The Hidden Costs of Manual Expense Management

While travel and entertainment (T&E) accounts for 10-12% of the annual budget, how much money is your company allocating to expense management overall? It may be more than you think. If your company manages expenses manually with spreadsheets, paper receipts and printed expense reports—there may be several time- and money-draining processes to consider eliminating.

The Hidden Cost of Manual Review Do managers and accountants spend hours each week manually reviewing expense reports? The review process can be a tedious one, including expense report approval, manager review (and subsequent accountant review), expense reconciliation, and processing for reimbursement.

Consider the average hourly rate of an accountant, and the number of hours per month spent manually reviewing expense reports and entering data into an accounting system. Over the course of a year, a manual review process becomes quite costly.

The Hidden Cost of Paper Expense Reports Employees who regularly submit expense reports know the tedium of saving receipts, entering data into a spreadsheet, stapling expenses together and remembering to submit their expense report on time. This manual method is a waste of the employees’ time and the company’s money—consider these hidden costs tied to paper expense reports:

Time spent on manual expense reporting: Tracking and organizing paper receipts Creating expense reports in Excel Mailing reports to manager or accountant Waiting for approval and reconciliation Waiting for reimbursement

Money spent on manual expense reporting: Wages for employees, managers and accountants to manual enter expense data Office supplies tied to expense reports such as paper, printer ink, staples, etc. Postage costs to mail expense reports (often overnighted to meet deadlines) Storage space to file past expense reports in the event of an audit Delinquent credit card payment fees due to late expense reports As more leading companies move to web-based expense management, it’s clear that automation is a cost-effective alternative to traditional expense reporting. Manual data entry, approval time, reimbursement time and paper use can all be significant reduced—if not eliminated—saving substantial time and money. To learn more about how automation can benefit your company, we’d be happy to show you how it works.