What actually is a smart expense management system?

Expenses. Everyone has to do them. It is simply spending that is required to make the business run, and encompasses everything from business travel to corporate card spending to stationary. Be it SME or enterprise, every business has to keep track of where it’s money is going, otherwise costs are waylaid or even fraud can happen.

The problem

All spending is different, as every company is different. A construction company will outsource a lot of its labour, so ensuring contractors are paid the correct amounts based on policy is key. Even hospitality will be completely different – there’s a lot more physical purchases made on a card as the business needs to be well stocked. And as every company is so different, so is their ways of conducting expense management systems.

It can often be an arduous time intensive process, especially if you are using an outdated method such as physically on paper, or even in an excel template. Often digital spreadsheets are mixed with copies of receipts and invoices. This is a pain to keep track of and document as it’s a confusing and intense paper trail.

It can also be made harder by the size of the company and employees location. Overseas spending will have different exchange rates, different requirements, different norms, so how on earth do you accurately keep track? If you are truly looking for your business to grow and develop, you need a smart automated expense management system that can grow and adapt with you.

Change is scary

Whilst it is good and all to talk about the pros of an automated expense management system, you may still be apprehensive about switching to a smart digital solution. This is because you may have old fixed business practises that you can’t imagine changing, or the idea of transferring old information online to create a comprehensive archive to be almost impossible, but that is not the case. Capture Expense can work with you to import all historical data making your life as easy as possible.

We also work with your current systems, not against them, having integrated Capture Expense with more then 50 different back-office systems and provided additional support for many others. So whilst you may be worried your current accounting system won’t integrate, have no fear. Capture Expense works with your accounting, payroll or other back office system, replacing any manual and repetitive tasks. Data integration is quick and accurate whether recording expenses within accounts or reimbursing staff via BACS or payroll.

Bank feeds generate card expenses automatically each month as we integrate with all major banks, alerting cardholders to review their expenses.

Just a few of the companies we work with are Tripcatcher, Azure, Oracle, Travelport, Financial Force, Quickbooks, Unit 4, Sage, Salesforce, Sap and Xero.

No need to import/export CSV files every month

No need to manually update spreadsheets every month. Capture Expense works directly using the Application Program Interface (API), meaning records and transactions are moved seamlessly without any manual intervention. Let technology work for you in the way it was designed.

Creating a single source

We can aggregate data from multiple sources and update multiple systems. For example retrieving Project and Costcentre records from Costing and Staff records from HR. Once an expense is fully approved we can generate a BACS payment as well update Accounting to record the receipt.

Mobile Expenses

You can even keep track of your expenses on the go with our mobile app. Simply use the mobile expense login (which you can even use SSO for an even speedier expense log) and snap a picture of your receipt. It will then be automatically processed and all the data can be used to automatically fill expense forms for easy submission and archiving of receipts.

Corporate credit card expense reporting

Easily keep a feed of both online transactions with company credit card and cash transactions using receipts. Cards can be added to your Capture Expense account so that any transaction is automatically added to your expense feed, meaning you just need to add an invoice.

Ever company is unique

It really is as easy as that. If you have any other doubts, feel free to send us a question. We will be happy to help, and we know that no one solution will fit all, so we can work with you to create a unique custom solution which works for you. You can add whatever tags you need, whatever categories you want, and unique company policies to ensure compliance.

Book a free trial today to see how easy it is.

Need an Excel Income and Expense Template?

 

It’s that time of month again where you need to sort your expenses out. It’s a bit of a pain having to put the data in, but you’ve got an excel business travel expense template so it’s not too bad. You just have to go through and dig for all your receipts, manually put in the data and hope you’ve not forgotten anything. There are loads of free download excel templates you can use, and it works just fine, so why would you change? It’s certainly cheaper than using an automated expense management system.

But what if you’re wrong? It turns out you’re actually spending more doing it this way, and it’s all in the time it takes to input this data.

Manual data processing

Say you hire someone to do your accounting, 20 hours a week at £12 per hour. They have to manually enter, check and produce reports on employee expenses. If they are working 50 weeks a year, that’s £12,000 you’re paying for your expenses to be input. Think of where else 12k could be invested in your company. You’re losing revenue on sales through missed marketing opportunities.

Receipt storage hassle and lost invoices

And not only that, but manual data input using something like a free download income and expense spreadsheet creates mistakes. What if someone is late in sending over their receipts and invoices? What if they’ve lost a receipt? You can’t reclaim Tax on lost receipts, so you’re losing money in other areas too.

