Manual expense claims, piles of receipts, and approvals that land right at month-end close are not just annoying. They represent hours taken away from budget monitoring, cash flow management, and the analyses leadership actually expects.
That is why automating expense management and invoice workflows is not about adding yet another system. It is about moving registration, documentation, and coding closer to the moment the expense occurs. Finance then receives booking-ready data and a full audit trail straight away – rather than having to piece it all together at the end.
Here are the three principles that typically make the biggest difference:
- Capture the expense when it happens – with a mobile photo of the receipt and automatic matching to company card transactions
- Make approvals consistent and transparent – so decisions no longer get lost in email threads, absences, and manual reminders
- Achieve booking readiness through ERP and payroll integration – so a faster month-end close becomes a natural outcome, not a separate project
1) Time is the most expensive line item in a manual process
Expense management and supplier invoices easily become a drain on time because the process is full of repetition: data entry, chasing receipts, checking, correcting, and posting after the fact. Independent analyses point to 50–82% faster processing through automation, and in one concrete example processing time fell from 17.4 days to 3.1 days – while the cost per invoice dropped significantly.
The point is simple: when data can move automatically from receipt and transaction through to the general ledger, both throughput time and errors decrease. As Martin Eriksen from Acubiz often notes, this frees the finance function from data-entry work, freeing up time for prioritisation and advisory work based on current insight.
2) Visibility requires expenses to be recorded on an ongoing basis
Most finance teams know the pattern: receipts that go missing, registration put off until the end of the month, and an unclear picture of employee expenses. This affects both controlling and regulatory compliance, because documentation tends to get weaker the longer the gap between purchase and registration.
When the expense lifecycle is digitalised from registration through to posting and archiving, you gain both visibility and traceability as part of everyday operations. In Acubiz’s own Proof of Concept survey (2023), 77% of customers said they had previously spent too much time on administration, and 66% cited physical receipts as a primary challenge.
After implementation, 96% no longer experience the same challenges as before.
A concrete example is BDO Denmark, where 1,400 employees moved from scanning and after-the-fact registration to real-time mobile registration. As Nina Hjorthmose, Senior Consultant in Accounting at BDO, describes it:
“Now they can easily take a photo of their receipt and complete the expense claim on the spot.”
3) Automation must cover more than out-of-pocket expenses
In practice, out-of-pocket expenses, company card purchases, and incoming invoices are all connected. If invoices still require manual data entry, you are simply shifting the bottleneck. That is why invoices should be received digitally, read automatically, and routed through a digital approval flow before being posted in the ERP.
At the same time, time data has become a requirement in many organisations. When working hours, absence, and rest periods must be documented, it makes sense to consolidate the data foundation so that finance and HR work from the same structured data – with fewer manual overlaps and fewer disputes about which figures are correct.
Peace of mind at month-end close - and an audit trail that holds up
Automated expense management addresses the challenges finance teams feel week after week: excessive administration time, paper-based processes, lost receipts, slow approvals, and lack of visibility.
The benefits are measurable:
- Up to 80% reduction in administration time
- Booking-ready data via ERP and payroll integration
- A mobile process that employees actually use
When expenses, invoices, and time are recorded on an ongoing basis and governed by clear rules, the finance function does not just become faster. You gain a better decision-making foundation earlier in the month – and an audit trail that can be explained without anyone having to hunt for crumpled receipts.
