Employee Expense Tracking Tips & Tricks
Employee expenses often fall into an area of finance that can escape us. Tracking them can be tedious and denying employee expense claims can lead to anger and frustration.
By following some simple guidelines, you can make employee expense tracking less painful for you, while also helping employees better understand how your reimbursement processes work. Having firm policies in place (absolutely no reimbursements for late submissions, for example), monitoring expense reports and using technology to manage expenses all help to make your life easier. Here are our six favourite tips for tracking employee expenses.
These six tips will help you save time and energy in tracking employee expenses (and they’re more efficient than a cardboard box).
Research online expense management apps
Choose an expense management app or system that fits your budget and meets your needs. Most importantly, make sure your employees use it. Give them time to learn the new system so it will all go smoothly.
Analyze your system
Just because your expense management structure has worked in the past doesn’t mean it still does. Regularly check your system to make sure it’s still relevant and efficient for your company and easy for your employees to use.
Keep track of petty cash
Make sure you know where the petty cash is going and have firm policies on how it is to be used. Without these policies, tracking down random receipts when you’re trying to balance your cash can be a hassle (or even impossible).
Monitor employee expense reports
Follow up on expense reports to determine where money is going and if it could be allocated differently. For example, are numerous employees submitting receipts for commuting from the same city? Could they carpool? Looks for opportunities to streamline and consolidate common expenses.
Have firm policies in place
Ensure your company has firm guidelines in place for reimbursement and make sure they are followed. If receipts are to be submitted within two weeks of the charge being incurred, then receipts submitted after that must be denied. This helps you keep track of your cash flow and better manage employee expenses.
Consider a pre-paid card
Pre-paid debit cards with daily limits are becoming more popular for business. They can be kept in the office and activated when needed. If an employee is on a business trip, they can use a pre-paid card to buy food. This saves you from tedious paperwork, and your employee the hassle of submitting for reimbursement.
