In this era of digitalisation, companies across the world are investing in state-of-the-art technologies to optimise traditional manual processes that were being followed around for years. The pandemic has further catalysed adoption of digitisation across organisations which has not only made processes seamless but have also decreased costs of management, with a 96% reduction in paperwork, 50% increase in employee productivity, among others. Applications of enterprise in every department is an example of how technology can disrupt the way organisations function.

The HR department, which is one of the most important departments in organisations, has also undergone substantial changes in how it operates. Most businesses have eschewed traditional HR processes and invested in digital HR software platforms with several modules to handle every HR function - from recruitment and on-boarding to managing leave and attendance, reward & recognition, and employee travel and costs. 

One of the most important functions of HR is to manage employee spending, which traditionally has been a cumbersome, tiring and a long process. Managing business expenses is a key concern for all companies, and one that’s difficult to orchestrate using manual processes. Companies can speed up the expense management process, decrease errors, and send reimbursements faster by employing software to track and monitor employee spending. Digitalisation of business finance flow and spend management benefits businesses in a variety of ways, including saving costs, increasing efficiency by several notches, streamlining corporate processes, and gaining a competitive advantage. 

This can be seamlessly addressed by an automated expense management system that can help streamline the entire process. Some of the key benefits of implementing an automated spending management system in an organisation are: 

• Digital workflows provide for more efficient authorisation: This is particularly interesting for companies with multiple locations or complicated authorisation flows. Human errors are more likely to occur when there are more persons involved in the approval process. According to Zaggle’s Internal Client Research, each manual expense claim takes up hours and 35-40%% of all expense reports contain errors. Since these errors take time to resolve, each claim costs roughly thousands (if not lakhs) of rupees, which is a substantial fee for a procedure as mundane and unavoidable as claiming an expense.

• Centralised Process: For better administration, a digital solution will automate all operations, centralise data, dematerialise, and integrate all documents, while also reducing data entry errors. On a daily basis, this saves the department-in-charge of expense reports or employees a significant amount of time.

• Faster Reimbursement Claims Processing: The entire expense management process becomes 7 times faster when the manual procedure is replaced by automation. Additionally, most expenditure management systems include a mobile app that permits access from anywhere at any time. This allows stakeholders to process requests even if they are not in the office. With expenditure management software, this adds to timely expense processing and reimbursements.

• Tax Saving & Recovery: Employers cannot deduct tax if they reimburse expenses without a receipt. This is a needless financial loss. Expense management system helps to save taxes by having receipts available on the portal and also contributes to a better tax recovery. Now, department-in-charge of this problem directly connects their application to an expense management platform. In a few clicks, they review all expenses and extract tax details depending on the type of expenses and the place of the expense.

• Prevent Fraud & Duplication: With automatic detection of identical invoices, you can avoid errors and fraud. Of course, as an employer, you put your trust in your employees, yet fraud and mistakes do happen. Consider travel expenses: each individual present should only claim expenses that they incurred and that were linked to their employment. However, if a receipt is long and has a lot of variables, it's easy to make mistakes. Expense Management software immediately detects duplicates and notifies the appointed manager.

• Access to Reports and Analytics: Creating reports utilising a manual paper-based procedure is simply impossible. Reports, on the other hand, are essential tools for businesses to analyse trends and patterns in employee spending across the board. The Expense Management System enables businesses to generate detailed automated reports that highlight critical insights that aid in making educated decisions.

We are living in a constantly evolving world, with changing customer and organisational needs. This is also the time when technology pervades practically every aspect of our lives. So, why can't we take advantage of this technical innovation to better manage our company? Use of suitable expense management software, better employee experience while improving the productivity of its financial teams.