Apps to streamline your expense process

January 31, 2020 |

A bookkeeper will often tell you that the worst part of their job is dealing with employee expenses. The expense process should be simple but it can be an administrative nightmare. Chasing employees for receipts and then being presented with a backlog… maybe even a pile of screwed up till receipts. This backlog must then be approved and entered into the accounting system which can be prolonged and a waste of valuable resources within the business.

There are now apps on the marketplace that can make this process much easier. Let’s break the expense process down into stages, and see how fintech can help:

Step one: Retaining a receipt

With apps like Receiptbank and Xero expenses, staff can snap a photo of their expense receipt on their smart phone as soon as they leave a store. A digital copy is then retained in the cloud. You will be pleased to hear that HMRC do accept digital receipts (as long as complete and unaltered). So it no longer matters if that paper copy ends up in the wash with your favourite jeans!

Step two: Passing the receipt to the relevant person in a timely manner

Once uploaded, the expense can be viewed online by the relevant person instantly. The beauty of cloud computing is that this can be done anytime.

Step three: Recording a receipt in the accounts

Expense apps will read key details from a photo image and populate an expense claim. Details such as supplier, date, amount and vat are extracted from the invoice and these fields are auto-populated. The receipt just needs to be reviewed, approved and submitted to the account’s software.

Step four: Paying the expense

The apps will automatically collate the expenses submitted into expense claims for each employee. When employees have company credit cards, the expenses will be matched to the credit card statements.

Step five: Expense Analytics

By digitising the expense process, you will have up to date information which will give you more insights and control over expenditure. The time saved by technology can be better utilised, giving you more time for analysis.

If you are looking to embrace this technology with us, please get in touch with your relationship principal or email us here for more information. In the meantime, here are links to some of our favourite apps out there:









Xero Expenses
Great for Xero Users.
Receiptbank
Integrates with Xero, Quickbooks, Sage and Freeagent
Pleo
Give employees their own company card with individual spending limits
Expensify
Good for larger SMEs with more complex expense approval requirements