Expense Management Software – Technology in Practice

Unless you have been living on Mars for the past two years, you will have undoubtedly heard about the constant stream of stories in the UK press about MPs expenses scandals, and many politicians careers were left in tatters and some were even jailed. In January this year even, ex Labour MP was jailed for 18 months for fraudulently claiming more than £20,000 in expenses. With technological advances as they are, it is amazing that senior personnel can get away with this kind of activity, and have been doing so for years.

Expense management software is hardly technologically groundbreaking, but offers multiple functionality that stops these things from happening. Managing expenses online is in instance where technology becomes practical and functional. Not only this, but can actively save businesses money in the long term. For example, as is the case with many other SAAS (software as a service) products, they are paid through monthly subscriptions or one off payments. Typically, expenses software is paid according to how many users there are in every system, and different aspects of functionality can be added or taken away according to individual business needs.

One of the primary functions of this kind of software is the ability to accurately calculate mileage costs. Companies that operate their expenses manually run the risk of losing money on this type of expenses. For example I am sure we have all been guilty of exaggerating our expenses slightly, an extra mile here or there is harmless, surely? Well, not necessarily, because if you are running say an organisation with 100 employees, and each employee adds on 3 miles to their journey, at a cost of 40p per mile, and this journey is made weekly, that accumulates to around a company loss of a (rather staggering) £6000 a year. As they say, pennies really do make pounds.

Automating this using an expenses software means that even small or typically miscellaneous expenses are accurately calculated to avoid this kind of miscalculation or overpayment. Various functionality means that all typies of expenses can be calculated and accounted for, so any misgivings are soon noticed.

Looks like the Governments relentless avoidance of technology has bitten them once more…