HomeAccount PayableHow to Streamline Expense Approval in 6 Steps

How to Streamline Expense Approval in 6 Steps

Expense approvals are an essential part of business operations, but the process can be tedious and time-consuming. This article will discuss what expense approvals are, the benefits of automating the process, and provide a step-by-step guide on how to implement a streamlined expense approval system in your accounts payable processes.

What Are Expense Approvals?

Expense approvals are a crucial step in the expense management process, where employees submit expenses incurred on behalf of the company for approval by designated approvers. These general expenses include travel, meals, office supplies, or other business-related costs.

The approvers, usually managers or finance team members, review the expenses to ensure they adhere to company policies before approving or denying the reimbursement. This step allows managers to track and approve spending as a way to effectively control budgets.

After employees incur business-related expenses and submit their budgeting reports, they must wait for a manager’s approval before receiving reimbursement from the finance department. This crucial expense approval step should be as efficient and straightforward as possible.

Common Problems Related to Expense Management

In the absence of a robust expense management policy, the approval process can become chaotic and disorganized. Here are some issues that commonly occur:

Long Approval Cycle

Traditional, manual expense approval processes often involve multiple layers of approval and lengthy back-and-forth communication, which can result in delays and frustration for both employees and approvers.

Depending on the scope and services provided by the organization, the finance team may face a huge volume of approval tasks that can be challenging to manage. The process can become exceedingly tedious for everyone involved when finance teams and managers are tasked with manually verifying Excel sheets and other documents.

The heavier the workload, the higher the probability of errors. Finance teams and managers may find it difficult to approve all items or reject some requests. This is because each document needs personalized scrutiny and a solid understanding of its significance.

As a result, meeting deadlines for approving or rejecting requests can be challenging, negatively affecting the approval process’s efficiency and accuracy.

Improper Expense Distribution

Once a proposal and budget have been approved, it is essential to ensure proper execution from the moment of approval to the completion of the purchase.

For example, if approval is granted for buying five computers, the components should be obtained within the budget constraints and promptly delivered to the individuals who need them.

Delays in this process can lead to decreased productivity, suboptimal utilization of resources, and employee dissatisfaction due to not receiving the required tools, such as software, hardware, or other forms of support, in a timely manner. Additionally, a sluggish reimbursement process for employees can negatively affect overall productivity.

Overall, manual expense management systems can lead to errors, such as duplicate or incorrect expense entries, which can distort the company’s financial records.

By streamlining the expense approval process and adopting automated solutions, organizations can minimize these issues, ensuring accurate financial records and maintaining employee satisfaction.

Inefficient Budget Management

In the context of expense approvals, automation is often mentioned, but managers cannot blindly approve every request that lands on their desks.

They need to check the monthly and yearly budget, scrutinize the Opex (operational expenditure) reports, and go through several Excel sheets to ensure correctness. A misstep could cause chaos if the wrong items are approved, leaving more critical ones without the required funds for acquisition.

It’s important for managers to not approve an expense simply because there is spare cash or an unallocated budget.

Multiple factors need to be taken into account, including long-term financial planning, unforeseen future expenses, and recurring costs before approving any significant operating expenditures.

Only the most pressing needs can be greenlit immediately, while other requests must be assessed based on their priority. Poor budget management can negatively impact an organization’s financial health.

Furthermore, in the absence of a centralized expense tracking system, managers might find it challenging to effectively monitor and manage departmental budgets.

By adopting an automated expense approval system, managers can better oversee budgets and make well-informed decisions, contributing to the organization’s financial stability and ongoing success.

Why Automate Expense Approvals?

Modern companies do not need to adhere to the cumbersome expense approval processes and long waiting periods.

There’s a better way: automated expense approvals. By automating expense approval processes, businesses can:

  • Improve Transparency at Scale: Automation software helps to maintain accurate records and provides visibility into the company’s expenses, making it easier to track and analyze spending patterns.
  • Save Time: Automated expense approval systems speed up the approval process by streamlining workflows and reducing manual work for both employees and approvers.
  • Simplify Auditing: An automated system makes it easier for auditors to review expenses, ensuring compliance with company policies and reducing the risk of fraud.
  • Manage Budgets Strategically: With a clear view of company spending, managers can make informed decisions on budget allocations and spending priorities.
  • No More Overloads: Automation helps to distribute the workload evenly among approvers, preventing bottlenecks and reducing stress.

