Put a spring into your step with an expense management system

Make the shift to an automated system today

As spring is finally here, so too is the new financial year for many businesses. This is usually the time of year when new business plans are being carried out in full effect.

However, due to the events of the last 12 months and the uncertainty this has brought to organizations globally, planning for FY2021-22 has been even trickier than usual. On top of this, businesses have to budget for a return to the office. It is not currently clear as to when and how this will look. As a result, some business plans may still be a little vague at this time.

Fortunately, in light of recent efforts, planning ahead may not be as daunting as originally thought.

The further easing of COVID-19 restrictions in the UK (for example, the opening of non-essential retail, personal care premises, increased number of people at events etc) and across many states in the US, including Georgia, shows promise. With more than half of the adult population in the UK having received their first COVID-19 vaccine, it feels like the closest we’ve been to normality in the last year.

With research showing over two-thirds of employees in the UK are looking forward to communicating in person with their colleagues when returning to the office, there are many things people miss about working from the office. However, whilst people may be looking forward to returning to the office or getting back out in the field, one thing they may not be looking forward to is the time and frustration of submitting expenses.

Manually submitting expenses can be a boring and time-consuming task that employees let linger until the end of the month – resulting in having to trawl through receipts and submit a large number of expenses in one go.

With respect to the challenges finance teams face, it is easier to miss incorrect expenses or errors with manual systems as there is no automatic policy being enforced, resulting in increased costs for businesses.

However, you can put a spring into your employee’s steps by implementing Zetadocs Expenses, ensuring they get the benefits of an automated expenses system.

Advantages of an automated expenses system

There are many benefits of using an automated expenses system for both submitters and finance teams, here are some of the key advantages:

For submitters:

• 24/7 availability – Employees can upload their expenses anywhere, anytime. This eliminates the need to rely on paper receipts and waiting until the end of the month to submit.
• Fast, accurate reimbursements – Staff will be spared the frustration of waiting for reimbursement, as managers and finance teams are alerted when an expense report is submitted, ultimately speeding up the approval process.
• Quicker card submissions – Our solution can create expenses from corporate credit card payments rather than entering each payment manually, saving submitters time and effort.

For finance teams:

• Increased control – Policies can be set for your employee’s expenses, either with warnings for approvers or by preventing expenses from being submitted in the first place.
• Better company credit card management – No more manually entering individual payments. Match and create expenses from card payments to reconcile payment card statements with ease – saving time and hassle.
• Reporting – Our solution not only clearly shows how much each department and individual employee spends, but can also help finance teams spot any anomalies within the data. This can include an expense submitted twice or an extra zero added to a value, which can easily be missed when managing expenses manually.

Zetadocs Expenses in action: “I would have liked to have seen this implemented two years ago.”

Over the years Zetadocs Expenses has helped multiple businesses transform their expenses procedures, including PXTech. PXTech provides real-time, actionable data to hospitality organizations and franchises across the globe, as well as to top UK-based charities.

Internal company reorganization highlighted issues that PXTech had with their old manual spreadsheet-based expensing system, which meant around 3 days per month being spent by their finance team collating expenses details. The finance team also faced difficulties when reconciling 15 company credit card statements, alongside cash expenses and centralized cards.

Further challenges PXTech faced were around policy enforcement and reclaiming VAT. Without any software in place to point out when an expense went over a certain limit, there was no help to control spending. Plus, as receipts weren’t captured digitally, PXTech were unable to reclaim VAT for any expenses that were missing paper receipts, or if the paper receipts had been damaged.

Once Zetadocs Expenses was selected, our solution was implemented in just two days (find out more about our implementation services here). This meant that employees now had access to our mobile app, allowing the capture of expenses anywhere, at any time. Whenever they incurred expenses on-the-go, they could simply take a picture of the receipt to either submit the expense on the spot or to add it into an expense report.

Our solution also allowed credit card statements to be imported into the system so that they could be matched to receipts quickly on screen as well as giving PXTech the ability to enforce company policies relating to certain expenses.

Implementing our software contributed to a significant decrease in expenditure costs, and employees now had access to an intuitive, simple to use mobile app to manage their expenses, saving multiple individuals (employees, managers and the finance team) time and effort.

This is what the CFO during the time of this project had to say:

“Zetadocs Expenses is a significant contributor to the dramatically reduced cost of expenditure at PXtech. Your product has helped our employees keep track of their spending, changing their mindset into questioning whether they do want to make each expense.”

Find out more about PXTech and this case study in detail here.

Spring into action today

If you’re currently using an old manual system to manage your expenses, this could be the perfect time to switch to our automated expense system, Zetadocs Expenses. Take advantage of these time saving and faster reimbursement benefits and put a spring into your employee’s steps with an award-winning system to use when expenses start heading towards pre-COVID levels.

Get in touch with us or book a demo to find out more about how our expense management system could help your business today.