Expense Reporting Made Easier

2007-03-08 10:33:40

( Business )



Tedious Task of Expense Reporting

Occasionally your sales or management crew may need to do some traveling or other field interactions with suppliers or clientele to promote your business. As a general policy, your traveling crew need to prepare a report that summarizes all the expenses they have incurred while in the field on official business.

The task of expense reporting involves collecting receipts, transportation ticket stubs or other evidence of the expense, then completing your company's standard expense report form. A typical expense reporting form may contain different columns to classify the nature of the item into food, transportation fare, hotel, fuel, or telecom expense. The traveling employee then submits the completed form to you, and you or your company accountant will record the figures into your expense accounts. The final expense report will give you a rough idea of the volume of expenses as well as their nature, and is a valuable key for setting upper limits for your staff's representation expenses.

Without an automated system, expense reporting can be very time-consuming and rigorous. You will not also be able to immediately detect whether a company representative may have already gone over the limit in travel expenses, until it's too late.

Modern Expense Reporting Methods

You can make expense reporting less tedious by setting up a computerized expense reporting system. You can use spreadsheet formats to construct columns and cells where data will be entered, and program specific parts of your spreadsheet to compute totals or percentages.

As an alternative, you can also download from online sources for a fee or buy the special software from computer shops. The software contains variations of possible expense reporting templates that you may want to use. You just need to input the figures given by your traveling staff, or let them do the inputs themselves. The software will automatically compute the data with its built-in formulas.

While the above cuts down processing time and effort, there will still be some delay before you will be able to see finalized expense reports.

An even easier and faster method is to utilize internet-based expense management solutions. For a low monthly subscription, you register your company and staff information into the online site. Your staff can access the expense reporting system through a laptop or handheld, and can also fax in the receipts using access codes. You can immediately check the information that your employee has entered.

The data also goes automatically to your company's expense accounts which you can view and check immediately. The online expense reporting system also analyzes the submitted data and gives you a summary within an hour.

While an online expense reporting system may be an extra cost to you, it will also enable you to instantly detect any signs of abuse or overuse. Thus, it helps you keep your staff's representation expenses within acceptable limits.


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