There are a number of suggestions as to what challenges a company may encounter when they manage their expense management processes manually. To give you a quick overview, we have collected the biggest problems for you here:
TL;DRCompanies that still manage expenses manually face four compounding problems: the direct time cost of manual keying, the lack of real-time data insight that prevents proactive management, the inability to enforce company policies automatically, and a poor audit trail that creates compliance risk. Acubiz identifies these as the four most common bottlenecks its customers faced before switching to automated expense management.
The biggest and most commonly encountered problem when you have not yet automated your processes is manual keying and handling.
It is not necessarily a problem itself but the consequences are often comprehensive, as manual work is extremely time-consuming, and it usually entails that more employees are becoming involved in the process. This means that a number of employees must focus on tasks that are not a part of their core competencies.
The process costs can therefore suddenly get out of control if a highly paid employee must spend time filling in and forwarding envelopes with completed schemes and receipts.
Insight into real time data is crucial for a company’s administration or management to stay on top of everything and maintain the overview.
Without the option to gain real time data insight on e.g. the amount of time spent on a given project, the management will also not have the possibility to be automatically notified if more time has been spent on the project than the company can be reimbursed for.
Therefore, it can quickly lead to a conflict between customer and company, if the lack of data insight into an employee’s time or money consumption is not in accordance with company policy or what has been agreed with the customer.
The previous point is completely in line with the next major challenge of manual handling of expenses. If a company has automated its processes around expense management, then company policies can set up limitations to ensure that no more money than agreed can be used.
At the same time, it is possible to dispatch two things: fraudulent overspending and cheating with expenses and the settlement hereof. Incorporation of company policies are therefore a good idea.
It may seem quite absurd, but one of the biggest challenges of managing expenses is by far that reports are often lost before handled or disappear somewhere in the process.
With a manual process handling the expense reports the error margin will always be greater than if the process had been automated. This way the expenses can be reported right away and you will not have to worry about keeping track of your receipts.
There is almost always room for improvements and that is also a part of the journey towards developing your business, and yourself.
Contact us if you want to know how we can help your business or book a free online demo to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the biggest problem with managing expenses manually?
Manual keying and handling is the most common and impactful challenge. Each expense requires an employee to enter data, an approver to review physical documentation, and a finance team member to retype information into the accounting system. This creates unnecessary work across multiple people and increases the probability of errors at every step.
How does manual expense management lead to poor data insight?
Manual processes cannot provide real-time data. By the time a travel settlement reaches the finance team, coded, and entered into the system, the spend has often already exceeded budget or policy limits with no one aware. Without live data, management cannot proactively flag overspending on projects or identify which activities are consuming disproportionate resources.
Why can't company expense policies be effectively enforced in a manual process?
Manual processes have no way to check a submitted expense against policy rules at the point of submission. Violations only come to light during manual review, if the reviewer notices them. This means both accidental overspending and deliberate fraud can pass through the system without being caught automatically, putting the compliance burden entirely on individual approvers.
What does automation solve that manual expense handling cannot?
Automation addresses all four challenges simultaneously. It eliminates manual keying through OCR and card integration, provides real-time spend visibility through a live dashboard, enforces company policies at the point of submission, and creates a complete digital audit trail. The result is a faster process with fewer errors and better compliance at a lower total cost.