Why bother processing expenses manually when you could invest in expense management automation with GlassJar?
This not only saves you time on the task itself, but also minimizes manual errors, prevents lost receipts, speeds up approvals/reimbursements, and gives you real-time visibility into spending on company cards. These are just a few of the benefits of automating expense management.
We’ll show you how to automate expense tracking with GlassJar below.
Key Takeaways
- Expense automation eliminates manual data entry, lost receipts, and delayed reimbursements.
- Automating expenses is simplest with software that integrates with your accounting system.
- Choose a platform with receipt capture, expense categorization, and real-time spending visibility.
- GlassJar checks every box when it comes to automating expense management.
Traditional Expense Management (Manual Methods)
You already know what goes into manually managing expenses for your business, and you’ve decided enough is enough. It’s time to work smarter instead of harder.
The pattern is more or less the same across any small business. An employee pays for something out of pocket, saves a receipt (or doesn’t), and fills out a form or spreadsheet to pass over to whoever handles approvals.
Someone then reviews it, cross-references the spending policy, and decides whether to approve or reject it. The request is passed along for reimbursement if it’s approved. Then someone enters the data into the accounting system and files the receipt.
You can see just how many points for failure there are. Receipts rarely make it back to the office. There’s an opportunity for typos or improper categorization during data entry. Approvals stall because the person in charge of them is backlogged or out of office.
Not only is this a massive time suck for whoever is in charge of expense management. But it leads to inconsistency in how spending policies are enforced. It’s pretty much impossible to catch duplicate submissions before they get paid or pull accurate expense data for a budget review without digging through spreadsheets.
This is why the benefits of expense management automation are so compelling.
What is Expense Management Automation?
You can let software do all the heavy lifting for you. It handles expense submission, categorization, approval routing, and reconciliation. All you have to do is lay out the rules from the start and show your employees how to upload their requests.
Of course, the extent to which an expense management software saves you time and prevents errors can vary from one solution to the next. Some tools just automatically capture receipts. Others oversee the entire lifecycle all the way through to reconciliation. We’ll talk more about what to look for in a tool for your company’s expense management needs later on.
Why You Should Automate Expense Management: 6 Benefits of Investing in Software
You can already see just how powerful an investment expense management automation is for small businesses. These are the 6 improvements you’ll see once you implement a new system.
Minimizing Manual Errors
Most bookkeeping mistakes can be traced back to manual data entry. Someone fat-fingers their keyboard or misreads the receipt as they’re working fast to try and cross the task off. Or they just mistakenly put an expense in the wrong category.
Whatever the root cause, it’s a problem of the past when you automate expense tracking. Data gets pulled directly from receipts and bank feeds. The system applies preset rules and posts to the right accounts without human transcription.
Preventing Lost Receipts
How many times has an employee come to you with a screenshot from their bank account because they lost their receipt, or never even asked for one? Even email receipts can get lost in translation and create confusion.
A good expense automation platform captures receipts right at the point of purchase. You upload a photo from your phone or automatically feed it in from your bank account. Either way, no more chasing employees down weeks later or missing documentation when an auditor pays your office a visit.
Faster Approvals/Reimbursements
A human is the bottleneck when it comes to approval and reimbursement timelines. What happens when they’re busy with more pressing tasks or out of office on vacation? Simple – NOTHING happens.
This can take a toll on smaller teams where employees may be fronting their own money for business purchases. Morale drops, and employees become hesitant to pay for things going forward. You don’t want that type of culture in your business.
Automated workflows fire around the clock no matter who is in the office. Approvers get notified on their phone and escalate if action isn’t taken in a timely manner.
Real-Time Spending Visibility
You can only see expenses in the spreadsheet after everything has been entered and reconciled. That could be weeks after money was spent.
On the other hand, expense management automation surfaces spending data the moment it happens. You can keep an eye on categories that are trending above budget and which team members are submitting the most.
Consistency in Policy Enforcement
Spending policies only work if they’re applied consistently across the board, no matter who it is submitting a reimbursement request. Manual review leaves room for interpretation, favoritism, and plain old oversight.
Your software doesn’t have emotions or make judgment calls. It only does what you tell it to. It’ll flag anything over the per-meal limit, reject duplicates, or require receipt attachments above a set threshold. You lay out the rules once and trust the system to apply them consistently.
Clean Tax Records
There’s an accompanying receipt image, a timestamp, a category, and an approval record for every expense that comes through your system. You never have to worry about unexpected visits from the IRS or requests from your CPA. No tearing apart filing cabinets or trying to type the right keyword into your email inbox to find the receipt in question.
