Must-Have Features in an Expenses Reporting Tool

The challenges of modern business expense reporting are clear and the benefits of automation are obvious. But when organizations go looking for an expense reporting solution, what features should they expect? What are the must-haves? Software shopping can be a game of give to get when it comes to capabilities. Does anyone have them all?

“Many organizations process travel and expense spend manually, and as a result, face many challenges in efficiency and control,” reads a PayStream Advisors report on travel and expense management. “When organizations without TEM automation were asked about their top challenges, most cited manual data entry, lack of visibility into spend, and an inability to enforce corporate travel policies.”

What’s needed to overcome these challenges? There are five must-haves.

Visibility

Understanding current expenses and spotting trends is the single best way to predict those expenses going forward. Visibility adds clarity to the planning and budgeting processes that can make for a good year instead of tight times. An expense reporting solution has to offer the organization reporting and insights so that when needed the appropriate adjustments can be made.

Accuracy

A study quantifies what accounting managers know: A sizable portion of T&E spend is non-compliant with company policies. An expense reporting tool has to be able to spot those non-compliant claims, ferret out odometer fraud and mileage padding, and reduce errors on both sides of the process through automation.

Security

Manual processing of expense reimbursement is not just slow and costly, it’s potentially dangerous. It fails to address the need for HIPAA compliance in employee reimbursement and other legal issues surrounding T&E management. Modern software solutions take these employee and company records out of cubicles and into the cloud, where they can be secured and monitored.

Compatibility

Every business seems to have done it once: Bought new software only to find that it doesn’t perform as well as expected with tools already in use. An effective mileage reimbursement solution should be end-to-end and integrated with the right tools. And it should be one that includes booking, expense reporting, employee reimbursement and expense analysis.

Mobility

Expense reporting screams for mobile capability that reduces the delays created when employees hang onto receipts. Mobile management offers additional savings over office-based tools, but the key to getting those savings is employee adoption. A solution has to deliver the same simplicity and ease of use that employees have come to expect from their other mobile applications.

SureMileage Delivers All Five Must-Haves

For decades, expense reporting was a one-way street. Employees made claims that businesses paid. On that street companies put up speed-limit signs in the form of expense policies, but unless someone was clearly speeding, everyone seemed to get away with something. With automation, reimbursements still flow out, but information flows in – information that can improve compliance, budgeting, and most importantly, expense management.

Company Mileage takes automation one step further still by approaching expense reporting in a new way. Rather than verifying the miles that were driven, SureMileage calculates the expenses to be reimbursed. Employees report their starting point and destination and the system calculates the driving distance between them.

SureMileage by CompanyMileage is used by hundreds of organizations to save 20% to 30% on their mileage reimbursement expenses. Why? Because our approach and the solution built around it checks all the must-have boxes.