Simplifying Expense Reporting After Kickoff Events
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Kick-off events or regional meetings can be exciting for everyone involved and strengthen your business as a whole. But after such large-scale events, finance teams are the ones who have to get down to business again and process countless employee expenses, chase receipts, and watch out for policies to enforce.
Now, imagine a less time-consuming and hassle-free version of this whole after-math: With expense management software like Yokoy, you can leverage automation and AI functionality to make expense reporting quicker, more accurate, and far less complicated.
Whether it’s tracking business travel expenses in real-time or ensuring compliance with your expense policy across different regions, modern expense management processes are simplified, so your finance team can focus on what truly matters.
Ready to take control of your post-event expenses? Let’s dive into how Yokoy can make all the difference to simplify your expense reporting!
Challenges of post-event expense reporting
Managing expenses is often overwhelming, particularly when submissions are delayed, essential documentation like receipts is missing, and even more so if the finance team uses spreadsheets. This process becomes even more complex when handling employee expenses from diverse departments or regions, where differences in submission practices and timelines can slow down workflows.
Ensuring every claim complies with the organisation’s expense policy adds another layer of difficulty. Each expense must be reviewed to confirm it aligns with approved categories, which can be a time-consuming and tedious task. Manual processes are prone to data entry errors and oversights, such as incorrectly categorised expenses or missed claims. These issues not only affect compliance but can also lead to inaccurate travel expense reports and budget inconsistencies.
To address these common pitfalls, finance teams can benefit from expense management software that leverages automation to simplify and streamline the expense management process. With features like real-time tracking, automated workflows, and enhanced visibility, such tools help ensure compliance, reduce manual effort, and enable efficient reimbursement while meeting modern and future-proof business needs.
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Steps to simplify expense reporting after events
Simplifying expense reporting after events requires a structured approach that minimises manual effort, ensures compliance, and keeps processes efficient. Here are three essential steps to achieve this:
Set clear deadlines: Timely expense submission is crucial to maintaining a streamlined expense reporting process and encouraging employees to submit their claims on time. Establish clear deadlines for expense submissions and communicate these effectively before, during, and after the event. Providing reminders through email, a mobile app, or internal communication channels ensures that team members know their responsibilities. A clear timeline not only reduces delays but also prevents a backlog of unprocessed claims, making it easier for finance teams to handle high volumes efficiently.
Use automation to streamline processes: Relying on manual processes for business expense reporting can lead to inefficiencies, errors, and increased workloads for finance teams. By using automation tools, organisations can significantly streamline workflows and reduce the burden of employees’ manual data entry. Automation software integrates with existing systems such as accounting software or ERP platforms, making it easier to categorise expenses, adhere to policy compliance, and process reimbursements faster. Automated solutions also offer real-time tracking and OCR technology to digitise receipts, reducing the likelihood of missing documentation and providing a more accurate view of travel expenses.
Provide clear process instructions: Ambiguity in expense submission processes can lead to errors, delays, and non-compliance. To avoid these issues, clear guidelines for employees on how to submit expenses should be created. This guidance will help employees navigate what documentation is required, which expense categories are approved, and how to use expense management systems. Additionally, automation tools can simplify this further by offering user-friendly platforms where employees can quickly upload receipts, categorise expenses, and track their reimbursement status. Clear instructions and an intuitive platform ensure that even employees unfamiliar with the process can easily navigate it.
Benefits of automating expense reporting
Automating expense reporting doesn’t just save time—it also ensures accuracy, simplifies workflows and offers unparalleled insights into organisational spending. Let’s look closer at the key benefits and how automation is an essential tool for modern finance teams:
Faster reconciliation
Automation significantly accelerates the reconciliation process by eliminating manual data entry and cross-referencing. Expense management software automatically captures and categorises expenses in real time, reducing the time it takes to process claims. For instance, receipts uploaded through a mobile app are instantly matched with corresponding transactions from corporate or credit cards, allowing finance teams to reconcile accounts almost immediately. This speed ensures that reimbursements are processed faster, improves cash flow, and keeps employees satisfied, especially after large events with high volumes of travel expenses in various currencies.
