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5 Ways to Increase Employee Satisfaction with Automated Expense Reporting
Expenses are part of running a business. When a company lets employees make business purchases on behalf of the company, the expense reimbursement system provides a way for the company to pay back employees for those expenses.
When the travel and expense (T&E) reporting and reimbursement system works well, it’s good for employees and the company. But if the system is difficult to use, employees may become frustrated by not being able to recoup expenses or by the hoops they feel they need to jump through to get their money back.
Investing in automated expense reporting software is a win-win situation for employers and employees. For employees, the process becomes simple, streamlined, and frustration-free. For employers, expense reports software saves time, improves employees’ satisfaction, and cuts down on fraudulent expense charges.
Why Aren’t Employees Happy with Expense Reporting?
A study published by Amsterdam-based market researcher Ruigrok | NetPanel found that employees worldwide lose $15 billion a year in unclaimed expenses. Employees in the United States account for $9.7 billion of this amount. This report says that 17% of U.S. employees shoulder an average of $390 of their own expenses each year.
While some employees said they just didn’t bother or forgot to fill out a claim, fully 1/4 of the employees directly blamed cumbersome claims procedures for their failure to recoup expenses. Understandably, resentment can start building when employees feel like they’re being cheated out of their money by a system that’s designed to frustrate them.
How Can BPA Software Help?
Your company doesn’t want to end up in a situation where employees feel like you’re deliberately making it hard for them to recoup legitimate business expenses. Business Process Automation (BPA) software can help streamline the expense reporting process, making it easier for employees who are submitting expense reports and for those processing expense claims.
1) Easy Reporting
Quality travel and expense automation software will feature a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for employees to report their expenses as they happen. With NextProcess’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, a centralized, online submission portal makes it easy for employees to rapidly enter all different kinds of expenses. There’s no need for them to keep track of paper receipts. They can just snap a photo of the receipt with a smartphone and upload it directly to the software portal. Employees can also send in e-mail receipts.
2) Complete Transparency
Just like it’s easy for employees to log in to the software and submit expense reports and receipts, it’s also easy for them to check the status of a claim. Our interface offers quick and easy access to data from current and past claims. NextProcess software doesn’t keep things hidden from the company or employees. This serves a dual purpose: a transparent reimbursement process makes for easier audits and keeps employees in the know about their claims process.
3) Fast Response
Automated T&E software significantly speeds up the response time. Since the expense reporting process is highly automated, your employees see faster payments in response to their claims. Faster payments are particularly helpful for employees who might struggle with the financial burden of putting business expenses on personal cards. It also saves time for the department in charge of handling expenses – no more keeping track of paper receipts and less trouble chasing down employees who forgot to turn in their expense reports.
4) Highly Customized
Good travel and expense management software is extremely configurable. You can set parameters for variable mileage reimbursements, reimbursement limits, and much more. You’ll also be able to customize the way the software looks to employees, further streamlining the expense reporting process by making it easy for them to see the tools they need to submit expense reports in a way that complies with your company’s policies.
5) Fraud Prevention
When your software supplier implements new travel and expense automation software, you get to customize your rules and procedures. Quality T&E software automatically checks that reported expenses comply with company policy and follows your procedures exactly. This helps prevent fraudulent expense claims.
Which BPA Software Should You Choose?
When you’re shopping for travel and expense automation software, make sure that it’s able to do the five things we discussed in this article. Your chosen software should make reporting simple for employees and make processing those reports quick and easy, so employees get a fast response to their expense claims. It should allow for full transparency in the expense management process, documenting every part of the transaction to provide a clear audit trail.
The software should also be easy to customize and support your company’s fraud prevention policies. NextProcess software can do all of this, and with the SaaS model, you’ll only pay for the parts of the software that you use. The automated T&E module expands as your company grows. At the same time, the cost of ownership stays low because our unlimited user license means no hidden fees for adding more users. Curious to see how it works? Contact us today to schedule a demonstration.
