The combined knowledge of the human race is currently available to you on demand from a device that fits in your pocket. In the age of self-driving cars, immersive virtual reality, and 3D printing, why is it that expense reporting for so many companies still belongs in the dark ages (or at least the nineties…)?
Coming from a sales background, I’m no stranger to expense reporting. Whether it be entertaining clients, traveling to meetings or conferences, or eating while on the road, I’m well acquainted with the routine — keep all your paper receipts; tape them to a white piece of printer paper; fill out some form of excel spreadsheet detailing how much you spent, when you spent it, on whom you spent it and what category it falls into; print that sheet out; staple all the pieces of paper together, and turn it all into HR.
How can this still be the norm in 2015?
For the advanced companies out there, employees might scan the receipt-laden printer paper and attach the .pdf to the excel spreadsheet, and turn it all in electronically.
While this does make the process slightly more digital, it’s still a massive waste of time. And, in the literal sense of the word, time equals money. Every minute your employees waste filling out and filing expense reports is time they could be selling, marketing, programming, etc.
Multiple friends I’ve spoken to, who work at Fortune 500 companies, still file expense reports with paper and tape.
This is such an easy problem to fix. Copper Mobile developed a white-label mobile app that allows employees to photograph individual receipts with their phones, type in the amount of the expense, label the client or project for which the money was spent, categorize the expense according to your company’s parameters, and submit it instantly to HR.
Additionally, we built a back-end web console so HR could track all of this digitally, on demand. The second an employee files an expense, HR can flag it for follow up or approve it on the spot. This allows employees to spend less time dealing with expense reporting and more time working. It also allows them to get reimbursed quicker, which is sure to make them happier as well.
Something good for productivity, motivation and your bottom line? Booyah.
While expense reporting might not seem like the biggest challenge facing your business, little inefficiencies like these build upon one another, leading to a whole more damaging than the sum of their parts. If you can find a smart, cost effective mobile solution like our white label app and dashboard, you can take one inefficiency off the proverbial table.
