Managing expenses is no one’s favourite task, neither for the administrative department nor for the people who submit them. From start to finish, it’s a sluggish, difficult procedure that might entail dealing with obsolete software, sending a lot of e-mails, and waiting a long time before being paid. That is why having a travel and expense management tool is currently everyone’s favourite!
Because regardless of whether you like it or not, travel and expense management is something almost every employee needs to deal with. No matter if you work for a large corporate or an SME, at some point your employees will make some costs that need to get reimbursed, meaning you’re in for a lot of hassle. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
It’s possible to pick a travel and expense management tool that your employees will love — but it’s critical that you realise what they really need. So what should you be looking out for? Let’s shine some light on the things that make a travel and expense management tool platform work for everyone, and why you should care about providing it to your employees.
Smart Features
While submitting, processing and reimbursing expenses already eat up a lot of time, this is often made worse by the software employees are forced to use. Because most digital office tools are fairly old, they only have a limited amount of features — which haven’t even been updated for modern office work. This can be frustrating for your team because it limits their productivity.
Everybody likes saving time — and that’s exactly what smart, modern software features enable you to do. Take for example optical character recognition, or OCR — when this technology is integrated, the application can automatically parse the expenses from a photo of your receipt or invoice. With no need to manually enter data, users are done processing their expenses much faster.
Another innovation that will put a smile on the faces of your team members is expense line-based reporting. Traditionally, getting your money back meant filling out individual report forms for every expense — something that significantly impacts how quickly you would get reimbursed. A modern travel and expense management tool doesn’t work with this archaic system but instead lets you create line items for anything you need to expense — this makes for a flexible solution that gives your employees more freedom.
A better user experience
More and more digital tools we use in daily life have been meticulously designed to create an incredible experience for the end-user. By using simple layouts, informative animations, and legible typography, this software is easy to use and understand for anyone, no matter their digital literacy.
Unfortunately, most expense management software has first and foremost been created to be purely functional — not to please the user. It’s not unheard of that the rough interfaces of these programs hide important features in hard-to-find places or otherwise work in illogical ways. They generally take a long time for new employees to understand, making it necessary to incorporate extensive onboarding — something that takes up valuable time.
When your team members use highly polished smartphone apps and websites every day, they expect the same from the applications they need to use for work. Great travel and expense management tool puts the user first, offering them an uncomplicated experience based on workflows that make sense. By doing this, your employees will be able to do their job smoothly and without needless interruptions, making for a better workday.
Relevant for different teams
An interesting aspect of expense software is that it’s never used by a single department. There are always at least two parties who have access — the people who file their expenses and those who take care of processing them. Both need a different set of tools to do their job, but most software forces everyone to use it in the same way.
Modern travel and expense management tool can offer a more versatile experience. If you’re just submitting an expense, there’s no need to show features that are only used by the financial team, and vice versa.
A solution your team will love
Switching to new software can take some time and energy, but it’ll pay off in the end. In order to do their best work, you should give your employees the best tools — a platform with powerful features and great design, that make expense management a breeze.
At Rydoo, we think that your expenses shouldn’t something to be afraid of — instead, we think managing them can be fast, easy, and even fun. We’ve painstakingly designed every part of our platform with accessibility in mind — this way, anyone can start using its powerful features right away.
With a great user experience, and easy-to-understand design, and functionality you won’t find in any other expense management platform, Rydoo doesn’t just make your team more productive in dealing with their expense — it makes them enjoy doing it, too.
