Why Employee Self Service Is Accelerating Expense Reporting

Nationwide there are over 5.5 million job openings and not enough workers to fill them—and workloads keep piling up. For many companies, automation is a clear-cut method for saving time and money on low-value tasks. But there are other advantages to digitization outside of automation.

One way to speed up repetitive processes and better divide workloads across departments is to implement employee self-service solutions. Here’s how this solution works.

What Is employee self-service?

Employee self-service, sometimes abbreviated as ESS, is a self-reporting solution. Backed by software, ESS makes it easy for employees to add and update information for various teams, including HR, IT, and accounts payable.

If you’re not using an employee self-service solution, you’re likely familiar with siloed departments handling these tasks in isolation. And the related pitfalls of manual, isolated work: wasted hours spent on follow-ups, corrections, and manual data entry for back-office departments. Imagine reducing the time needed to add and process employee data while nearly eliminating the related communication issues.

When combined with cloud-based systems, automation, and a state-of-the-art ERP, employee self-service can enhance otherwise routine, repetitive processes for everyone involved.

5 Benefits to employee self-service

1. Save time

Making it easy for employees to supply information on their computer or mobile phone streamlines any reporting activity. Not only does self-service reduce the workload for the team that usually manually follows up and files employee data, but digital solutions also speed up the process for employees.

2. Reduce costs

Since the time and effort required to capture, verify, and file employee data drops dramatically, processing costs also decrease.

3. Improve accuracy

When an employee uploads documents, such as receipts for expense reports or an updated W-2 form, there is less chance of error or lost documents. This is especially true when data is automatically captured, and the party responsible for verifying the information can easily reference the original. For example, a marketing employee can upload a receipt for work-related expenses through their self-service expense reporting portal. The program can then automatically reconcile this expense with the business’s credit card statement.

4. Streamline the employee experience

Employees often enjoy completing tasks, especially routine paperwork, quickly and with minimal effort. Self-service portals and tools make it easy for employees to complete manual boring tasks quickly and at their convenience, thus increasing productivity and employee satisfaction.

5. Ensure easier compliance

Late or missing documents can negatively impact compliance and waste department money and resources on remedies. An employee self-service portal can boost compliance efforts without adding new hassles.

Employee self-service for expense reporting

One of the best places to implement employee self-service solutions is in expense reporting. Your AP team is likely overwhelmed with other tasks, and following up with employees for recent travel purchases or other expenses is tedious and a waste of valuable time.

But manually entering data from employee expense reports is even worse.

Adding an employee self-service solution to your expense reporting process supports both your workers and the accounts payable team.

An ideal solution is one that:

• Is accessible from any device
• Integrates with your chosen accounting software
• Captures and logs raw data from employee paper receipts
• Reconciles bank and credit card statements
• Notifies the accounting team of policy violations, duplicate payments, and other errors
• Lives in the cloud for easy access
• Records accurate mileage
• Safeguards data with PCI-compliant security
• Generates advanced employee expense reports automatically
• Allocates expenses to projects, persons, and other categories
• Calculates VAT, GST, and other tax codes
• Allows for multi-level approval
• Guides employees about expense management best practices

Many companies also work with a solution that includes easy and automated time-tracking. This avoids potential mix-ups common with paper or generic spreadsheets for reporting hours. Plus, automated time tracking helps employees stay productive while providing spot-on time reports.

Do More with Gorilla Expense

Gorilla Expense is a best-in-class expense reporting software for businesses worldwide. Through automation and employee self-service for expense tracking, accounting teams spend far less time on verification and suspicious transactions while reducing costs, improving spend visibility, and focusing on high-value tasks. To learn more, visit our expense reporting best practices blog

To find out how our simple, cost-effective solution can enhance your expense reporting, book a demo with us today.