Expense management

Expense management refers to the systems deployed by a business to process, pay, and audit employee-initiated expenses. These costs include, but are not limited to, expenses incurred for travel and entertainment. Expense management includes the policies and procedures which govern such spending, as well as the technologies and services utilized to process and analyze the data associated with it.

Software to manage the expense claim, authorization, audit and repayment processes can be obtained from organisations that provide a licensed software, implementation and support service, or alternatively, from software as a service (SaaS) providers. SaaS providers offer on-demand web-based applications managed by a third party to improve the productivity of expense management.

Expense management automation has two equally important aspects - the process an employee follows in order to complete an expense claim (for example logging a hotel receipt or submitting mobile phone records) and the activity accounts or finance staff undertake to process the claim within the finance system.

Typically, a manual process will involve an employee completing a paper, spreadsheet, or Graphical User Interface-based expense report which they then forward, along with the relevant tax invoices (receipts), to a manager or other controller for approval. Once the manager has approved the claim, they forward it on to the accounts department for processing. The accounts staff then key each expense item into the company's finance system before filing the claim and receipts away. In a Software as a Service implementation, these processes are largely automated and the submission and approvals processes are transacted electronically.

Expense Management automation is the means by which an organization can significantly reduce transaction costs and improve management control when logging, calculating and processing corporate expenses. Independent research evaluating the use of automated expense management systems has confirmed that the cost of processing an expense claim is reduced as the level of automation increases.

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