What is an expense tracker?
Business leaders rely on data to make good decisions. But the reality is that many organizations today are making decisions about expenses based on incomplete or inaccurate data.
Solving this means you need to find a way to obtain richer data related to business expenses. Smaller teams may not necessarily have the time to add expense report control to their ever-growing list of tasks. And larger organizations need a solution that scales.
That’s why top-performing organizations work with an expense tracker. It is simply the most cost and time-effective approach to get the insights you need for expense report control.
This guide is for you if you’re currently using manual processes to track individual, team, or organizational expenses — or if you’re starting from scratch.
Read on to learn how an expense tracker will save you time, control your budget, and give you greater holistic insights for better decision-making over the long run
What’s new in expense tracker apps
An expense tracker helps individuals, teams, and businesses to organize, categorize, and gain insights from their business expenses. There’s no better way to understand where your team’s hard-won budget dollars are being spent.
You might expect expense trackers to perform basic functions, such as capturing receipts and invoices and supporting the employee reimbursement process.
Today’s leading expense trackers offer more advanced features that increase productivity:
- Save time with automation: Advanced expense trackers provide custom, automated workflows to finance teams that streamline the review and approval process.
- Gain peace of mind with AI-powered insights: Top expense tracker software brings you the benefits of artificial intelligence to ensure quality and mitigate fraud risk.
Benefits of tracking your expenses
An expense tracker app creates value across your organization in several ways:
- Budget management: An expense tracker app creates transparency in how and where you’re spending your hard-won budget funds. Equipped with these insights, business process managers can advocate for annual budgets using reliable data.
- Risk management: Employee spending is a risk that your organization must carefully manage. An intelligent expense tracker reduces risk by flagging unusual or unapproved spending based on your company’s rules.
- Time savings: With teams busier than ever, expense trackers remove bottlenecks from the expense report process.
- Breaking down silos: For the teams that frequently operate in silos, an expense tracker helps to break down those walls and increase collaboration.
Understand how and where funds are being spent
Greater transparency helps to build and sustain trust across the organization. If implemented effectively, an expense tracker app provides an opportunity to form critical, trust-centered connections. Managers need greater transparency into how and where team funds are being spent.
An expense tracker makes this information easily accessible through granular reporting.
Empowered with this information, finance managers can easily perform audits for compliance purposes, and team leads can more effectively oversee their staff’s spending activities.
Categorizing and analyzing your expenses
Granular expense reporting categorizes expenses automatically and provides enriched insights based on real-time data.
Frequently, teams rely on manual processes to develop these insights related to expenses. Manual processes present the risk of unintended mistakes. They also stand in the way of your opportunity to establish a consistent, company-wide process.
You can standardize how your organization categorizes and analyzes expenses by onboarding an expense tracker tool. This allows for greater transparency among decision-makers, finance, and compliance teams.
Capture, store, and automate all transaction data in one location
Centralizing your expense data is essential for many reasons:
- Capturing transaction data in one location streamlines the finance team’s review and processing effort.
- Compliance teams responsible for the company’s privacy practices may have specific rules on how you must handle transaction data. Operating within a unified database makes this effort easier to control.
- Centralizing transaction data enables automation, which delivers significant benefits to all teams involved with company expenses.
Control your budget easily
Expense report control is vital to business success. With an expense tracker app, you can easily control your budget.
- Integrate with internal and external data sources: Many organizations count on multiple data sources for expense reporting. Therefore, your expense tracker app should integrate with all your sources for a seamless experience, including travel apps, payroll systems, and other essential tools.
- Enforce company rules: Every company has its own rules related to expenses. Your expense tracker app should enable you to enforce your specific spending requirements based on expense categories, limits, and other criteria.
- Automatically flag violations: Relying on manual processes to identify policy violations exposes teams to error. AI-powered scanning can help by flagging violations that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks.
- Go paperless: Expense reporting can be a tedious process, especially if you’re juggling several priorities. Your expense tracker app should minimize the time spent creating expense reports by going paperless.
How to use an expense tracker
Getting started with an expense tracker is a collaborative process.
First, you’ll need to evaluate your existing expense management processes across teams. Identify what’s working today and what isn’t. Next, gather as much information as you can about how you’re currently collecting, processing, approving, and flagging expenses.
Next, dedicate sufficient time to onboard your expense tracker app effectively. This includes setting up your integrations with care and training expense-incurring teams on the new process. The more time you invest in onboarding, the greater adoption you’ll see across your organization.
From there, you can begin to enjoy the benefits of working with an expense tracker app. You can use the time savings to operate from a continuous improvement position — supporting greater efficiency and precision over the long term for teams involved with this vital business process.
Meet your expense tracker solution: Jenji
Jenji’s automated solution delivers everything your company needs regarding expense tracking. Our solution seamlessly integrates with your current tech stack for a more effective, transparent expense management process.
With Jenji, handling expense tracking has never been easier. Employees can upload photos and digital receipts for automatic, real-time expense processing, categorization, and analysis. Financial managers gain greater transparency, and Jenji’s anomaly and fraud detection helps you identify unauthorized spending quickly.
To find out how Jenji can help your company manage expense tracking, as well as a wide range of other bookkeeping and payment solutions, get in touch with us at sales@jenji.io
