A busy travelling consultant or salesperson will often spend a substantial sum on items like petrol, highway tolls, parking, hotel rooms, meals, and entertaining clients in any given month. While companies will naturally reimburse their employees for any authorised outlay, the traditional process for submitting claims is prone to delays and errors that can result in late or incorrect settlements. Expense tracking software digitises the process, providing businesses with an accurate, speedy, paperless expense management solution.

There are off-the-shelf products like “Expense Tracker” and “Capture Expense”, but these are generic solutions that offer only a limited range of fundamental functions that take no account of a company’s unique operational needs. There are no genuinely one-size-fits-all solutions. The preferred approach when looking for the best expense claims software is to find an experienced developer and commission a bespoke application.

Some Essential Features of Effective Expense Tracking Software

It is essential to distinguish between spend management and expense management software. The former offers a means to manage a company’s entire operational expenditure. The latter monitors the expenses incurred by individual employees and will commonly include the following features:

• Categorisation: The software might organise employee expenses into categories like transport, meals, entertainment, and accommodation to provide a more detailed tracking record.

• Reporting: The software eliminates the need for employees to submit conventional handwritten expense claims by generating digital forms with predefined fields like date, department, amount, and category.

• Approval: Expense tracking software can assist accounts departments and managers with algorithms that determine the validity of a claim before payment is approved based on the rules provided.

• Payment: Once a claim is approved, the software can automate payment to an employee’s account and differentiate between various types of payments, such as part settlement or cash advances.

• Analytics: The best expense claims software will be designed to analyse expense transactions to identify significant trends or anomalies and provide expense forecasts that can be invaluable to a company when compiling its budget.

Some Benefits of Expense Tracking Software

The following are just three of the key benefits to a company when computerising the expense management process:

• A Simpler and Faster Option: Traditional employee expense management procedures are time-consuming, involving submitting handwritten claims and receipts to managers for checking and approval. A software solution is seamless, paperless, and designed to speed up each step in the process, from submission and verification to approval and reimbursement.

• Remote Use: The best expense claims software will also be available as a mobile app, allowing an employee to capture photos of receipts and invoices on the spot when away on business and upload them directly to the system for processing from a smartphone.

• Comprehensive Reporting: In addition to serenading reports based on project, expense type, department, client, and employee, a well-designed reporting system should be able to provide notifications of pending and approved claims.

Where to Find the Most Comprehensive Expense Tracking Software

Is yours a business for which regular off-the-shelf products are unsuitable? If so, you would be well advised to follow the example of companies like Murray & Roberts and deal with Fusion Software, a leading South Africa-based software developer. So, why not book a demo to see the nation’s best expense claims software in action?