Poor visibility of spend and lack of expenditure control

Using a simple travel sheet format leads to a lack of visibility of your overall spending. It takes extra time to visualise this data and analyse spending. It may seem like an extra add on to use a service which supplies this analysis, but an automated expense management system like Capture Expense integrates it automatically in the software so that you can easily view your expenses and understand what they mean. This means better control of expenditure as well.

Overestimated mileage

Working out fuel expenses using a template is a pretty rudimentary way of calculating mileage and VAT on fuel rates. Mileage Allowance Payments (MAPs) are what you pay your employee for using their own vehicle for business journeys.

You’re allowed to pay your employee a certain amount of MAPs each year without having to report them to HMRC, this is called an ‘approved amount’. If you reimburse employees above the approved amount, the benefit-in-kind will need to be reported to HMRC to deduct any further tax due.

Capture Expense stores the approved rates and you can generate a reports which shows how much you’ve paid to staff above or below the approved rates. This determines by simply multiplying the employee’s travel miles for the year by the rate per mile for the vehicle. The total includes any type of vehicle they’ve used. The rates below were correct in 2020.

Anything below the ‘approved amount’ then you won’t have to report to HMRC or pay tax, but your employee will be able to get tax relief (called Mileage Allowance Relief, or MAR) on the unused balance of the approved amount. You can make separate optional reports to HMRC of any such unused balances under a scheme called the Mileage Allowance Relief Optional Reporting Scheme (MARORS).

Chasing staff to submit claims and backlogged reimbursement

I’m sure we’ve all been on at least one side of this problem. It can take an age to get your reports approved and reimbursed because it’s such a time intensive operation. Want to speed up expense reimbursement? Use an automated system! Because it is so much easier to input data as most of it is done automatically using receipts and OCR, it means you can submit more accurate reports more quickly. This is easier to check and approve, meaning you get your money back in a timely manner. On the flipside, if you’re in charge or approving expenses it can be a real burden to chase claims. It takes time and effort to check up on people, send emails, check data, so switching to an automated system largely eliminates this problem by allowing a much more consistent and accurate flow of claim data which you can approve at a better rate.

Out-of-policy bottlenecks

Sometimes it’s easy to forget what policy is, and what applies to you. With an expense excel sheet you can’t dynamically show policy and make sure all claims are according to policy. With a smart system custom policies can be easily displayed to stop the problem before it’s even submitted.

Duplication and errors

File management is also a real struggle when you have very similar sheets sent from multiple people at different times. Is this the most up to date version? Have I already been sent this? It’s a tedious process of checking that can often lead to errors. Eliminate this entire problem with a smart dynamic system such as Capture Expense.

To summarise, just a few of the drawbacks to manual expense management using excel template are:

• Receipt storage hassle
• Lost receipts ( so no Tax reclaim)
• Poor visibility of spend
• Tax inaccuracies
• Lack of audit trail
• Out-of-policy bottle necks
• Lack of expenditure control
• Overestimated mileage
• Manual data processing
• Backlogged reimbursement
• Duplication and errors
• Chasing staff to submit claims
• Reiterating policy to employees
• Accrual unaccounted expenses
• Difficultly with Remote Workers
• Staff personalise expense forms

And just some benefits to automated expense management:

• Digital Receipts
• Combined Mileage, Cash and Card
• Smart Approval workflow
• HMRC Fuel Rates (Private, Business)
• Personal Milage Refund
• VAT Reclaim & Management
• Built-in Compliance
• Easy to use and maintain
• Available 24/7 on any device
• Only pay what you use
• Minimal training and setup

If you’ve got any questions or want to know more, drop us a message. You can also book a free demo to see what we can do for you and your company.

Expense Fraud Detection and Prevention

One problem you may face is keeping an eye on Travel and Expense risks. These are not always people trying to exploit a credit card, they may just be human error, but they can still affect your cash flow.

We apply automated checks such as duplicate submissions, refunded expenses and unusual mileage. Other areas which need to be tracked are unusual or out of policy purchases, meals and accommodation and misclassified purchases.

With an automated expense management system, data is more accurately and consistently inputted, and so with proactive monitoring can detect and reduce fraud in less than half the time than without an expense management system in place.

