Picture this scene. It's the end of the month and you've finally carved out time to finish your expense report. Your wallet and inbox are overflowing with receipts, so you're pretty confident you've got everything covered. All of your receipts must be there, right?
Wrong.
So, the search begins. You look through ALL the places you stash receipts, even the black hole between your driver's seat and the middle console. Time goes by - and you're still hunting. Plus, you have employee receipts in expense reports to approve. By now, your motivation has gone out the window. Month end isn't for another two days, so what's one more day?
End scene. Rinse and receipt repeat.
Let's take a look at how implementing a receipt scanning software can help streamline the vicious expense management cycle business owners like you endure each month.
As we established at the top of this post, expense reports and approvals are a huge time drain - and frankly, a waste of time - when you're dealing with paper. If you can relate to this, you're not alone.
In fact, over 30% of business owners claim the biggest pain point of managing expenses is the time it takes to reconcile, review and approve expense reports.¹ And over half say lost or missing receipts are the most frustrating aspect of the entire process.¹ Imagine what you could do for your business if you didn't have to waste so much time scrambling and troubleshooting each month.
All of those things you just thought of could be a reality if you started using a receipt scanning software or modern bill pay platform with OCR technology. You'd no longer have to stuff your receipts into your wallet and cross your fingers, hoping they stay put. Instead, you could just snap a photo of the receipt on the spot and move on to your next action item.
From there, the software would take over and do the heavy lifting for you.
Along with chasing paper, manual data entry could be a thing of the past with a receipt scanning software. That means you could forget about the many times your report was rejected, after a week of waiting, all because one pesky decimal point got away from you.
You may be thinking "Okay, it can save time, frustration and embarrassment but what does that really mean for my business?"
Well, let's break it down. According to the GBTA, the average expense report takes an average of 20 minutes to complete and $58 to manually process.² Of those reports, just under 20% of them (or every 1 in 5!) have errors, which takes about 18 minutes and $52/report to correct.² That's a little under 40 minutes and over $100 for every fifth expense report your business processes.
So, eliminating manual data entry with a receipt scanning software could save your business hundreds or even thousands of dollars and several hours depending on how many reports you process each year.
Once you snap that photo, your receipt would be sent directly to your report and added line by line- no manual entry needed. Come month end all you'd need to do is give your report a quick scan and hit submit. And if your whole team was on board, reviewing and approving your employee reports would be just as easy.
Not only are missing receipts stressful - they could be a threat to your business come tax season. Let's take a look at just a few the common risks of lost or unreported receipts:
While a receipt scanning software can lower the risks outlined above, it can't do your taxes for you. That's where your accountant comes in. What it can do though is make working with your accountant much easier.
Instead of handing them a big bag or shoebox filled with receipts and invoices, everything will be digitized and ready to go. Depending on the software you are using, it may even sync everything right to your accounting system - if that won't make your accountant happy, we don't know what will.
Scanning a receipt in Corpay One can be done in seconds from your desk or on the go - with 99% accuracy.³ Our advanced scanning technology automatically (and accurately!) populates all of the transaction details so you don't have to. With Corpay One, documenting an expense is no longer a time-consuming, manual process riddled with human error. We do the heavy lifting so you can get back to the work that matters most.
If you're already a Corpay One member, here's how you can start scanning your receipts today:
New around here? No worries, just book a demo with us and we can show you the ropes. We're ready to help you win back valuable time and save money for your business.
Sources:
¹ 2019 Travel and Expense Management Trends Report, Certify, Inc.
² How Much Do Expense Reports Really Cost? Survey by GBTA Foundation and HRS, October 2015.
³ Using OCR: How Accurate is Your Data. TDWI, March 5, 2018
