Documentation Is Key for a Streamlined Approval Process

To reduce expense management processing costs, you have to ask five questions for evaluation:

1. What is your expense management process? Begin by documenting your company’s process, walking through each step and every possibility. Include every person and every requirement.
2. How many people are involved? Do they have the training and resources they need?
3. Does every expense report have the same process? How do expenses vary by level and is the process the same?
4. Are any of your processes manual — such as spreadsheets, stamps, written policy validation, and physical reimbursement checks?

Building an approval process matrix is key to automating an expense management solution — particularly one that employs a sophisticated business rules engine to handle virtually any combination of criteria.

Approval routes can be built based on organizational hierarchy (e.g., manager, director, VP, etc.), dollar threshold escalation, expense allocation coding, attributes of the expense owner, and many additional criteria.

Every company is different and can set its own number of reviewers. Some companies use accounting as the final step in the approval process. They are responsible for exporting the approved voucher to the financial system for payment.

Learn how to automate administration and simplify expense reporting, here.