Improved accuracy
Manual data entry itself—and expense reporting especially—is prone to errors, such as miscalculations, duplicate entries, or incorrect categorisations, which can lead to discrepancies in financial reports. Automation minimises these risks using advanced technologies like optical character recognition (OCR) to extract data directly from receipts and match it with expense categories. These tools also enforce expense policy compliance by flagging out-of-policy claims in real time. This reduces the likelihood of human error, ensures the right expenses are accounted for, and maintains the integrity of financial records, which is crucial for audits and tax reporting.
Enhanced visibility
A key benefit of automation is the enhanced transparency it brings to expense reporting. Automated systems offer finance teams a unified platform to monitor, track, and assess all expenses tied to an event. Real-time data allows for deeper insights into travel expenditures, corporate card transactions, and reimbursement patterns, helping with more effective budgeting and decision-making. Additionally, improved visibility enables organisations to pinpoint overspending areas, enforce policies more effectively, and tailor workflows to better meet business objectives. With comprehensive reports and dashboards, automation equips finance leaders with the necessary tools to manage expenses confidently. By centralising all financial data in one place, teams can reduce the risk of discrepancies and improve the accuracy of their reports. This leads to more informed financial decisions, better control over budgets, and a smoother, more efficient approval process.
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How Yokoy simplifies post-event expense reporting
Yokoy makes your post-event expense reporting much easier and more efficient, helping your finance team streamline the entire process. AI-driven automation reduces manual tasks, helps to ensure compliance and gives you a clearer view of your organisation’s spending.
AI-driven automation
Yokoy uses AI-driven automation to categorise and reconcile expense claims instantly. With OCR technology, it scans and extracts information from receipts, automatically matching them to the right categories. This helps to reduce errors and saves valuable time for your finance team to focus on more essential tasks than typing numbers in expense report spreadsheets. Additionally, thanks to modern AI, the system improves over time, making expense reporting quicker and more accurate with every use.
Corporate cards
Corporate cards and business credit cards can be managed within Yokoy and integrate seamlessly with both physical and virtual cards. This allows your organisation to track spending in real time, so you can see expenses as they happen and where they happen. Whether it’s for travel expenses or other purchases, Yokoy automatically links card transactions to the correct categories, making reconciliation smooth and easy. Setting limits, issuing single-use cards or setting up vendor categories also helps to prevent overspending or misuse.
Customisable approval workflows
Keeping track of expense policy compliance after an event can be especially tricky. Yokoy assists you and your finance team with customisable approval workflows: These workflows can be tailored to fit your organisation’s specific needs, whether that’s different departments, regions, or expense categories. This ensures that every expense is reviewed and approved by the right person, according to your company’s expense policy. You can save time and also automatically set reminders, helping to keep the process moving, speeding up approvals and making sure everything stays on track.
Centralised real-time data
Yokoy consolidates all your expense reporting data in a single platform, providing real-time visibility into your company’s event-related expenses. The user-friendly dashboard enables you to monitor spending, identify trends, and gain a comprehensive overview of your employees’ travel costs. Centralising this data simplifies audit preparation, budget tracking, and ensures your financial reports are always current. By enhancing transparency across the organisation, it also fosters better decision-making and greater accountability at every level.
Country-specific controls
Managing expenses across different borders or even countries can be challenging, especially with varying regulations. Yokoy helps by providing country-specific guidance, allowing you to manage expenses according to local rules, such as per diems or the 3-month rule. This ensures your expense reporting stays compliant, no matter where your team is based, and it helps you maintain consistent policies across different locations.
Next steps
With a powerful combination of AI-driven automation, seamless corporate card integration, flexible approval workflows, real-time data insights and country-specific controls, managing kickoff event expenses with Yokoy’s expense management system has never been easier. Say goodbye to the hassle of manual processes and hello to streamlined, stress-free expense management.
Try it out for yourself: Book a demo today!
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