Businesses of all sizes suffer from one persistent probe – expense fraud. They are estimated to lose a considerable 5% of their annual revenue to fraud every year, as per the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. One of the most common frauds that plague companies is expense reimbursement fraud. Most companies fail to keep their expenses under control because of traditional paper-based processes. Although the market is riddled with expense management software, businesses are yet to leverage this software to implement strong compliance policies to keep fraud in check.
In this article, we will understand how you can master expense management using expense management software with AI capabilities to enforce compliance and automated workflows.
Cutting-edge Tracking: Real-time Monitoring of Expenditures
The expense management system facilitates real-time tracking of your business expenses, enabling you to manage costs effectively and gain financial transparency. They also provide data-driven insights to make critical business decisions.
Centralizes expense management software
Most expense management software comes with a centralized platform that collects all the expense data points like employees submitting digital receipts or supporting documentation. It not only expedites the reimbursement process but also eliminates mismanagement of bills.
Expense claims in real-time
A digital platform can give your team the freedom to report expenses as and when they happen. Using expense management software with AI capabilities like OCR (Optical Character Recognition), your employees can quickly scan receipts which eliminates manual data entry errors. While it provides them with greater flexibility, you can reduce the chances of errors or omissions by aiding real-time expense reporting.
Enforcing compliance automatically
Enforcing your expense policy compliance can seem like a distant dream. With traditional processes, implementing a consistent policy is impractical. However, an expense management system allows you to implement compliance in real time by integrating it with the platform. The platform will generate automated alerts and block any transactions that could violate your spending guidelines.
Automated Approval Workflows: Ensuring Cost-Effective Activities
Automation is one of the core elements of an efficient expense management system as it reduces a major chunk of manual tasks, which ultimately speeds up the entire expense management process.
Customizing your approval workflow
An expense management software allows you to build your approval workflows within the platform. Based on the rules you define, the flow of expense reporting is implemented across the organization. You can also create multiple workflows for different expense types or purchase values. If you pre-define a rule to fastrack travel-related expenses, such expense claims will have to go through fewer approval cycles.
Enforcing policies without bias
By automating your expense management through an automated workflow, you eliminate an opportunity to dupe the system or show bias. Every claim will be verified against the rules set before it is approved, flagged, or rejected.
Send notifications in real-time
Your automated approval workflows are equipped with notifications that alert or remind you in real time about any expense-related submission or query. It ensures that you are always proactive, and process claims without delays.
Save costs through automation
When you automate your expense management through expense management software, you typically avoid unnecessary expenditures and other losses that stem from reimbursement delays. Further, through robust compliance enforcement, you can ensure that your business transactions are legitimate, and eliminate any scope of fraud.
Red Flags Detection: Alerts and Insights to Prevent Duplication
You can implement any compliance policy regardless of complexity through an efficient expense management software. These platforms offer a range of features that help you keep a grip on your expense-related activities.
Generate real-time reports
Most expense management software comes with a single-window dashboard that offers an analytical overview of your expenses. You can also generate custom reports and insights in real time to understand your spending patterns and deduce trends. These help you make informed decisions on where you need to control your expenditure to improve cash flow management.
Set a proactive alerting mechanism
Using the software, you can configure alerts and reminders for a range of activities including when your expense policy is being breached. You can also set reminders for your employees when they exceed the spending limit. Whenever an unusually high-value transaction is made, the system can be pre-defined to alert you so that you can quickly check if the purchase was valid.
Maintain detailed auditing trial
Unlike your paper-based process, using an expense management system maintains a detailed audit trail of your entire expense management history. You can go back and evaluate your expense approvals, policy changes, and so on. A comprehensive audit trail will ensure that you comply with necessary regulations and cruise through external and internal audits.
Conclusion
Expense policy compliance is one of the pillars on which your cash flow stands. Having an efficient expense management process is difficult with traditional, manual processes that are not just time-consuming but also frustratingly error-prone. Expense management software has proven capabilities to streamline your expenses while ensuring compliance and fraud prevention.
However, it isn’t just enough to decide to have an expense management system, you need to pick an ideal one. And Zaggle EMS is the best platform for businesses of all sizes It allows you to enforce complex expense policies and facilitate your team to self-serve their expense reporting.
