The demand for expense software in UK has never been higher. Contributing factors to this phenomenon appear to be the gig economy, a larger number of startups and small businesses, and of course, working remotely in bursts and spurts amidst the ongoing pandemic.
If you are yet to adopt expense software, you are probably wasting time on data entry (or time and money, if you hired someone only for that one task). You might be missing tax deductions because you sometimes forget to enter business transactions like coffee meetings, for example. If you have investors or intend to have investors, you probably struggle with offering them a thorough and at-a-glance overview of your unique and amazing journey from nascency to where you are now.
However, with expense software in the UK, you can eliminate all these problems and many more. In this article, we will discuss the 3 biggest benefits of expense software and offer tips on how to get the most out of each one.
Benefit: Never miss a tax deduction thanks to no more data entry
When you use expense software, optical character recognition tech extracts data from a variety of document formats to present you with exportable, copyable, and editable chunks of digital text, also known as data entries. Moreover, the document formats that OCR can work on include photos (jpeg, etc), PDFs, and scans. As a result, you can quickly get that data entry underway as soon as you receive an invoice, a bill, or a receipt. Quick and easy! Now you can claim every little expense without poring over an untidy stack of tiny receipts at the end of the month.
A copy of the original source document is also saved with the data entry for purposes like proof or for double-checking accuracy.
Get the most of it by:
Tip #1 Immediate uploads – It will only take you seconds, so why not upload that receipt as soon as you get it? Set such rules and timelines in place for your team too. It will also ensure that your accounting books are always up to date.
Tip #2 Extending use to the right people – Allow teammates with the bulk of the data entry burden to have access to expense software’s receipt scanning because that’s where you’ll experience an organizational productivity boost. Improved productivity is one of the big benefits of expense software, but you might not actually experience it if you keep it only for those at the top and do not democratize its use.
Benefit: Quick approvals
Expense software allows for the creation and approval of expense reports in the same amount of time you take to repost a meme or send an email.
In addition, as your company expands and you are needed for bigger and better things than expense approvals (like client pitches and meetings or putting out fires or selecting suppliers, or making a product more market-focused), you can actually add approvers to the expense approval process. This is the equivalent of adding tiers – you’ll still be in the loop.
Get the most of it by:
Tip #3 Trusting people and adding them as approvers -Offer senior and loyal teammates the power and the responsibility of approving the expenditure of company capital.
Tip # 4 Staying (visibly) in the approvals process – If you have trouble trusting your team, or if you want to make your presence felt in the approvals process, ask a question every now and then so that both the expense approval seekers and the appointed approvers get the sense that they need to be honest and on the ball respectively.
Benefit: Clear and instant pictorial representation of financial data
With expense software in UK, you can publish expense reports to your company’s accounting software. The data can be variously exported in CSV and PDF formats or can be emailed.
We hinted at the ability to show off those super professional pie charts and other pictorial representations of all your financial success at the start of this article and yes, this is a delightful little feature of expense software. There is a setting called Image Sharing which helps you generate a clear, professional, and at-a-glance insight into your financial data.
Get the most of it by
Tip #5 Using these representations to impress investors or other stakeholders – Do ensure you toggle this feature so that you can use it for meetings with existing or potential investors, or any other stakeholders.
Tip # 6 Getting a motivational kick out of your own progress – Less sensitive data (or percentages, which can be sufficiently vague and therefore safe) can be pinned up around the office to motivate yourself and your team.
Tip # 7 Observe issues and make changes – The great thing about at-a-glance or even a new format is that it takes away the blind spot that might develop when you are looking at something for too long. You might notice something in your financial data that calls your attention to a factor you need to change.