Still Filing Expense With Excel? It May Be Painful For All Stakeholders.

Why Are We Still Using Excel To Document Corporate Expenses?

Ten years ago as a fresh graduate, I was working as a Channel Marketing Executive at a multinational corporation. The position requires me to travel to visit clients 40% of the time and I didn’t have a smartphone then. I could vividly remember having to stick physical receipts onto A4 sheets, and then photocopy them for our Finance department to check, approve and file. There was one month when I lost the entire stack of receipt, which amounted to 15% of my gross salary, so that was painful!

Ten years down the road, almost everyone owns a smartphone. Companies like Comfort Delgro have taken a leaf out of Grab and Gojek’s system and are instead going digital. It has become effortless for anyone to track their transport spending–they can simply do so by going online.

Gone are situations of employees losing physical receipts. Against this context, why do some companies still insist that their employees print and compile physical receipts to pass to their finance and accounting departments?

Recording Expense On Excel Is Painful For Everyone

It is clear that recording expenses on excel is painful for all stakeholders– employees, accountants and managers. So, why do companies still continue this possibly archaic practice?

Perhaps this is because as human beings, we are extremely resistant to change. Companies are so used to the old and familiar way of doing things that it is hard to get them to “switch” over to better, more efficient and progressive technology.

Employees Dread Recording Expense on Excel 

Employees dread recording expenses on excel, because they have to use their own money to pay for company expenses, only to claim back later. If receipts are lost, employees bear the burden. 

Subsequently, imputing expenses on excel can be a rather menial and boring task, which takes away the energy and enthusiasm during work hours which could be alternatively spent on more creative tasks. 

Prior research has shown that it takes employees an average of 20 minutes to complete one expense report, and 19% of expense reports have errors which take another 18 minutes on average to correct.

The GBTA has also shown that the life cycle of a single expense report is 30 days from submission to payment, which might also imply that the finance or HR department may get overwhelmed at the end of the month. 

A Headache for Managers

Manual expense filing might increase the chances of expense fraud. Expense and reimbursement fraud definitely cause a lot of problems for higher management.

According to the Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse released in 2012, one of the easiest ways to steal from a corporation or startup is through expense fraud– an average of 14 out of 100 of all assets misappropriation investigated involved fraud related to expense reimbursement. One of the main reasons is because of lapse in checks and the probability of forging supporting documents when it comes to claiming expenses. 

In addition, managers might find it extremely tedious to compile insights from excel, especially when it relates to blindspot. In today’s age when companies can adopt artificial intelligence or other tools to map out expenditure patterns with a click of the button, this causes a huge loss in productivity.

Last but not least, having employees file for expenses via excel results in a lack of macro-overview of the company’s expenditure. This could cause potential strategic issues when it comes to budgeting and forecasting, especially against certain industry landscapes where things are changing fast. 

Painful for the Finance Team

The finance team in any company is responsible for auditing and processing the expense reports of the whole company. Whenever any employee makes a mistake, they are in charge of asking the staff to make amendments directly. In addition, whenever a C-level executive makes certain dubious purchases, they have to question him or her with tact. 

According to a study released by the GBTA Foundation in 2015, companies around the globe spend approximately half a million dollars and nearly 3,000 hours correcting errors in expense reports every year. That is time that can be alternatively spent on doing more strategic level activities for the finance department used to grow the business, instead of going into each detail entered onto the excel.

The Alternative: TeamSpirit’s Expense Solution

At TeamSpirit, we have a convenient and robust expense solution built to ease the pain points of employees, managers and the finance team. We are a Salesforce AppExchange Partner since 2010 and have enjoyed a solid reputation with Salesforce and our clients. 

• Employees can enjoy a guided workflow on the TeamSpirit Expense Solution, which helps minimise the errors associated with data input. 

• We also make it easy for managers to request and approve expenses, which helps smoothen their workflows. Managers can also generate expense reports with a simple click and effortlessly benefit from a macro-view of where the expenditure is going. 

• The finance team can also exercise strong internal controls and create rules and guidelines to ensure that expenditure is within budget, such as setting spending limits. In addition, exchange rates are automatically applied to overseas spending, so there is no need for time wasted in disputes due to exchange rates. 

Work smarter with TeamSpirit–not harder. 

Interested in finding out more about our expense solution? Request for a demo today!