Read this special section
only
if you work for a big company.
If you submit expense reports in your job, you only use expense report forms periodically -- once a week, once a month -- yet you're forced to remember how to cross-reference all the dates and amounts in the little boxes with the entries in the matrix. Forget anything and amounts in all the rows and columns won't match up. Heaven help you if you have an error in the total, because you can't turn in the report for approval until you fix it.
If you’re a manager who needs to sign off on the expense reports of others, are you going to check all those cross-referenced amounts, dates, and notations? I don’t think so, either. You get a feel for the big picture, look for glaring amounts and weird descriptions that don’t fit the situation, then sign off at the bottom. Move that sucker to Payables!
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If you’re in the Payables department, you know who the idiots are. You hate having to review expense reports to piece together the bad math and improper categorization. Making corrections makes for a big mess.
There’s never enough room for the submitters to write descriptions – will the company have enough information to properly document the associated expense based on the cryptic information squashed into the tiny box? Who decides the sizes of those boxes, anyway? And while each expense report brings with it its own share of pain, at least you get good at dealing with it, because you get to do it SO MANY TIMES week in and week out.
If you’re an executive trying to make sense out of where all the company’s money is going based on what your expense reports are telling you, you might feel in the dark. The 10 categories they give you on those generic forms don’t give you much to work with and, hey, you don’t have a generic company to run.
The generic expense report might give you a way to satisfy documentation requirements for the IRS, but it doesn’t give you much of a tool for running your business.
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If you have to keep paying your people to prepare and process all those blasted expense reports -- an American Express study found that companies spend between $36 and $64 to process a SINGLE expense report -- at least you should be able to get something out of it that’s going to help you make better business decisions and make business less of a gamble. Don’t fool around with a generic expense report form any longer than you have to.
Simple. Now there’s no excuse for staff turning expense reports in late. In fact, they might even come to enjoy filling them out. Well, probably not, but at least they won’t despise the chore anymore.
"We're not idiots, but we're smart enough to see that anything simple enough for idiots to do right can only help us use our employees' intellects and time more effectively to accomplish our business goals."
-I-T-Online.net, Inc., Paula Mader Brensinger |
The following review appeared in Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow:
"Shortcuts to Expense Reports. We all know that some of the expense reporting tools on the market today are wonderful. Unfortunately, at least for the accounts payable department, numerous management teams refuse to pay for them forcing employees to deal with forms that leave a lot to be desired. They cause the employees filling them out to make mistakes and the accounts payable department processing them is often left with a mess. Now there is a resource that puts some discipline on employees while presenting accounts payable with something less than the chaos that often passes for an executive T&E report. Shortcuts to Expense Reports is a reasonably priced—no, make that cheap—T&E reporting tool.
Now we are not going to even pretend that this $17, that’s right $17, is going to provide you with the depth of information that some of its higher priced competitors will, but it will make it easier for your employees to prepare their reports, provide executives with a clean overview to approve, and best of all, make life easier for the accounts payable department. As the creators of this Excel template explain, “If you’re in the payables department, you know who the idiots are. You hate having to review expense reports to piece together the bad math and improper categorization. Making corrections makes for a big mess.”
If you are satisfied with your existing system, we’re not suggesting you replace it. However, if your T&E process is currently on Xeroxed forms or a simple Excel spreadsheet with no programming, Shortcuts to Expense Reports might be a good choice. Add $10 to that $17 price tag and you’ll get the Date Sort Version. For additional information go to www.ShortcutsToExpenseReports.com "
-Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow, Mary S. Schaeffer, Publisher and Editorial Director
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