Find out more about how automation can empower your finance teams by downloading the eBook below.

EBOOK_Empower your finance team with automation

How to Automate Expense Approvals in 6 Steps

Ready to streamline your expense approval management? Follow the step-by-step below:

Choose a Reliable Automation Software

Selecting the right expense management software is crucial for a successful automation process. Look for a solution that is user-friendly, secure, and can integrate with your existing accounting systems.

One option that fits all these criteria is Peakflo. Our AR & AP automation simplifies expense approvals with automated workflows, allowing you to save hundreds of man-hours wasted on time-consuming approval procedures.

Revisit Existing Policies

When managing finance reports manually, companies often follow ambiguous policies that are hard to remember, so it’s crucial to use this opportunity to refine your expense policy.

Review your company’s existing policies to ensure they are clear, up-to-date, and comprehensive. Address any gaps and establish guidelines for expense submission, approval limits, and reimbursement timelines.

Write your policy in clear language to prevent confusion, making it flexible enough for emergencies and special circumstances. Specify which managers make final decisions on approvals and detail the approval workflow steps.

Ensure all team members can easily reference the policy and remember best practices. By doing so, you’ll lay a solid foundation for a seamless transition to an automated expense approval system.

Using Peakflo, design workflows that reflect your organization’s specific requirements. Customize based on the budget type and range of amount, then easily apply them to bills, transactions, purchase orders, or credit notes.

Dengan

By adopting Peakflo, save time, minimize errors, and have more control in ensuring that your approval system is following the company’s standard of practices.

Tag the Relevant Approvers

Design and implement workflows in the automation software that reflect your company’s expense approval processes.

In Peakflo, you can add up multi-level approvals, route expenses based on department or budget, and configure notifications for approvers and employees. This way, you can provide a more efficient and transparent expense approval process.

Accounts payable audit trail
Bypass the most complex approval by setting custom approval workflows, assigning multi-level approvers, and tagging to the right budget

Strategize How You’d Like to Follow Up Approvers

Establish a system for following up with approvers who may be slow to review and approve expenses.

With Peakflo, approvers will have a dedicated dashboard to track approvals for purchase orders, bills, transactions, and credit notes.

Instead of manually chasing approvers in long chains of emails, Peakflo will do the chasing for you.

Approval email

If an email doesn’t work, Peakflo allows you to personalize where and how you’d like to follow up on approvals to fast-track the process. You can leverage mobile approvals via WhatsApp for Business and update external stakeholders, such as vendors, to streamline communications.

Approve from the tip of the palm!

Resolving issues will also be quicker and easier as you can simply mention a team member in Peakflo, allowing them to review and revise immediately.

Leave comments on a PO or a bill

By implementing Peakflo’s automated follow-up system, reminders, and escalation procedures, you can ensure that your expense approval process runs smoothly and efficiently, eliminating any blockers for your team or organization as a whole.

Supercharge Your Approval Matrixes with Rules

To further streamline the approval process, incorporate rules and conditions into your approval matrix using Peakflo’s role-based permission system. This feature allows you to automatically give specific individuals, such as managers and junior admins, access to certain approvals based on their department, business unit, level, and more.

Approval rules

By leveraging Peakflo’s approval rules, ensure that the right people are involved in the approval process at the appropriate stages, further enhancing efficiency and compliance with your company’s policies.

Track, Manage, and Approve Better

Automating the expense approval process can significantly improve the efficiency, transparency, and control of your company’s spending.

By choosing the right software, revisiting existing policies, and implementing effective workflows and rules, you’ll be well on your way to streamlining your expense approval process and creating a more efficient and transparent financial management system.

Get started today with AP automation
Lulu
Lulu
Lulu, as a content marketer in Peakflo, is passionate about educating users on accounts payable and receivable management to help businesses maximize their cash flows. When not glued to the screen, she has her attention either on her annoying brother or five adorable cats.
Related Articles

Latest Post