Regardless of the business sector and the technologies in place in the company, the advance payment of business expenses remains commonplace. Transport, meals, accommodation, etc., employees incur expenses in their work for the company, particularly during client meetings and other business trips. It is the company’s responsibility to reimburse these expenses. In this context, it is difficult to escape expense report management. To ensure reliability and save time, it is essential to set up an efficient process for approving expense reports. Find out how N2F’s software for expense report management solves these major problems, and more…
Expense report management: a clear reimbursement policy
An expense report template must provide factually accurate information, particularly in the event of an audit. Make sure you use your expense report template correctly by following all the following tips.
First step for optimizing your expense report approval process: implement a clear reimbursement policy. The CFO, on the employer’s behalf, must establish and inform employees of the rules relating to the reimbursement of expenses. There are two issues to be addressed:
- Identify the categories of reimbursable business expenses. All expenses incurred by the employee in the performance of his or her duties may be included in an expense report. These include: transport costs, meals, accommodation costs, mileage costs if the employee uses his or her personal vehicle, documentation purchases, teleworking costs, etc.
- Define the terms and conditions for reimbursing business expenses. The employer determines whether to reimburse expenses on an actual or flat-rate basis. Note that some expenses cannot be reimbursed on a flat-rate basis, in which case reimbursement of actual expenses is compulsory.
Defining a rigorous policy for reimbursing business expenses helps to avoid unpleasant surprises, to control costs, and to provide employees with a responsive system. This makes it easier to manage expense reports, when they are prepared in accordance with company policy.
Expense report management: an optimized validation process
Second step for optimizing your expense report management: implement a fast and reliable validation process. This process includes several distinct steps:
- Expense report verification: Was it sent on the right date? Does it contain all the required information? Is it correctly justified?
- Approval: once verified, the expense report is sent by the manager to the finance department.
- The employee is reimbursed.
Validation processes vary from one company to another due to the different levels of decision-making in place, and may include additional steps depending on the value of the expense report. To speed up and simplify your expense report management, it is therefore essential to have automation software that can be used to apply customized validation processes. N2F allows you to configure different processes for validating expense reports. The result: considerable time and money savings.
N2F also integrates a feature that is unique on the market: predictive verification. The AI tool automatically controls and classifies expenses using a scoring system. The person in charge is alerted if there is an anomaly: checks are only carried out on suspicious expenses. The result: considerable time savings and increased accuracy.
Trust does not mean we can remove control. It is in the company’s interest to equip itself with a high-performance software tool for retrieving, checking, and processing receipts for business expenses. N2F, designed for this purpose, offers a turnkey solution:
- The employee submits his or her paperless expense report online;
- The manager approves the expense report via a multi-level, conditional system;
- The administrative department checks for anomalies–shown by highlighting–and validates the expense report;
- The accounting department reimburses the employee and enters the transaction into its accounting software in one click;
- The employee is notified of the repayment date.
