How to Find the Right Expense Tracking Software for Your Business

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Business expense tracking software solutions have eliminated the manual hassle of monitoring expenses in many offices. That’s because they are fast, efficient and will actually save you a lot of money and time.

So, what exactly is business expense tracking software?

Well, business expense tracking software is nothing but a cloud based solution with tools for your employees and management to record, report and approve business expenses. You can access all business expenses through a platform, and process reimbursements for your employees.

Such software will automatically generate expense reports for you and streamline the entire business expense processing exercise.

But, how do you find the right business expense tracking software for your business?

There are a few simple things you should look for in such software:

1. Generate per diem expense reports
2. Automated expense reports
3. Policy compliance
4. Cross platform access and Integrations

1. Generate per diem expense reports
Every country will have different per diem policies. For instance, the IRS in the United States has issues certain guidelines to be maintained for expense reports. Per diem expense reports require receipts of meals, lodging, purpose of trips, location and dates.

So, the business expense tracking software that you choose should include federal government guidelines and the subsequent rates.

You should go for the best expense management software that allows you to upload IRS regulations according to your state and county. These are then generally automatically applied to receipts, and you are notified if any expense receipt submitted by your employees doesn’t follow the guidelines.

This streamlines the business expense tracking process, and simplifies it according to your business and its guidelines.

    Also Read: Why Your Small Business Needs Time Tracking Software

2. Automated expense reports
This is something you must look for in any good business expense tracking software. Usually, the management in any office spends hours approving expense reports filed by employees. However, with expense tracking software, it becomes exceedingly easy to approve such reports.

Most free business expense trackers will also allow you to automate the approving system. Automatic submissions for business expenses from employees is a must have feature as well. And with the right software, you can set up rules for automatic approvals.

Auto submissions and auto approvals make business expense tracking software a complete bag of goodies. Workflow automations make the process of expense tracking time-saving and efficient. That’s because, the management and employees don’t have to go through countless Excel sheets anymore.

3. Policy Compliance
Just like per diem expense reports have to follow some legal guidelines, every expense also needs to follow a policy. This means, not every expense counts as a business expense, as a lot of these might be personal expenses that employees tend to club. Although, it might seem harmless, but business expenses are subject to legal bindings.

Therefore, the best expense management software will always have a powerful policy checking feature. This ensures that within every expense receipt, there is no room of discrepancy. And admin gets notified every time an employee files in an expense.

Expense tracking software will auto flag receipts that are non compliant and depending on the severity of the violation, send alerts. This is a must have feature for businesses that struggle to analyze expense receipts.

    Also Read: 3 Steps for Tracking Your Business Monthly Expenses

4. Cross Platform Access and Integrations
Any business expense tracking software will work within the framework of your operations. Starting from how you are collecting the data in your business, to how the invoicing is processed, the tracking software should fit your business model well.

So, if you would like to do business on the fly, it is important that you have access to the said business expense tracking software from every platform, including mobile and desktop. This will help when expenses need to be filed and reviewed on the go. Also, the best expense management software should integrate with your invoicing channel with process expense receipts, to make sure that you are not filing duplicate data on multiple software solutions.