Choosing The Right Expense Management Software | Software | Computers

Expense management systems are increasingly being deployed by companies across the world to process, pay and audit employee related expenses. Since almost all businesses are stepping into the global market, travel and other employee related expenses have skyrocketed and there is now a need to monitor the expenses and check for compliance of the company policies. The increasing number of employees in the company makes it difficult for the finance team to verify everyone’s claims. There is, therefore, a need for an automated system which can process claims, streamline the approval systems without the need for human intervention. The system should also keep track of the reports and should be able to generate an accurate, complete and detailed expense report as and when required. But there are countless expense management systems available in the market today. How does one go about choosing the right expense management system for their company?

Before you step into the market to consider buying an expense management system, it is imperative to understand your needs. Expense management systems have extensive and highly complex functionalities that enable organizations to manage their expense claims. Some of the functionalities may or may not be required for your company. Some may only be required when the company grows in size a few years from now. Hence, understand your specific needs so that you can ensure a functional match which can help your company realise its immediate goals and then some.

• Internal storage or hosted storage: decide whether you want your data to be housed internally or if you are comfortable with housing in an external location. Also understand the financial and security implications for the decision. Hosted expense management system can be provided as a cloud offering or it can be configured to the internal system as well.
• Software license model: can your company afford to purchase the software outright or will you need to rent it on a regular basis? The breakdown for the former is at least two years while the latter does not require any upfront expenditure and it pays as it is being used.
• Mode of operation: do you want the software to be installed in the users’ machines or do you want them to gain access to the software through an internet browser? This will also change depending on whether the software is internally hosted or cloud supported.
• Remote access permission: do you want the employees to gain access to the system from any location even if it is installed on the internal system? How do you plan to allow remote access? VPN, or terminal service?
• Multi location employee management: do you have employees working in different locations with different taxing system, or business policies? You will need to make arrangements for that in your expense management system.
• Multi currency transactions: do your employees incur expenses in multiple currencies? If so, you need to ensure that the software converts the currencies back to the native currency based on the current transaction value.
• Finance integration: Do you require the software to integrate your finance systems and payroll systems with the expense systems?
• Recharge expenses: does the company recharge the expenses to the clients or the respective internal departments or is it centrally managed? Will the claims be forwarded manually or do you want the system to automatically complete this process?
• Policy compliance: does the company have limitation on the spending and policies that employees are expected to adhere to when it comes to expenses? If so, do you want the software to check for compliance?
• Credit card transactions: do you want the system to automatically import transactions from the credit card providers and present the employee with individual credit card statements?
• Receipt attachment: do you want physical proof of the credit card statements? Do you want the employees to submit the scanned copies of the receipts to support their claim?

Once you have decided on all these factors, you can choose your expense management system with ease.

Enaviya provides Sharepoint Company India, Sharepoint 2010 Development and Sharepoint Developers

via freearticles.mohul.com