Why Do I Need an Expense Management System

June 8, 2020

3 min read

Summary

Your expense management solution should position finance as a strategic asset. This article walks through the impact your expense tools can make.

    More than ever, finance is being asked to help companies make strategic business decisions.

    Your expense management software should support that goal, not work against it. With the right solution, you’ll increase visibility and control over your expenses, as well as boost productivity thanks to the time saved.

    This article walks through why your expense tools are important, and the impact they can make.

    Increase Visibility for Better Decision Making

    Your expense management solution should empower your finance team to be a more strategic company resource. Automations to help track expenses, pull reports, and gain insights at a granular level across your company helps achieve this. Now, instead of pulling reports and sifting through data, finance can easily glean insights that inform business decisions.

    “In the past, organizations looked to the CFO to ensure the financials of the company were accurate. Today, with the increase of data across organizations, CFOs are looked upon to advise leaders as they plan out the strategic future of the company.”

    Adaptive Insights CFO Jim Johnson, as told to Forbes

    Gain Control Over Expenses

    Maintaining policy compliance and reducing the risk of fraud is a common concern for finance teams in regards to business expenses. Expenses are often submitted with missing or incorrect information, or are outside of policy. A solution will help you dramatically increase your control over your data’s accuracy. Your solution should have tools that automatically flag expenses as rule violations with system-triggered rule setting. It should also connect directly with your financial institutions to decrease the amount of manual work (and human error!) required.

    Companies saw a 64% reduction in errors and 40% improvement in policy compliance when using an expense management solution.

    The Aberdeen Group

    Boost Employee Productivity to Lower Costs

    According to the Aberdeen Group, the average cost of processing a single expense report is $20.65 factoring in the time it takes for a finance team to review, approve, file and reimburse expenses.

    An expense management solution can help automate your expense reporting and reduce that time. This is especially true with tools that focus on usability and automation, so employees can quickly enter expenses without major disruptions to their work.

    You can reduce the cost of processing expenses by nearly 60% when implementing an expense management solution.

    The Aberdeen Group