At the lunch meeting, you paid with your credit card and slipped the receipt into your pocket. But later when you met a client for a drink, you paid with cash. Now, two weeks later, you can’t really remember how much you spent at the bar, and you’ve gone through all of your clothes trying to find that lunch receipt. If only you could log these kinds of details as you go using something you already carry with you everywhere.
Mobile expense management apps like Chrome River MOBILE make tracking business expenses on the go easier, more efficient and more accurate than waiting until you get home from a business event or trip. These mobile apps offer secure tablet or smartphone access to the same expense management software you use on a computer. Here are three ways that integrating mobile apps can improve your expense management process.
- Mobile tools make entering expenses easy for employees. For each expense, use a tablet or smartphone to quickly snap a photo of a receipt and enter details (date, amount, type and description), then allocate the expense to a specific client or project. Chrome River EXPENSE even lets you skip the details and just upload the receipt if you’re in a hurry. But logging these details electronically now makes it easier to generate expense reports later.
- Real-time expense reporting increases efficiency and accuracy. If you wait to manage expenses until you get home from a business trip, you’ll probably spend a lot of time trying to remember the amount of a cash tip or locate a crumpled receipt. It’s inefficient and errors are bound to happen. A mobile app helps you capture details as you go instead of relying on your memory later.
- Mobile approval and pre-approval keep accounts payable processes flowing smoothly. Approvers also travel for business, work from home and take days off, but that doesn’t need to cause a bottleneck. A mobile app can make it easy for approvers to quickly review expenses and requests for pre-approvals, improving payment and billing speed.
The sooner you enter expenses, the quicker you and your company will be reimbursed.
We want to hear your thoughts. Does your company use mobile expense management tools? If so, how have they improved your expense management process?
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