Magazine : 
Top 10 features of expense management software you need
When your business is growing rapidly, you don’t want to hinder that growth by having to manually fill out hundreds of expense reports every day. What you want is to save time and be more efficient so that you can turn your attention to places that demand it, driving your business growth even further. Luckily for you, many features of expense management software can help you achieve this. Automation is exactly the tool that you need to propel your business to higher levels.
What is expense management software?
In short, expense management software is a system that manages all your business expenses. Starting from processing to paying to auditing, expense management software features allow you to do everything all on one platform. These expenses can include and are not limited to travel, subscription, and entertainment costs.
How does expense management software work?
In the growth stage of your business, you want to eliminate as much manual work as possible. Expense management software can help you cut down your expense processing time by half compared to using traditional methods.
One of the key features of an expense management solution is a custom approval workflow best suited to your business policies. Your employees can upload receipts or request for payments to be made on the platform and have them routed to approvers in real-time. If there are any errors or things that don’t fit your company policies, your expense management software will detect them and let you know. After everything is sorted out, you can also generate reports quickly based on expense data.
What are the features you need in expense management software?
- Real-time visibility into all expenses
Your employees can file all business expenses from anywhere at any time using the features of expense management software. Everyone looped in the approval workflow will have real-time visibility into all your business expenses, as well as the ability to make those approvals in real-time. With policy checks, you can guarantee that you will be notified of any expenses that violate company policies as soon as they happen.
- All-in-one corporate credit card management platform
One of the expense management software features that will stand out when compared to using traditional expense management processes is the ability to manage your corporate card spending on a single platform. Issue physical and virtual cards for designated employees and reasons for usage, set your individual card limits, and ensure that there’s no misuse or attempts of fraud. You can also perform credit card reconciliation by matching your expense reports against your card statements.
- User-friendly mobile app & web application
A system that is easy to use and accessible on multiple platforms means you can achieve faster expense reporting. For your employees, writing up expense reports no longer has to be a tedious task. Allow them to fill out expense reports from a web application or a mobile app on the go.
- Multi-currency functionality
If your business is growing into a multinational company with offices in multiple countries, then you want to have multi-currency functionality as one of your expense management software features. Even if your business isn’t, then you still want the feature nonetheless for any business trips abroad, as well as paying any foreign vendors. You want to be able to record your expenses both in your native currency and the international one for both transparency and accounting purposes.
- Automated approval workflow
Out of the features of expense management software available to you, one that you want to put a lot of stock into is the ability to have a custom automated approval workflow. Create a multi-level approval workflow for your business expenses as you see fit. From then on, your business expenses can be automatically submitted for approval. Approvers can view, approve, and reject expenses in just a few clicks.
- Integration with accounting software
You want integration to be one of the features of expense management software available to you. Streamline your processes even further by syncing your expenses with your books. With two-way syncing across your expense management and accounting software, you can close your books faster and overcome even more challenges by saving time.
- Increased compliance and control
Keep details of every expense you make, creating a digital audit trail that is accurate and easily accessible. With the ability to set limits and create a multi-level approval workflow, you can ensure that you have full control of your business finances. Flagging policy violations is also one of the features of expense management software, which helps you make sure that you immediately know if there is anything that is not in compliance with both internal and external regulations.
- Corporate expense travel management
There are many features of expense management software that can help you manage your travel expenses, whether it be flights, hotels, or transportation. With the usage of corporate cards with set limits on them, managing your travel expenses is easier than ever, especially when combined with quick expense reporting. Employees can easily upload photos of their receipts and have them routed through policy checking.
- Analytical dashboard
With an analytical dashboard, you can gain an in-depth insight into your business expenses through your data being visually formatted differently on your dashboard. All the information you receive will be real-time, all available to you on one screen. When your data and numbers are turned into analytics, you can see where to cut unnecessary spending and make wiser and more well-informed decisions.
- Easy expense reporting
Automatic data extraction is one of the features of expense reporting software that you want. When your employees upload receipts, your software will be able to extract data from the receipt to log into your ledger. Admins and approvers can also manage expense requests and receipts that have been sent in from a single dashboard. This saves time, reduces errors, and nets you a faster turnover time with your expense reporting process.
FAQ’s
1. What are some benefits of expense management software?
Some benefits of expense management software include being able to cut down processing costs and redirect efforts otherwise spent on manual tasks for other things that demand attention. Expense management software features will also increase the visibility and transparency of your company's spending, allowing you to have better policy compliance.
2. Why is expense management software important?
Expense management software saves you time and eliminates costly errors in your expense management processes. It allows your finance team to neatly and accurately maintain records, therefore increasing their productivity—which will increase the productivity of your business as a whole in the long run.
3. What is the reimbursement tool?
Your employees might have to make out-of-pocket expenses for one reason or another during the daily running of your business. The reimbursement tool allows employees to submit a claim for reimbursement, put it through a policy check to ensure that it complies with policies in place, and then get it approved and reimbursed in real-time.
4. Does subscription management come with expense management software?
Yes, with the use of virtual cards. You can view, manage and pay all your subscriptions on one platform with Volopay. Assign a virtual card to each subscription for timely and appropriate recurring payments.
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