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How Companies Handle Expense Reporting Didn’t Change Much In 2018. Here’s How To Make Next Year Better
2018 should have been a year of continued advancement in how businesses handle travel and expense reporting. But the most surprising thing about expense reporting trends in 2018 is how little actually changed.
Almost half of all companies are still using manual systems to handle T&E. Continuing to use manual systems for travel and expense management has far-reaching implications. For example, companies continue to struggle with the same problems that have been plaguing T&E for years even though automation can help fix all these issues.
Fortunately, there’s a solution. If you’re one of the companies that are still struggling to handle T&E efficiently it’s time to take charge of your expense reporting.
Companies Still Using Manual Systems
About 49% of companies are still tracking expense reports using manual systems. The number is down a little from last year, but not much. This is surprising since some were predicting at the start of 2018 that this would be the year we’d see T&E software deployed on a large scale across all industries.
There are a large number of reliable, easy-to-use travel and expense automation software systems on the market today. Automating could fix many common problems in T&E, yet almost half of all companies aren’t using it yet. It’s puzzling that so many still choose to stick with manual systems.
Same Problems In The Department
The most commonly cited problem in T&E is that employees lose receipts or submit reports without receipts. That problem is easily remedied when using an automation system, which lets employees enter receipts directly. They simply snap a picture of paper receipts with their smartphone and upload them to the system. For emailed receipts, it’s as simple as forwarding the email to your T&E system.
Another significant expense reporting problem that continues to plague the financial department is how much time they spend reconciling, reviewing, and approving reports. And even after spending all this time errors can still show up. Automation would streamline and speed up this whole process. It’s also better at catching and avoiding errors than human employees are.
Top Ways Companies Want To Improve
There’s quite a bit of pressure to improve T&E management. Because managing travel and expense reporting takes so much time it’s also an expensive system. Reducing costs and improving the overall process are top-needs in 2018, as they were in previous years as well. In many cases, this includes finding a way to develop and/or enforce the company’s travel policy.
Another problem is that companies have trouble leveraging the data they gather from T&E. If they could improve visibility into how much employees are spending, where the money’s going, and other data points, the finance department could use that data to predict future trends. Better insight will make for more strategic planning.
It’s Time To Automate
Travel and expense automation software can fix the biggest T&E problems facing companies today. Automation is also the key to improving how companies manage the entire expense reporting process from receipt collection, to the approval process, to using collected data in forecasting.
Don’t continue to struggle with the same expense report challenges in the coming year. Get in touch with NextProcess today to schedule a demo. We’ll show you first-hand how our T&E automation software can help your company improve the entire expense reporting process.
