What is expense management software?

Expense management software is a digital solution that automates countless hours of tracking, submission, approval, and reimbursement of expenses for businesses of all sizes. It helps a company ensure compliance, oversee employee-initiated expenses, and provide insight into spending patterns. While traditional expense management deals with paper receipts, paper forms, and a clunky approval process to manage expense reports, modern expense management is another story, one that greatly contributes to a company’s financial health. A business expense can be anything employees pay for related to their jobs (like office supplies). Expense management pertains to every task involved in ensuring these expenses are properly handled and paid back. This may include tasks to: Create expense reports Track employee spending Manage expenses Verify accurate financial records Approve expenses Consolidate travel expenses Eliminate manual data entry Identify cost-saving opportunities What makes expense management important? The right spend management solution saves a company money, reduces time-consuming mistakes, and improves efficiency. Expense management allows businesses to gain better control over their financial data, eliminating reliance on manual work, which is often prone to human error. Automated expense management leads to faster processing and stronger compliance with more accurate recordkeeping.

How does expense management automation work?

Expense management automation streamlines the tasks associated with tracking, submitting, approving, and reimbursing expenses within the expense management process. Here’s an overview of how it works: Employees submit business expenses via an expense management system (i.e., an expense app through mobile devices) The automated expense management system captures invoice data via optical character recognition (OCR) The expense management software checks expenses against company policies During the expense management process, expenses are automatically routed to approvers Automated notifications and alerts are sent The system tracks expense reports in real-time The expense management system calculates the amounts owed The system processes multi-currency payments for reimbursement An audit trail is created, documenting every step The expense management system generates reports and analytics to better track business expenses Tipalti is an end-to-end provider of advanced expense management. It can assist you with tasks like receipt scanning (to capture expense data), spend tracking, creating expense reports, approval workflows, corporate cards, policy enforcement, and multi-currency support.

What are the benefits of automating employee expenses and reimbursements?

Automating expense reimbursement for expense reports offers some key advantages for small businesses and large enterprises alike, with key features including: Time efficiency Accuracy and compliance Improved visibility and control Enhanced employee experience Mobile accessibility Ease of use for business travel Using expense reimbursement software, companies can streamline expense management, reduce costs, consolidate expense reports, eliminate data entry, simplify travel booking, and enhance accuracy, contributing to greater efficiency and employee satisfaction.

What is the best way to reconcile expenses?

The best way to facilitate expense reconciliation is to keep detailed records, implement internal spend controls, and take advantage of intelligent expense management tools. The right software offers hassle-free, advanced functionality like in-depth analytics and payment reconciliation reporting on expense reports. Tipalti’s accounts payable software helps businesses cut through manual expense claims, filing, and reconciliation challenges, accelerating monthly close by up to 25%. Tipalti’s expense management platform helps streamline employee expense reports, strengthens financial controls, and facilitates more informed decisions. Tipalti’s user-friendly system enables easy access and reduces your team’s workload by automating payment reconciliation, enforcing policies, consolidating business spend, and seamlessly integrating with your ERP (like SAP Concur).

What steps in the expense approval process can be automated?

Automating the various steps in the expense approval process includes: Receipt capture (remote and mobile features) Submitting expenses and filing an expense report Checking policies and flagging discrepancies Routing for approval based on specific criteria Parallel approval paths for multiple approvers Approval notifications Integration with other accounting systems Real-time tracking of the expense approval status Generating an audit trail Reporting and analytics tools By leveraging expense approval software to automate these steps, businesses can reduce manual efforts, improve compliance, and expedite the overall process.

How do I reimburse expenses with Tipalti?

Tipalti’s robust global payment infrastructure enables finance teams to efficiently reimburse employees, no matter where in the world their receipt is from. It facilitates expense reimbursement and enables managers to review and approve employee expenses easily via a mobile app. As a result, finance can quickly reimburse employees internationally using a modern expense management process that’s much faster than traditional expense management. Automated reimbursement workflows (via the app) eliminate manual processes, ensuring timely and accurate payments to employees. By integrating with expense management systems, Tipalti can automatically pull approved expense data and receipts, reducing the risk of errors and delays. This seamless reimbursement process allows finance teams to focus on strategic tasks rather than administrative work (collecting receipts) or rogue employee spending. This also allows employees to experience faster reimbursement cycles. Additionally, Tipalti’s compliance features ensure receipt scanning and expense reimbursements adhere to local tax regulations and corporate policies. This is particularly beneficial for companies operating across multiple regions. Real-time reporting and analytics offer visibility into reimbursement trends and daily allowances, empowering businesses to monitor spending patterns and maintain control over their budgets and receipts. Expense management software allows companies to customize workflows to align with their unique receipt approval processes, creating a streamlined and scalable solution that grows with the company’s needs. These capabilities ensure that Tipalti simplifies expense reimbursement, enhances financial accountability, and streamlines operational efficiency. The Tipalti solution enables expense payments to 200+ countries and territories in over 120 currencies using 50+ payment methods. It streamlines travel and expense management for companies of all sizes, from startups to enterprise corporations, in the US and other countries.

