Spreadsheets help users capture, organize, and manipulate data arranged in rows and columns. Many organizations find it convenient to use spreadsheets or worksheets to manage a variety of information and data manually. There are many organizations that manage crucial information like business expenses using spreadsheets.
While managing expenses, you must remember that the widely-used spreadsheets are developed as general-purpose software applications. They lack the features required to manage business expenses flawlessly, securely, and efficiently. Moreover, your organization has to deploy dedicated staff to manage business expenses for using spreadsheets.
In addition to being vulnerable to human errors, spreadsheets cannot be accessed and updated by multiple employees simultaneously or remotely. Also, you cannot gain actionable insights while making important business decisions by analyzing the expense data stored in spreadsheets software like Microsoft Excel. That is why the number of organizations switching from spreadsheets to expense management software has been increasing consistently.
Unlike spreadsheets, expense management software applications come with built-in features to automate expense management end-to-end. Your business can use the right expense management solution to enable employees to file expenses without putting in extra time and effort. Also, the software will speed up expense reimbursement, automate approval, and ensure fraud detection.
9 Reasons to Choose Expense Management Software Over Spreadsheets
1. Eliminate Human Errors
While using spreadsheets, your employees have to draft expense reports and file expense claims manually. The manual drafting makes the expense report vulnerable to human errors. Moreover, employees have to put in extra time and effort to review the expense reports and fix the errors.
Expense management software helps your business to eliminate manual data entry errors. It generates expense reports automatically and accurately based on data collected from scanned reports.
2. Simplify Expense Filing
While using spreadsheets, employees have to scan receipts using third-party software applications. Hence, they need additional time to scan receipts and file expense claims.
But new-age expense management software comes with native auto receipt scanning. Also, they generate automated expense reports using OCR technology based on the receipts scanned by individual employees. Hence, it becomes easier for your business to speed up the entire expense processing.
3. Automate Expense Approval
Spreadsheets do not support expense approval automation. Your organization cannot curtail overall expense processing time without automating the expense approval process.
On the other hand, expense management software comes with native features to automate expense approval. Some software applications further support expense approval configuration based on employee, department, project, or entity. Also, they speed up approval by sending smart reminders.
4. Ensure Policy Compliance
Enforcing expense policies and ensuring policy compliance is an integral part of business expense processing. As general-purpose software applications, spreadsheets do not support or facilitate expense policy implementation. But expense management software applications are developed with features to implement expense policies.
While configuring the software, you have the option to configure approval workflow as well as policy checks. Also, the notifications sent by the software help you detect policy violations immediately.
5. Detect and Prevent Expense Fraud
Expense frauds make US businesses lose $ 2.8 billion per year. No business can detect and prevent expense fraud using spreadsheets. The new-generation expense management software uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and provides native features to prevent expense fraud.
Most software applications detect duplicate receipts and policy violations automatically. They further send smart notifications to your finance managers or accountants each time an expense fraud is detected.
6. Conduct Expense Audits Regularly
Finance managers and accountants conduct expense audits regularly to ensure that the expenses incurred remain aligned to the expense policy guidelines. They produce audit evidence by revisiting and reviewing the expense reports and receipts submitted by employees. They cannot speed up expensed audits using spreadsheets.
But expense management software facilitates quick expense audits by allowing auditors to access digital expense receipts and read approvals and comments. Hence, you can leverage the software to conduct expense audits regularly and effortlessly.
7. Track Behaviors and Patterns
No organization can curtail costs without understanding its spending or expenditure patterns. The decision-makers uncover and analyze expenditure patterns periodically to make informed decisions. Spreadsheets make the expenditure analysis process complex and time-consuming.
Expense management software, on the other hand, simplifies expenditure analysis by featuring dashboards. You can access the customized dashboard to gain actionable insights in minutes by understanding the expenditure patterns and organizational behavior.
8. Integrate with Enterprise Solutions
Most spreadsheets are developed as standalone software applications. They cannot be integrated seamlessly with existing accounting or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
But the expense management solutions can be integrated with your organization’s existing accounting or payroll software seamlessly. The integration helps your organization to speed up expense processing without deploying additional staff.
9. Curtail Ongoing Costs
Many organizations prefer spreadsheets to expense management software to avoid additional expenses. But your organization can curtail ongoing costs only through expense processing automation. The expense management software will boost the productivity of employees by simplifying expense filing and accelerating expense reimbursement.
Also, your business can save money by preventing expense fraud regularly. Several studies have highlighted the effectiveness of expense management solutions in reducing ongoing expenses by about 63%.
Conclusion
Most organizations these days operate in a digitized and distributed environment. The widely-used spreadsheets are developed as general-purpose software applications. They lack the functionality, scalability, and flexibility required to streamline and accelerate a crucial business process like expense management.
Your organization can automate the crucial process successfully only by opting for expense management software instead of spreadsheets. The built-in features provided by expense management solutions help you speed up expense filing, approval, and reimbursement. At the same time, the software will help you ensure policy compliance, conduct regular expense audits, and prevent expense fraud.
References
https://www.captio.com/blog/disadvantages-of-excel-expense-reports
https://www.jenji.io/resources/the-weak-points-of-excel-for-corporate-finance-process
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