If you manage a team of field executives, you must know how difficult it is to track them. You have to monitor their activities, verify their attendance, approve expenses, and more.

How do you accurately track your employees and check whether their expenses are authentic? Or if employees have actually travelled the distance corresponding to their fuel expenses?

These challenges can be difficult to tackle, but not if you implement an expense management solution in your business. It lets you monitor employees in real time and manage their expenses, leaves, orders, etc.

These are just a few of the benefits of field employee expense management software. Read on to learn how it simplifies expense reporting for your business.

Simplify Expense Reporting With Employee Expense Management Software

Since there is little to no face-to-face contact between managers and staff, it can cause a communication gap and a slew of other problems. It’s not wise to delay reimbursements to employees for expenses they pay out of their pocket.

As such, it’s essential for any organisation to simplify the expense management process to timely reimburse their field executives. But how?

Well, here are 6 ways you can streamline your field expense related operations.

1. Dedicated expense management module

The key feature of any good expense management software is a dedicated module to record and reimburse expenses. For example, TrackoField has a separate module to manage employee expenses.

With a user-friendly interface, employees can conveniently log their expenses. All they have to do is take a snap of the bill and upload it. The software logs the time and location of the uploaded proofs so that you know when and where the expense was incurred.

Managers can view the expenses and choose to approve or reject them along with the reason. The entire process is seamless and requires no unnecessary communication between the manager and the employee.

1. Real-time employee tracking

A key feature of expense management software is accurate GPS tracking of employees in real-time. You can view what your employees are doing at all times. This keeps them vigilant and focused at work. Plus, real-time monitoring eliminates unnecessary communication between you and your staff.

You don’t have to constantly call them to know their location and how many clients they’ve visited. You can just look it up in your software dashboard. GPS tracking also helps in calculating the distance travelled by an executive in a day. You can even playback the routes your employees take. This is beneficial to authenticate conveyance expenses.

2. Alerts and reminders

Employee expense management software is useless if the staff and managers remain unaware of each other’s task status and have to resort to manual methods like calling. As such, all good expense or sales location tracking apps have a notification feature.

Anytime an employee logs his expense, the manager receives an alert about it. There are regular reminders given until the managers take action on the request. This also applies to the employees, who are alerted of their expense requests immediately when they're approved or rejected.

3. Customisation Capabilities

Every business has different requirements and work types. Some jobs require employees to travel long distances, while others require more client visits. Employee expense management software lets you create custom categories for expenses.

You can segregate expenses into fuel, food, stationery, accommodation, etc. This simplifies the employees' and managers’ jobs. You can also establish custom approval rules, define the managerial hierarchy, and put a cap on the expenses.

4. Data Analysis

Employee expense management software archives data for long periods. Managers can use this data to generate various insightful reports. You can check the distance travelled by an employee in a day to corroborate fuel expenses. 

You can also check activity reports, performance reports, and timesheets to go through employees’ workdays and verify their expense claims.

Additionally, you can perform various operations on the historical data to spot trends and identify any discrepancies. You can optimise the necessary expenses to save money and cut redundant expenses.

The stored data also comes in handy during audits. You can securely store all financial transactions and reimbursements. It helps your organisation stay compliant with laws and maintain transparency.

5. Integration with other software

It can be a hassle to juggle multiple software programs to manage expenses. Instead, you can opt for expense management software that can be integrated with other accounting solutions. Most expense-tracking apps already come with a payroll module. But if it doesn’t, then it usually supports seamless integration to simplify your field expense operations. 

A one-stop solution to manage expenses and other field operations can help you save money on implementing separate MR reporting software or field sales location tracking software to manage your mobile workforce.

Conclusion

Employee expense management software can be a game-changer for your business. Using it, you can simplify the entire process of expense reporting, from uploading receipts to approvals and reimbursements.

You can say goodbye to manual data entries and welcome error-free transactions. The software also boosts employee productivity as it reduces the time they spend on communicating with superiors and waiting for approvals.

All in all, an expense management solution like TrackoField can radically transform your field operations and is a must-have if you manage a field salesforce.