–This article was last updated on 7 October 2021-
While Excel is undoubtedly a useful tool, it’s worth remembering that it has been 40 years since electronic spreadsheets were first adopted by businesses in the UK – and when it comes to expense management, it’s high time businesses started adopting a more advanced approach.
If your business is still battling on with a combination of paperwork and spreadsheets to keep on top of expenses, here are five reasons why you might want to consider an overhaul of your company expenses administration:
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1. Traditional Expense Calculation is Time-Consuming
Spreadsheets lack connectivity and this ultimately means that expense management processes are painfully slow. Think about it: all information must be manually entered and transferred from document to document. To alleviate this, why not consider implementing a cloud-based expense solution which removes all delays and provides your accounts team with instant access and real-time reporting on all data entered into the system? Tasks which currently take days or weeks using traditional approaches could be handled in mere minutes, freeing up your team to focus on other tasks.
2. Automation Boosts Productivity
Instead of using a static Excel spreadsheet, an expense application could automate calculations without the need for any manual processing. By removing repetitive, boring data entry tasks and eliminating the potential for manual error, your team can instead focus on managing out-of-office costs without spending so much time on the administrative side of things.
3. Fraud Protection and Improved Compliance
Expensein is HMRC compliant and allows for receipt scanning and policy enforcement, thereby negating the potential for fraudulent claims to occur. Your finance team can set spending limits which will trigger automatic alerts when a claim breaches its set limit. This means that any issues can be immediately addressed, unlike spreadsheets where problems may not be noticed until weeks or months down the line.
4. Less Pressure on Employees
If your team is currently having to manually transfer details from a crumpled bundle of paper receipts into an Excel spreadsheet, morale and productivity could be affected. This is because manual expenses handling is time-consuming and results in your employees not receiving expenses owed to them for weeks or even months. With a cloud-based expense system, your team can use mobile technology to input receipts in next to no time, improving efficiency and ensuring claims are processed as quickly as possible.
5. Enhanced Financial Reporting
The lack of connectivity with Excel spreadsheets means that report generation can be painstakingly slow, as your team are reliant on pulling information from several different documents. With a cloud-based company expenses solution, integrated reporting tools allow instant access to data. This helps to shine a light on the murky world of business costs and allows your organisation to identify any issues before they become costly or problematic.