How we use data to track misuse

Centrally control spend over multiple profit centres

Tags are a powerful feature which allow administrators to recreate the organisational structure and related business rules and expense system policies. Each tag can represent a team, office, location, project or cost centre which may require different rules and actions. This structure also allows for costs to be posted to the correct accounts as PL Invoices are be generated as part of the expense system integration, providing transparent auditing and reconciliation, maintaining up-to-date budgets and returns.

Increase accuracy

Our built-in journey distance calculator and HMRC approved tax and fuel rates create accurate journey claims for personal or company vehicles. Not every journey is the same so % tolerances can be setup for flexibility between the expense system generated distance and the actual journey recorded by the claimant. Reduce potential overspend whilst submitting accurate VAT returns.

Fraud detection and enforcing policy

With the organisations business rules applied directly into the platform, they are enforced in real-time by displaying warnings or restriction as visual notifications to staff whilst raising the expense claim. Weekend and duplicated claims also form part of our compliance. Save time by relying on Expense Once to reduce out-of-policy reports and potential overspend.

Dynamic approval made easy

Multi-level approval stages and dynamic workflows entirely streamline the process. Every line of an expense report can be routed to different budget holders or managers based on the claimant, team, expense category, amount or project. As many workflows can be created as needed and managers are notified as expense reports are submitted whilst the claimant is kept up-to-date until they’re reimbursed.

Improve Staff confidence

Managers and finance can spend far less time manually scrutinising expenses and instead rely on the platform to apply correct rates and taxes as well as notifying them of inconsistencies or potential over-spend. Flexibility has been built-in by design to cater for simply small business expenses whilst also delivering for the most demanding enterprise. With Expense Once feel confident that you won’t be contributing to company overspend or incorrect VAT reclaim.

If you need any more information on how we can help support your business in security, contact us today. We will be happy to go over the details with you and cater the system to your needs.

Travel Expense Management Must Haves

 

You’ve got a trip coming up for work. You’re excited travel because it’s been a while, but one thing you’re not looking forward to is keeping track of what you’ve spent, when, where, and how. Fortunately there’s a new way to record your outgoings, and a faster way to claim that money back.

How to organise your trip

Need some extra help with organising your travel? Here are some awesome travel apps for business travel that can help in other areas, such as organising and booking trips.

TripIt!

TripIt is perhaps the greatest app for keeping track of all of your trip plans in one spot. Whatever information you need for your trip—flight schedules, hotel reservations, or meeting details—TripIt keeps it all in one place and arranges it on a calendar. The greatest part is that you can just forward all of your confirmation emails to your TripIt account, and the app will take care of the rest!

Google Translate

We know you’ve heard of it before, but it really is one of the best for general translating when you’re abroad. In its most basic version, you specify the language you want translated and the language you want it translated into, then enter in your words, and Google Translate does the rest.

However, the service, particularly the smartphone app, has become increasingly sophisticated and powerful with time. Google Translate now has access to your phone’s camera and microphone, allowing it to read and translate signs and menus via the lens of your camera, as well as listen to and translate conversations in real time.

Around Me

No idea where you are? Get the AroundMe app to solve your problem. AroundMe analyses local businesses and services to help you locate what you’re looking for, including banks, hospitals, hotels, gas stations, coffee shops, and more. After you’ve plotted your destination, utilise the directions tool to avoid getting lost.

How to manage expenses

Now you know how you’re going to travel, how are you going to deal with the costs and keeping track of everything?

Journey Calculator

Expense Once makes advantage of the Google API Distance Service to assist you in filing travel claims, whether you travel by car, bicycle, or as a passenger.

The service returns the distance between a start and finish location with any number of checkpoints in between. The service considers the date and time of the travel to establish the most precise mileage, as well as avoiding highways or toll roads. We use miles by default, but you may change it to kilometres if necessary.

This prevents an over-claim for travel expenses; nevertheless, you want to manually update the distance, we still compare the value to the calculated distance and compute the percent difference to highlight at the approval stage.

Vat Mileage Calculator

We keep track of HMRC’s advisory rates, which are pre-programmed and included in the software. We keep track of each vehicle type (fuel type and engine size) and the most recent HMRC fuel rates, which are updated every three months.

You may generate new vehicle records for each organisation and link them to HMRC authorised rates or insert your own set of vehicle rates with cumulative mileage support. This guarantees that the firm is claiming the proper amount of VAT and reimbursing each claimant for the permitted amount.

