Why Expense Management matters for Business Central customers

Corporate travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses can often be high, especially if not tightly controlled. When you add the time & costs associated with processing all these expenses to ensure employees are reimbursed correctly, in a way that complies with company policy & government regulations – the total spend can be significant for many companies. 

Digitizing and automating your expense management process can deliver real cost savings and benefits for your business. 

What is Expense Management?

Expense Management is the end-to-end process by which employee expenses are submitted, approved, recorded and reimbursed, along with the policy controls and procedures for this type of spending.

Most companies will already have a process for reimbursing employee expenses, perhaps via the payroll system, which does the job and so you might ask why do we need anything else? Well, the reimbursement stage is just one of several stages in the overall expense management process, albeit a very important one.

It is the stages of the process prior to reimbursement where there is typically scope for substantial time & cost savings to be made – when employees submit expense reports with receipts, managers approve, finance teams record expenditure in Business Central with correct GL account, job, tax code etc specified and reconcile credit card statements. 

Streamlining the end-to-end expense management process not only brings efficiency savings for the business, but also the opportunity to delight their staff by taking away the pain that often comes with submitting, approving and administering expenses.

Manual paper-based vs Automated software

Many companies still have a traditional expense management process based on the use of paper and/or spreadsheets, involving the collection of paper receipts and lots of manual processing.

Like any manual business process, managing employee expenses manually tends to be very time-consuming, comes with a high risk of human error and can be frustrating for both employees and finance teams. 

As many companies have already found, there are significant benefits to be gained by switching to an automated software solution for your expense management process – with a quick return on your investment.  

5 reasons to digitize & automate your expense management process

• Simplicity & convenience – Enable staff to snap photos of their receipts, submit expenses easily using an app on their phone and get notified once approved. Managers can review and approve expenses from anywhere using any device, enabling the finance team to reimburse expenses quickly & accurately.
• Save time & paper – Take away the hassle and pain that comes with having stacks of paper receipts and expense reports laying around and free up employees’ time for the more productive work that needs doing.
• Control & Compliance – Ensure employee expense policy limits and approval rules are applied consistently and automatically with full audit trail visibility. Plus, make tax authority compliance and tax recovery easier by recording the sales tax and VAT on all expenses and business mileage.
• Accuracy – Ensure greater accuracy in the expense management process by avoiding any manual re-keying of data (e.g. from credit card statement into expense report, from expense reports into Business Central).
• Real-time insights – Gain full visibility of all employee expenses that are being incurred, helping you control spend and make cost savings

For all these reasons and more, it is well worth any business controlling their T&E expense spend – by introducing more control, automation and visibility into their expense management process. 

Zetadocs Expenses

Dynamics 365 Business Central does not offer the tools to help control T&E expense costs and streamline the whole expense management process. The same is true for many other solutions that integrate with Business Central to support HR & Payroll processes – whose expense management offering is often focussed on reimbursement only.

Zetadocs Expenses is an end-to-end expense management solution designed for use with Business Central, offering a range of features to benefit both finance teams and other employees.  

Watch a 1-minute video below for an overview of the solution.

If you would like to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly or speak to your Dynamics partner to discuss your requirements further. Zetadocs Expenses is also available on Microsoft AppSource.