To reduce the carbon footprint and protect the environment, companies are moving towards a completely paperless system and embracing the digital platform to automate their travel and expense (T&E) system.

It helps in saving time and mitigating employee fatigue in managing paper receipts and filing expenses. But the bigger challenge comes when receipts are lost. As per a global study, companies are heavily impacted when employees lose paper receipts or submit expense reports without receipts: 53% of small businesses, 49% of mid-sized businesses and 48% of large enterprises.

Disadvantages of a manual paper-based system

Time consuming and cumbersome

It is extremely time consuming and cumbersome to manage paper receipts. The process from submission to auditing reports to processing reimbursements becomes too cumbersome.

Manual check and poor policy compliance

It is challenging to manually check all receipts for policy compliance. There is always room for error and audit risk.

Duplicate and fraudulent claims

A manual system cannot fully check all receipts to track duplicate claims, thereby increasing the chances of duplicate claims.

Paper and maintenance cost 

The cost of paper, toner, files etc. becomes a substantial expense in any manual paper-based system.

Insufficient data for analysis

There is only so much that can be tracked for reporting and analysis. There are other valuable and informative data that could be required to provide extremely valuable insights.

Automated receipt captures eliminate paper from the entire equation and employees do not need to spend hours in managing receipts and creating reports. Expense reports are now submitted within a couple of minutes and with fewer clicks. With digital paperless system, the process can now be completed within minutes.

Advantages of a digital paperless system

Time saving

The paperless ‘capture and submit’ system allows employees to capture receipts images and submit expenses on the go.

Automated policy check

Companies can use flexi-fields to capture additional details that could be required to audit receipts and track expenses that are non-compliant.

Highlight duplicate and fraudulent claims

The system can easily track duplicate or fraudulent claims and highlight them as they are submitted through the system.

Zero paper and maintenance cost 

The cost of printing and managing receipts could be brought down to zero depending on the degree of automation.

Digital copies

Since digital receipts could be stored and saved forever, companies can review them whenever required for any taxation needs.

Greater insights into company spend

Companies can use the digital receipts to capture and track all the data available for effective analysis.

Mobility and advanced OCR technology

Mobile solutions with advanced OCR technology make the entire process extremely simple and intuitive.

Automated expense creation

Capturing receipts to automatically populate expenses and capture any non-compliant expense becomes very easy.