make mistakes.

There is no checks and control.

There is no review of these expenses and approvals embedded in the process. There is no proper control on these expenses that add up to a large amount even though they are small individually. In other words, it is almost impossible for a small firm as it will be time consuming and need resources.
There is no control over advances and reimbursement.

Some technicians might have received an advance for meeting the expenses. There is no proper following and management of these advances. It is often missed or overlooked, which dent cash flow and sometimes leads to misappropriation.

Delayed payments cause frustration.

The field staff have to submit the bills physically; then the accountant has to reconcile the bills and statement to make the reimbursement. The reimbursement often gets delayed due to this process which raises complaints and disputes. It, in turn, cause frustration to the employees as well as the accountant.

Expense management system

A good expense management application can automate many tasks in the workflow. Employees get reimbursement on time, and the accountant is relieved from a lot of stress and effort, saves lots of time, and makes better control possible.

Proper expense management system can make life easier for everyone. It will streamline the whole process, remove duplication of work and provide better control.

The expense management system will have a mobile app for each field employee. They record the expenses as and when it is incurred and take a snap of the bill from the app itself, which take just a couple of taps and a few seconds. They then submit the expense report periodically as per the company's policy, daily, weekly or monthly from the mobile app. Even the submission of the report can be automated on a predefined interval. The manager or the accountant gets the statements with all the details and copy of the bills on his system or mobile, review it and either approve, if everything is in order, or send back with comments to rectify and resubmit. On approval, the relevant accounting entries get updated in the respective expense ledger, and advance gets adjusted. All these processes are executed online either on mobile or a computer screen.

The field employee can submit the expense report from anywhere; the manager can review and approve the expense statement from anywhere, and accounts get updated automatically on approval of the report. Employees are happy as they get reimbursement on time and free of hassles, the accountant is happy as his workload is reduced, and the manager is happy as he has better control over expense