Best Practices For Automating Expense Management: Step-by-Step Implementation Guide
The best part of automating expense management is you don’t even need a dedicated IT team or a six-figure budget. Most small businesses can move from manual processes to a working system in a week or less. Here’s a quick guide to getting started:
Step 1) Finding the Right Software
One of the non-negotiable criteria for your software is that it must integrate with your existing accounting system. Otherwise, how will expense data flow into the general ledger without re-entry?
Other than that, look into features such as receipt capture, configurable approval chains, and real-time visibility. Don’t waste your time with tools that only solve one piece of the workflow and leave you to fill in the gaps yourself. This is one of the most common issues with QuickBooks.
Step 2) Configure Your Company’s Expense Policy
This is easy if you already have a bulletproof company expense policy written down somewhere. If your spending policy has been fairly subjective to this point, it’s time to get a little more specific.
Determine what gets automatically approved, what needs review, and what’s rejected outright. You can set per-category spending limits, receipt requirements, and mileage rates. The more specific you are, the less human intervention will be needed after launching the system.
Step 3) Sync Your Corporate Cards
This is the beauty of expense management automation – you can sync all company cards and bank accounts so transactions are automatically imported as they happen.
You can finally say goodbye to the submit-and-wait cycle for card purchases. You get real-time insight into business spending from your phone or computer. Employees can still categorize and attach receipts, but the transaction record doesn’t require manual entry.
Step 4) Integrate Your Automated Approval Workflows
You’ll need to map out who approves what. Some businesses route everything through one person, while others will set up tiered approvals based on the amount or department.
Whatever you decide to do, configure the software within the workflow and test it with a few sample submissions. You can tinker with the rules if need be. The end goal is that everything automatically routes when the system goes live.
Step 5) Make Sure Everything Reconciles in Your Accounting Systems
Run a full test cycle from submission all the way through to reconciliation before going live. Double-check that approved expenses are posting to the proper accounts in your general ledger. Confirm that receipt attachments are coming through. The totals should match up in your bank statement. Then, it’s just a matter of getting your team up to speed on the new system!
What Should You Look For in Expense Management Automation Software?
From Sage to NetSuite, GlassJar, and more – you have no shortage of options at your disposal. But the last thing you want is to spend the time and resources getting set up with a tool only to discover that it doesn’t meet your needs. Look for these things before choosing a platform.
Integration With Your Accounting Software
We touched on this earlier, but the tool you choose must natively connect to your accounting system. This is how expenses will post to your general ledger without CSV exports or manual re-entry. In a perfect world, your accounting software would have built-in expense tracking.
Captures Mobile Receipts
Employees spend money away from their desks more often than not, so the software should let them snap a quick pic that can be attached right away to the transaction. You can save even more time with a tool that automatically detects vendor name, amount, and date from the image.
Customizable Approval Workflows
It has to be easy to create your own approval workflow based on your spending policy. That includes configuring routing rules, escalation timelines, and approval thresholds without having to reach out to a support team or request a new feature.
Reporting/Spend Analytics
Part of what makes automating expense management a worthwhile endeavor is being able to check spend at a glance. A solid software has an intuitive dashboard that shows you spending by category, employee, department, and time period. Some tools even have trend analysis so you can see if travel costs are climbing or supply spending is going down.
Ease of Use and Adoption
What good is expense management automation if your team doesn’t buy in? A short learning curve goes a long way in getting employees to use the new system. Fewer steps are better.
Automating Expense Management Made Easy With GlassJar
GlassJar has expense tracking and automation features integrated directly into the accounting platform itself, so you handle one system for everything from receipt capture to reconciliation.
Expenses post to the same ledger as every other transaction so you get up-to-date financial reports without jumping through hoops. Managing cash flow has never been easier.
Expenses are just one side of what GlassJar simplifies, too. We encourage you to try it free for yourself and see why more and more small businesses are making the switch!
Frequently asked questions
What are the benefits of expense management automation?
There are so many – fewer errors, faster reimbursements, uniform policy enforcement, real-time spending visibility, and organized records come tax season. That’s not to mention all the time it saves your employees. This is one of the best investments you can make.
Should small businesses automate expense management?
Absolutely. Expense automation pays for itself fast if anyone is tracking expenses in spreadsheets or on paper. Even if you only have a few employees submitting expenses each month, it’s worth it.
How quickly can I automate expense management?
You can get up and running ASAP with GlassJar. Especially if you already have your spending policy laid out clearly. Get in touch with our team for one-on-one support today.
What is the best expense management software?
GlassJar seamlessly integrates expense management automation with your accounting system, captures receipts and stores them safely, correctly categorizes expenses, and automates employee reimbursement – all while delivering real-time spending insights.