VAT Compliancy

The programme includes pre-built VAT records that incorporate all typical UK and EU rates. These can be changed for usage in other countries or for special partial recovery circumstances.

A variety of configurations can be used to establish the precise use of VAT by spending category and claimant; however, the most basic technique needs a VAT receipt to be attached for VAT recovery. Ensure you and your company are reclaiming the correct amount of VAT. In most situations using the programme boosts reclaim by up to 34%.

There are many ways to make business travel as pain free as possible, and with automated expenses and a healthy arsenal of travel apps, you can go and do anything you need.

Keep your restaurant ahead of the game with technology

 

No matter how big or small, running a restaurant is tough work. From front of house all the way to restaurant manager, you have a million and one things to keep track of, and you can’t afford hold ups or mistakes because it could cost you a lot of money.

With the recent pandemic, the hospitality industry was hit hard. With restaurants, cafes, bars and pubs closed, we saw incredible developments in the sector. With DIY meal kits, home delivery services and even meal subscriptions, food and drink venues were able to adapt and change to meet the future.

It makes sense to keep up with the times, so why haven’t more restaurants moved to automated expense management?

Capture Expense works to streamline and automate business expenses through advanced coding and AI technology. With the front end being simple and intuitive to use, it is straightforward to implement and deploy throughout your business. Being made from the bottom up in the UK, we have full control over every aspect of the software and so do you. With the ability to cater to any need you may have, Capture Expense stands out from the cookie cutter expense management software on the market today.

The hospitality industry is a fast paced and complicated one, and you can remove another headache by using our software to take care of all the things you don’t want to be spending on, such as approving expenses, calculating business mileage, creating reports, and checking credit cards.

With our expense tracking app, you can easily upload and update expenses using your camera to take photos of receipts. These are uploaded and automatically processed, where the data is used to fill expense reports so you don’t have to spend the time manually typing in any amounts. The digital storage of receipts also means you can save time and space, eliminating the need for clunky filing systems and spending lots of time searching through by hand. You can search through the files by date and time as well as the content itself to find exactly what you need.

Worried about moving a lot of data to a new system? Have no fear! Capture Expense integrates all major Accounting, Payroll, HR systems. Once the expense reports are fully approved, administrators can integrate these transactions into their chosen back-office system, or multiple systems if applicable.

We support all major accounting and payroll software; we also support BACS payments. There are two types of integration, File Export/Import with the correct file format and specification which is the default approach, then real-time API integration, either your existing system or requirements determines the integration approach.

As well as integration going out, we also provide information to be fed in, such as users, projects, cost centres. We can also pull user record in from existing HR or other existing staff record systems.

Spending on the company credit card is also made easy as we utilise Open Banking, which allows real-time and direct integration to major UK banks. Cardholders are notified when their statement is available, Capture Expense automatically generates card expenses for the card holder to review and submit for approval.

 The process works separately to cash expenses ensuring the account balance each month can be reconciled with the total number of expenses that are generated in the process. Furthermore, these transactions are already categorised and with receipts already captured and stored in the software, the whole process can be automated.

This makes card expenses an extremely efficient to process, using Open Banking with Capture Expense removes any remaining integration tasks such as aggregated statement uploads and saves additional time for card holders and finance.

Travelling for work?  Capture Expense uses the Google API Distance Service to support claimants as they raise travel claims whether they travel by private or company vehicle, bicycle, or as a passenger.

A start and end address with any number of waypoints in-between and the distance is returned by the service. A number of options can be set including: avoiding motorways or toll roads, the service also uses the date and time of the journey to determine the most accurate distance. We default in miles but can set as km if required.

This ensure there isn’t an over-claim for travel costs, however if you do allow the claimant to update their own distance, we still compare the value with the calculated distance and determined the % difference to highlight at approval stage.

We care deeply about your experience with our product, as we want to make your life as easy as possible. We know one size doesn’t fit all, so your input is highly valued in creating a product that is best for you and your unique needs. Listen to one of our most recent reviews to hear for yourself: “The support we have received from James is fantastic; he always responds promptly with answers to any queries you may have. It is apparent how important it is to James and the team to improve Capture Expense continuously and so any feedback provided by us is taken on board and almost always implemented. You are never waiting too long for new features to be released. If there have ever been any minor problems, then these are fixed extremely quickly.”

Be it big enterprise or small start up, we are competitively priced to ensure you get the best value for money.

So what are you waiting for? Contact us today for a free demo and help your restaurant take a step into the future.