Is your expense management process your hidden productivity killer?

October 20, 2021

By Ben Grossberg

Thousands of wasted hours

Expense management is the hidden process responsible for stealing thousands of hours each year – time that should have been used to lead teams and innovate within the finance function. Existing expense processes are excruciating for all involved, with everyone from the C-suite to graduates agreeing that the process is fractured.

First though, what is the expense management process?

The expense management process is a system that allows organisations to manage a range of expenses and financial transactions, including processing expense reports, coding expenses, transactions, approvals, receipt collection and employee reimbursements.

For many, the expense management process may be described as time-consuming, laborious, expensive, and frustrating. Traditionally this process has been done manually with paper receipts and handwritten notes.

Business leaders or admin staff?

When organisations hire sales and marketing leaders, they expect them to lead teams and deliver growth, not waste days on basic administrative tasks like processing expense reports, leading to productivity loss. Similarly, CFOs are selected to strategically manage cash flow, predict trends and lead on financial planning rather than manually enter or approve expenses.

But, existing expense management processes are backwards, resulting in CFOs and their finance teams becoming support staff for other departments, and key sales leaders becoming trapped at their desks working out expense management for days. The entire organisation ends up completing tasks that don’t align with their unique skill sets – quickly killing everyone’s productivity.

Is there a better way?

What are the benefits of a better expense management process?

What if you could automate your expense management process? How would you like to gain real-time visibility into all transactions? Imagine if you could save up to 90% of admin time!

Some of the benefits of a better expense management process include:

  • Automatic business transaction coding
  • Digital receipt collection
  • Customised expense reporting
  • Automatic reminders at the right time

Introducing virtual corporate cards: the new gold standard in expense management software

Virtual corporate cards – issued as needed, without having to wait for a traditional card to arrive in the post – are changing how expenses are managed and fighting productivity loss. They deliver unprecedented access to information and increased automation.

Rich transactional data is available as soon as payments are made with a virtual corporate card, and data can be automatically exported to an organisation’s accounting software.

Sales teams can quickly reconcile their expenses in the field to prevent days wasted on manual data entry and scanning receipts, processing expense reports. And finance teams don’t have to wade through email upon email with attached receipts, or, even worse, process paper receipts left on desks.

How virtual corporate cards work

  1. CFOs or finance teams create a virtual corporate card in seconds
  2. Once created, cards are sent to team members to install on their smartphone – instantly – ready for immediate use
  3. When a purchase occurs, team members quickly reconcile the transaction on their smartphone, while still in the field
  4. Finance teams have complete visibility of transactional data as expenses are incurred
  5. Expense data is automatically exported to existing accounting software, significantly reducing manual handling time

Manage expenses and boost productivity

Weel is trusted by businesses like Michael Hill, Uniting Agewell and more.

The straightforward but highly efficient expense management software is a great system for CFOs of small- and medium-sized businesses who are ready to reclaim their admin time for more strategic challenges. And sales teams will thank their CFOs for making expense management so much easier, regardless if they’re working on or off site. Productivity loss due to poor expense management and processing expense reports becomes a thing of the past.

If you’re ready to step away from the day-to-day admin of your expense management process, then you need to learn more about Weel.

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