#Paperless employee manpower how to

In addition to being a time-consuming hassle, traditional expense reports are an insecure method for managing company expenses.īy having employees pay for expenses and claim them back, there is a lack of clear oversight of company expenditure until the end of a billing period. No matter how much they enjoy their work, they didn’t go to business school just to end up taking care of Brian’s tuna mayo reimbursements! Not only are expense reports inefficient - they’re a security risk There are much, much better things your finance team could be doing to help grow your business. This means even more time and effort sunk into meaningless details. They’re the ones having to process your employees’ expense reports, including reviewing reports and chasing staff for missing information.Ī study released by the GBTA Foundation has shown that one in every five expense reports needs to be reviewed. If you think the process is a hassle for your employees, consider the dire situation your finance team is in. What’s more, it can - in some cases - lead to a higher likelihood of expense fraud.Īnd even though this remains the 'classic' way that companies manage cost, it won't be for long. In one study, a third of workers felt 'financially unstable' because of expenses they were forced to incur.Īsking your employees to go into their own pockets for major expenses is a surefire way to end up with a grumpy team. Not only that, but they can have a significant negative financial impact on your employees, particularly when handling significant expenses like travel or accommodation. A headache for employeesĮven if you have a comprehensive and informative expense policy and the best finance team in the universe, traditional paper expense reports are still a massive pain. Multiply this across each member of your team, and the amount of time sunk on this pointless labyrinth of paper starts to get truly scary. Companies often ignore the hidden costs of traditional expense management processes, which can be significant and distract from core business.Įstimates suggest the life cycle of a single expense report is 30 days from submission to payment, with a total of nearly 50 minutes of company time spent dealing with each form.

Not only are paper expense reports a common bugbear they’re also an expensive one. Painful for everyone (this means you)ĭealing with expense reports is one of the most common employee complaints. And not just for the poor soul in the finance team tasked with reviewing and checking everyone’s meal and travel reimbursements. Fortunately, with an integrated expense management tool, it no longer has to be. But more on this soon. People are so used to this way of doing things, they continue asking their staff to shell out their own money for company expenses and stuff their wallets with fistfuls of receipts, only to be reimbursed many weeks later. So, why do they still exist?īecause old habits die hard. Nobody wins with paper expense reports, ever. Think about it - instead of providing approval for Brian’s skim latte, Head of Marketing Rachel could instead be working on the next run of digital ads, or meeting with market leaders to strategise on potential partnerships. Worst of all? The managers taking time out from their busy schedules to approve everything. The employees hoarding receipts for coffee and sandwiches the finance team working their way through teetering stacks of paper the accountants making sure everything squares up at the end of the month: no one comes away from expense reports unscathed.Įvery step in the process feels like a Kafka novel wrapped up in a Munch painting living inside a Beckett play: bureaucratic, vague, and inevitably resulting in existential dread.

You know it as well as we do: expense reports are horrible for everyone, everywhere.

#Paperless employee manpower how to

17 ways the expense report process hurts your businessĮxpense automation: How to automate expense claims and approvalsĮxpense reports: why do we do this to ourselves?