Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen tremendous advancement in recent times. What was once a far-fetched dream is now a reality. AI is being used in innovative applications across industries. One such AI application is expense management software.
Employees expect a seamless and frictionless expense reporting workflow, but it is quite the opposite when done manually. Employees have to struggle with multiple steps to get their reimbursements, which are all tedious and eat away at their valuable time. This is where AI-enabled expense management software comes into the picture. Interestingly, unlike other solutions, AI in expense management is more than a trend. Some solutions like Zaggle EMS have already been using AI-enabled functionalities for some time.
In this blog post, we discuss how AI can transform the way you handle your expenses by adding advanced features to expense management software. But before we do that let’s quickly take a look at the challenges of traditional expense management processes.
Entering expense data manually will lead to human errors and mistakes. Additionally, it is also an easy way to defraud companies either intentionally or unintentionally.
- The expense reporting process is tiresome and can demotivate employees from footing the bill for business expenses.
- Lack of a streamlined validation process and approval workflow can delay reimbursements much to the frustration of employees.
- The finance team ends up under a pile of documents as the business scales. Also, it is impractical to generate insights from this voluminous data.
- Due to a lack of control over employee expenses and the real-time functionality of tracking, companies could end up with illegitimate transactions or budget overruns.
All of these challenges with both manual processes and solutions without AI-infused features can be addressed by using advanced expense management software. Let’s see how.
Reinventing Expense Management Software with AI
Below is a list of things that AI can help streamline your expense management processes.
Error-free data extraction using OCR
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is a subset of AI technology that expense management solutions like Zaggle EMS use. It allows the system to read and capture all the key points from the expense claims regardless of the format. It can be used to eliminate paper-based submissions entirely.
Digital receipts for on-the-go reporting
Employees can submit their expense reports as soon as they are done to expedite the reimbursement process. Earlier, travelling professionals would carry the paper receipts with them for days and then submit them all at once. It was a hassle chiefly because the receipts were either damaged, lost or tampered with. The expense management software can automate report submission through digital receipts, which also empowers a smooth auditing process.
Categorize your expenses for better management
AI-based expense management solutions can automatically categorize employee expenses. The software will look at the merchant and purchase type to predict the expense category. It works brilliantly for employees who are unsure of what expense goes into what category. Also, it neatly organizes insights for leaders to identify spending trends.
Better decision-making with predictive analytics
AI can be a fortune teller. The only difference is that AI will look at your historical data instead of the palm. The predictive analytics technology of AI has the potential to turn your existing data into a goldmine. You can use the data to generate insights like the approximate cost of a business trip, departments bleeding through the budget, and ways leaks are impacting your cash flow.
Implement expense policy for consistency in expenses
An expense management software can introduce consistency in your expenses by allowing you to implement a corporate expense policy. With AI/ML functionalities, you can set rules to block a transaction that violates your policy either in terms of budget violation, restricted category, or lack of funds.
Real-time expense tracking for greater control
Oftentimes, it is after the deed is done that companies learn about the business expense that an employee has made. It leaves little power in the hands of the companies to optimize their expenses. An advanced expense management software gives you the ability to track employee expenses in real time. Further, you can block invalid transactions or violate expense policy.
Automate workflow for faster reimbursements
The approval cycle is a major bottleneck where almost every expense report gets stuck. Using AI-based expense management software like Zaggle EMS, you can configure multiple routes that different reports can take based on hierarchy, expense type, and other factors.
Conclusion
With AI in the picture, expense management software has gone beyond a good-to-have enterprise solution. It has turned expense management from a time-consuming, frustration-triggering process to an efficient, automated, and rules-based system. Additionally, these solutions allow you to generate multiple reports so that you can study your expense data from all perspectives. Zaggle EMS is an all-in-one expense management software that allows SMEs to accelerate their business into an AI-centric landscape.
Check out more about Zaggle EMS here.
