Expense management solutions have come to a long path from being a simple reporting tool. They have developed because of the advances in the spheres of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. An expense management software solution which employs the latest technology is a must-have for every company, irrespective of industry or size.
Many organizations are gradually switching to automated expense management software to mitigate the losses connected with expense frauds. The speed of change and adoption needs to keep pace with the emerging trends in the industry.
According to Technavio analysts, the travel and expense management system market will rise at a CAGR of 12% approximately from 2019 to 2023.
Several organizations made advances in expense management practices such as:
- Adopting an automated expense management system with user-centric interface and design.
- Digitally transforming and moving ERP systems to the cloud.
The year 2019 will witness a continuous upswing in the maturity in expense management practices and sophistication of software capabilities.
Here, we present some of the new trends that expense tools will adopt in the long-run.
- Integrated Software
The expense management system will start to combine recently different actions into a seamless operation with bank accounts, payroll, accounting, CRM, credit cards in a single place. All these solutions share common information, and it is perfect for uniting all of them to ensure data integrity.
When integrated with travel management solutions and travel applications, transactions can be entered directly into the software without the need for any manual input. Corporate credit cards can be linked to the system, which will make it easier to resolve credit card statements with the expense reports.
- Booking Travel Tickets
According to a study by TripActions, almost 90% of respondents state that traveling is hugely significant for business growth. But more than 50% of the employees do not use the business travel solutions which are offered by their company, owing to the difficulties in the time taken to book a trip. The employees prefer using customer channels.
Using multiple external suppliers and incoherent channels to book travel tickets is a tedious task and ends up with last minute chaos. Expenses have to record accurately in the expense management software, and it’s imperative to integrate the same into the software.
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Traveling employees have to spend a lot of time in filling the expense reports and demand for an expense management solution that is easy to use. By leveraging expense management software, businesses brought down the cost and time of expense reporting. This will go down further with the advancement in OCR technology.
OCR has become one of the best ways in which the ease of use of an expense management tool is enhanced. It helps in eliminating the need to enter data manually from the receipts into forms and facilitate mobility.
Travelers can take a picture of the receipts and have the solution to extract all the necessary information from it to fill the expense report. OCR technology is 96% accurate and needs no human intervention to verify the data or information that has gets uploaded.
- Mobility
Many organizations have felt that mobile applications and accessibility is a crucial capability of an expense reporting system. An expense management solution will start to respond to this change in the way that people work by facilitating mobility.
Employees can submit their expense reports on the go, and managers can approve the claims using a smart device. Mobile applications will become more responsive and intuitive, thus encouraging greater adoption.
- Artificial Intelligence
With artificial intelligence and machine learning evolving, they will add to the sophistication of the expense management system. There will be an enhanced ability to assign expense general ledger codes based on the smarter categorization and submission of expense types. Elementary versions of this still exist in some tools which use rule-based categorization.
AI-powered automation is also expected to reduce fraudulent activities in expense reports. It can track and monitor expenses, and compliance related matters will immediately be flagged out and eliminated.
To Sum Up
It is true that expense management practices are making huge leaps, but some organizations still haven’t started using automated travel and expense management processes. Making sure the efficiency of the expense management processes do not have to be quite difficult. Leveraging a cloud-based expense management solution like SutiExpense gives you complete control over your corporate expenses and minimizes errors. Also, you can provide role-based access for some additional security.
The solution easily integrates with other applications that you are using and has powerful expense reporting capabilities providing valuable insights to enhance your expense management processes.
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