Four steps to selecting the best expense management solution for your manufacturing company
Expense management automation provides significant benefits to manufacturing businesses by streamlining financial processes, enhancing transparency, and optimising resource allocation. However, to what extent and how quickly your business realises these benefits will depend greatly on choosing the right solution and configuring it to your specific needs and goals. To do this effectively, it is crucial to understand your current processes and approval workflows thoroughly.
By clearly defining your expense management process and identifying manual expense areas that can be optimised through automation, you’ll be able to effectively compare expense automation solutions and eliminate vendors that don't meet your company’s specific needs.
Let’s take a closer look at the four critical steps to selecting the best solution.
Align expectations with all stakeholders
The first step in your process to automate expense management is to initiate the evaluation by conducting stakeholder interviews to align all decision-makers and set precise expectations. Establishing clear expectations ahead of time sets the foundation for a smoother evaluation process.
Identifying critical expense reporting requirements and strategic objectives is crucial for optimising cost savings and improving operational expense automation efficiency. Involving key stakeholders and finance teams from the beginning can reduce decision-making challenges and enable seamless implementation.
Establish non-negotiable requirements
Once stakeholders have met and shared their expectations for an expense management solution, establish a list of non-negotiables. This ensures that the chosen expense management system aligns with manufacturing regulations and upholds internal policy compliance.
In your list of non-negotiables, state the accounting software you use, outline the rules that make up your expense policy, and define your approval workflow.
Common requirements include:
- Integrated corporate card programs for easy expense tracking
- Streamlined workflows that eliminate busy work around routing expenses and invoices for approval
- Smart controls to ensure compliance with policies and government regulations
- Automated employee expense monitoring for efficient and accurate travel and expense reimbursement
- Real-time dashboards for valuable expense data insights
Outline your expense management process
Outline how you would like to improve your current expense reporting process. Focus on questions such as:
Does your finance team need help enforcing your expense policy?
Are employees holding onto expense receipts for months on end?
Do employees complain that the expense reimbursement process takes too long?
Identifying these critical concerns will provide significant clarity in your discussions with potential expense management solution providers.
Explore your choices: Real-time versus batch reporting
An automated expense management solution can broadly be categorised into two main types: batch reporting and real-time expense reporting. Your choice between these solutions will significantly impact the features and functionalities at your disposal, influencing how expenses are submitted, reviewed, and approved within your company.
Batch reporting solution
Batch reporting typically involves a manual process where expenses are collected over time, grouped into an expense report, and submitted for reimbursement. Batch reporting solutions are known for their efficiency in handling large volumes of expense data systematically and concurrently. They enable users to compile and submit expense reports periodically, streamlining the process and ensuring that all expenses are captured and accounted for efficiently.
Real-time reporting solution
In contrast, real-time expense reporting solutions offer a more dynamic and immediate approach to expense report automation. These solutions allow for an expense request to be reported and approved in real-time, providing greater visibility and control over expenditure as it occurs. This can lead to expedited reimbursement processes and enhanced decision-making driven by real-time financial information. A real-time expense reporting solution indexes individual expenses, reducing the need for a batched expense report.
That said, note that the term “real-time” commonly used can be misleading as it is often limited to specific functions like receipt capture. A true real-time solution treats expenses as individual transactions, logging each separately, similar to how a search engine operates.
Selecting the right expense management software
When selecting the right expense management software, a critical step is thoroughly evaluating your finance team's needs and operational processes. Distinguishing between batch reporting and real-time expense reporting is necessary for making an informed choice that can enhance the efficiency of your automated expense management software. By comprehensively analysing each software type's features, capabilities, and operational implications, you can ensure that the selected expense management solution effectively meets your company’s requirements for expense tracking, generating expense reports, and managing each approval process. Selecting a system that seamlessly aligns with your company's goals is critical to automating expense management.
Emburse provided a modern mobile solution that saved employees time and effort so they could focus on impactful work, rather than cumbersome expense reporting tasks. We went from having 13 standalone expense management systems and numerous other Excel variations to one unified, global solution.
Hamish Waddell
Global Finance Process Manager
Jotun
Smarter expense management starts with Emburse
Emburse delivers innovative end-to-end travel and expense management solutions that solve for what’s next for forward-thinking organisations. Our suite of award-winning products is trusted by more than 12 million finance and travel leaders, and business professionals around the world. More than 20,000 organisations in 120 countries, from Global 2000 corporations and small-medium businesses to public sector agencies and nonprofits, count on us to manage business travel and employee expenses with ease.Our highly automated, mobile-first solutions streamline business travel planning, booking and management, and eliminate manual, time-consuming expense submissions, approval and reconciliation. We deliver efficiency and time savings, increase financial visibility, enhance spend control and compliance, and improve the entire business travel experience. This empowers our customers and their teams to deliver meaningful value for their organisations.
For more information visit emburse.com/uk, or follow our social channels at @emburse.