Can you automate spend control?

Spend control can be automated via expense management software, custom approval workflows, corporate credit cards, receipt scanning, expense management policy enforcement, integrations, analytics, and more. Tipalti Expenses enables customers to set spending limits within specific categories over defined time periods, ensuring meticulous budget control. The spend management system also ensures expenses align with predefined expense policies and limits. This reduces the administrative burden on finance teams for expense claims, mitigates the risk of expense policy violations, curbs rogue employee spending, and ensures financial transparency and compliance across all levels of the company. The software allows a business to create multi-level expense policies per subsidiary. It promptly notifies employees and approvers in case of expense policy breaches, providing clear details on the rule violated.

Can you integrate the Amex corporate card with Tipalti Expenses?

Tipalti currently integrates Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Tipalti Expenses easily connects with Visa and Mastercard networks and integrates with external cards, allowing businesses to integrate banking with employee transactions and gain full control over corporate card management. Companies can upload receipts, provide coding, and reconcile to an ERP using the expense app. They can also manage the card and reimbursable spend through the mobile app and Tipalti Hub.

How does integration with the Tipalti Card work?

Tipalti Card includes physical and virtual credit cards that streamline the issuance, control, visibility, reporting, and reconciliation of all credit card expenditures. Integrating the Tipalti corporate credit card into a unified finance automation dashboard centralizes spend, expenses, procurement, and more. The corporate credit card integration feature consolidates Tipalti Card and reimbursable expenses in Tipalti’s expense management software. Employees connect expenses with their cards, managing all business needs in a single spot. An organization can effortlessly set spend controls, issue new cards, and benefit from automated transaction coding. Companies can also sync all card tasks to their ERP systems to ensure accuracy and save valuable time.

Scalable Expense and Reimbursement Management Software

Review, approve, reconcile, and reimburse in one comprehensive platform that simplifies all your workflows.

Expense Management Software Features

Spend Smarter, Work Faster

Comprehensive, mobile-ready features for automating and managing employee spend and reimbursements.

A digital expense report showing transactions with vendors Amazon, Uber, Yummy Market, and Hilton Hotel. Payment methods include Mastercard, Visa, and American Express. Statuses include Reimbursable and Company Card.

Painless Corporate Card Integration

Support employee card spend and card transaction reconciliation across Mastercard, Visa, AmEx and Tipalti Card. Manage out-of-pocket expenses and card transactions in one place.

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Global Reimbursements Everywhere

Secure reimbursements to 200+ countries and territories in more than 120 currencies, using 50+ global payment methods.

A pop-up window to settle an expense group indicating that Sofia Joseph will be reimbursed $324.00, with "Cancel" and "Continue" buttons below. Various currency amounts and bank icons are shown on the left.

The image shows an expense-tracking interface. The user is creating a new expense for Amazon MKTP US on September 21, 2024, with an amount of $385.20 USD.

Expense Management That Employees Love

Employees can manage receipts with just a photo and a quick upload. Card expense details are then automatically populated in employee expense reports. Push notifications and emails keep everyone updated on approval status.

Instant Reconciliation

Accelerate your monthly close by 25% by integrating with ERP or account systems, such as NetSuite, Sage Intacct, and QuickBooks.

A digital expense tracking app interface showing different expenses and logos of Oracle NetSuite, Acumatica, Sage, QuickBooks, and Xero on a gridded background.

A digital dashboard displays an expenses report for an employee, highlighting a pending "New York Trip 2024" expense with three rejected items due to exceeding the policy threshold.

Spend Control and Visibility

Stress-free expense tracking for stronger budget control and better insights.

Automated Tax Support

Make tax time easier and more efficient by automatically capturing tax details for every expense.

Receipt for £100.25 from The Yummy Restaurant dated August 22, 2023. Display shows tax codes 20% S and 20%, resulting in a tax amount of 20.

Platform Features

Work smarter, not harder

With AI and machine learning capabilities, an intuitive UX, and quick and easy global payments, you can drive unprecedented efficiency.

AI

Smarter processes. Instant insights. More productivity. Less manual work. Tipalti AI actually gets things done.

Global

Manage all entities’ payables operations from a single system. Enable each entity to operate with its own unique workflows and branding.

Payment Fraud Protection

Detect and prevent fraud with AI-driven pattern recognition. Block suspicious payees from receiving payments, prevent them from creating new accounts, and get notified of abnormal activities.

Controls and Compliance

Stay compliant across jurisdictions with automated tax compliance, built-in payment protections, and top-tier security controls.

Integrations

Pre-built connections to extend automated workflows

Easily extend and simplify your workflows with pre-built integrations and powerful APIs for your ERPs, accounting systems, performance marketing platforms, HRIS, SSO, Slack, credit cards, and more.

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