Expense Tracking: What to Look For | Software | Computers

Business teaches you that in order to gain something valuable, you must invest a lot of time and resources into it. The sales and marketing department is one of your biggest assets in your company. They help the company scale new heights. They are constantly interacting with the industry and the market to ensure that they tap every opportunity that presents itself to generate revenue for the company. But this effort has its own expenses. This effort involves travel and mobile expenses. A laptop and portable internet connectivity device and the expenses associated with it are also some of the pre-requisites of the trade. Since the sales and marketing team comprises of more than a handful people in a medium to large sized company, keeping track of the expenses incurred by each of them can grow to be an increasingly complex task. An efficient expense tracing system, hence, is the need of the hour.

Expense tracking system keeps track and approves company costs through a web based application. It eliminates all paper based systems for managing purchase requests and invoice tracking by automating the entire process. Auditing costs are reduced dramatically and the system gives you a real-time broader perspective of your company expenses enabling you to zero in on the unnecessary company expenses that you can minimise. It allows you to effectively account for project costs, track budget allocated to the actual expenses, and analyze real-time reliable project time and cost information to make timely and sound business decisions.

One of the biggest challenges faced by the industry is that each department in the industry have their own system of tracking time and expense in their team. IT department could have their own product/ application to track project expenses, marketing and sales team may use spreadsheets or an outdated expense tracking application. Yet others may keep track through paper based entries. It becomes a challenge to compile the data from such distinctive systems. This will only result in increased stress for the finance division and is a sheer waste of time. It also causes inefficiencies, poor project status, and lack of actual cost/revenue visibility and real time project status all of which can prevent the management from making informed decisions.

Why can’t we continue to use our old expense tracking system, you ask? Here’s why. Look at the expense sheets for the software itself. You will note that you will have spent more on the maintenance and enhancement tasks in the past three years than on the software itself. Today’s expenses have to be tracked through numerous platforms such as cash transactions, card transactions, online transactions, etc. and consolidated on a single platform which the legacy systems cannot manage. Thus, instead of simplifying work, you end up multiplying it.

If you are looking to upgrade your expense tracking system, ensure that the software has the following features:

·        A simple, intuitive, easy-to-comprehend user interface

·        Automatic policy enforcement features to promote compliance

·        Easy to configure dashboards and financial reports for faster analysis

·        Mobile accessibility feature to enter records even when the employee is away from the desk

·        Ability to import transactions from different platforms based on the mode of transactions and create an expense report automatically

·        Feature to attach scanned receipts and bills to individual expense entries

·        Multi currency conversion based on the current conversion rates and multiple-tax support

·        Ability to track and sort expenses by category

·        Feature to allow labelling expenses that are billable, capitalized or to be reimbursed

·        Built-in integration to personal accounts and general ledger systems of all major accounting systems

·        The system must be compatible with other applications

If you can obtain a tracking system that also permits time tracking, you can gain more benefit from the system. You will be saved the task of integrating time and expense tracking systems in the organization.

Enaviya provides Expense Management Software, Travel & Expense and Spend Management

via freearticles.mohul.com