Do you know how much time you’re spending on expense reporting?

If you don’t, you’re not alone. Many businesses, from sole traders to large organisations, are unaware of how much time is spent manually tracking business expenses, managing receipts, and processing expense reports.

A study by the GBTA Foundation and HRS found that creating a single expense report takes around 20 minutes on average, with roughly one-fifth of these reports containing errors that require an additional 18 minutes to correct. That means $67.88 and nearly 24 minutes of work for just one report. For an SME with 50 employees, where 10 might need to submit two reports each per month, this can amount to 240 reports annually—costing over $16,000 and consuming 93 hours.

Consider the time and effort involved in a typical expense report submission:

1. Logging Transactions: Employees manually record details for each transaction, including dates, vendors, and expense categories.
2. Scanning Receipts: Each receipt needs to be scanned and stored in a specific format, often for audit purposes.
3. Tracking Missing Receipts: Employees frequently lose receipts, requiring additional time to track them down.
4. Matching Receipts to Expenses: Manually matching receipts to transactions can be a tedious and error-prone task.
5. Report Approvals: Once the report is compiled, it needs to undergo multiple layers of approval, which takes time away from more impactful tasks.
6. Correcting Errors: Errors in reports are common, requiring reports to be sent back for correction, adding more time to the process.
7. Finance Department Review: After managerial approval, the finance department conducts another round of review to ensure all expenses align with company policies.
8. Reimbursement: Finally, the reimbursement process can take additional time, requiring manual transfers or integration with payroll.

Given these steps, it’s no wonder that almost half of companies take over a week to process expense reports from submission to reimbursement. Expense management best practices indicate that simplifying this process is essential to saving time, reducing costs, and maintaining control over company spending.

The Importance of Expense Management

Expense management plays a crucial role in maintaining a business’s financial health. Not only does it help in tracking business expenses and improving budget adherence, but effective expense management also ensures compliance with company policies. However, traditional, manual approaches to expense management come with considerable drawbacks, including high error rates and time inefficiencies.

The importance of expense management cannot be overstated: an expense should be recorded when it occurs to maintain accurate financial records and prevent issues like cash flow mismanagement, compliance risks, or out-of-company policy spending. Automation offers the best way to keep track of expenses while ensuring data integrity and reducing the workload on employees and finance teams alike.

Benefits of Automated Reporting in Expense Management

The benefits of automated reporting in expense management are transformative for businesses. Automation reduces the time spent on repetitive tasks, ensures compliance, and provides real-time visibility into spending. With expense management automation, your business gains more control over expenses, enabling you to identify areas for cost savings and avoid out-of-policy spending. Automated systems like Qashio’s expense tracking tools simplify the reporting process, from data entry to approvals, and reduce administrative burdens.

With automated reporting, businesses can easily generate custom reports that offer insights into spending trends, allowing for better financial planning and resource allocation. This shift not only cuts costs but also improves overall operational efficiency.

Why Automating Expense Management is Essential

If you're wondering what is the purpose of an expense report in the first place, it’s to provide an accurate record of company spending, ensure policy compliance, and manage reimbursements effectively. Expense management best practices recommend automating these reports to reduce errors and save time.

How to automate reports effectively? Solutions like Qashio streamline expense management by automating each stage of the process—from capturing receipts to approval workflows—saving your team valuable hours. Automation minimises the need for manual intervention, reduces mistakes, and enhances visibility into spending, making it a crucial investment for growing companies.

Expense Management Best Practices with Qashio

Automated expense management solutions, like Qashio, offer some of the best practices in expense management by providing end-to-end automation. Here’s what companies gain:

• Enhanced Visibility: Real-time tracking of expenses and insightful reports give businesses complete oversight of their finances.
• Improved Compliance: Automated systems enforce policy compliance by flagging out-of-policy expenses and ensuring all reports are reviewed accurately.
• Efficient Approvals: Dual-level approvals streamline the process, helping managers and finance teams approve expenses quickly and accurately.
• Error Reduction: By eliminating manual data entry, automation significantly reduces the risk of errors and the time spent on corrections.

Reclaim Time and Resources with Qashio

Traditional methods of tracking business expenses consume valuable time that could be spent on high-impact tasks. By embracing expense management automation, companies can reclaim hundreds of hours annually, reduce costs, and achieve greater accuracy. Automated expense tracking tools simplify the entire process, allowing employees and finance teams to focus on growth and profitability rather than on administrative burdens.

If you're ready to explore the benefits of automating expense reporting, reach out to one of our specialists for a demo and learn how much time and resources your business could save with a streamlined, all-in-one automated expense management solution.