Are you still filing expense reports in Excel sheets and attaching paper receipts with Scotch tape? Then it is time to change that and officially enter the 21st century. Using smartphones and web based applications, the modern day business traveler utilizes the latest technology to efficiently complete expense reports and also make sure that the company’s dollars are spent wisely.
This Dilbert cartoon says it all – Manual old school expense reporting is just painful!
Expense Reporting is painful! The time for change is now! Rather than taking large risky steps, many businesses are turning to the cloud for cost-effective T&E expense management tools that automate and streamline the creation, review and approval of expense reports. Using smartphones, travelers can track expenses as they happen, take photos of receipts, and submit expenses all from the palm of their hand in seconds!
Some of the key areas to look for while evaluating expense reporting solutions are:
1) The ability for employees to photograph , attach or email electronic receipts and easily assign them to line-item expenses
2) Expense reporting systems where credit card transactions can be imported
3) The ability to send T&E expense data into any accounting system like QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle etc. through automation
Gorilla Expense offers all of the above, and is fully integrated with various corporate credit cards and Accounting systems, which means manual data entry is reduced in multiple places, accounting errors are eliminated, employees are reimbursed faster and billable expenses can be tracked easier. In conclusion, whether on the road or back at the office, businesses and employees can now easily manage their T&E expenses – online, or on a smartphone with just a few clicks! So jump in to the 21st century with us!
Expense report padding may seem like a harmless offense and a common thing. But it still constitutes as fraud. Here are 8 cases where employees and public officials got caught cheating big.
Thank you for taking time and participating in our survey with Smart Selling Tools. We received tons of responses and great feedback from everyone! It was amazing to note how many companies still struggle with managing this cumbersome process based on the responses we received.
The winner for the iPad mini drawing is David Escobar (company name withheld per request). An email has been sent to notify the winner. Congratulations David!
We will be putting together a white paper that discusses the results from the survey and emailing to all participants. This will help guide their companies towards better managing the T&E expense reporting process and help with improving productivity and reducing costs.
Thanks again for participating! Stay tuned for more surveys and promotions…..
We have been receiving several inquiries over the last few months about our integration with NAV2013 in relation to what would happen if NAV is hosted on the cloud. Here is the quick scoop –
Microsoft has made significant investments towards the “hostability” of NAV2013. This helps deploying and using NAV in the cloud, thus benefiting both customers and partners. Microsoft is currently fine-tuning deployment scenarios and developing guidance for deploying NAV on Azure. Microsoft expects to make deployment of NAV on Azure broadly available in Q1, 2013. They had initially planned it closer to Nov 2012.
Our application is deployed on the cloud too (as one of the options), specifically Azure (Yes, we are heavily Microsoft oriented and we love it :). With this option, the customer has nothing to worry about in regards to hosting the data, managing the application or tackling the overhead associated with maintaining a server, support etc. Our integration with NAV is agnostic to the hosting format employed. NAV can be on a dedicated server on the cloud or we could be co-hosted with NAV too. Neither approaches affect out integration from the user’s perspective. On the back-end, there will be a few more gerbils turning wheels. But the customer will always experience a seamless and fully automated integration between our solution and NAV.
This flexible integration and hosting capabilities between our solution and NAV makes life much easier for the customer, the partner and of course for us too. Read about our integration with NAV here. If you would like to learn more or have any further questions, send us a message at – info@gorillaexpense.com.
Meanwhile, here are some more tidbits about NAV013 you may find useful
– Microsoft announced the availability of NAV 2013 in 15 markets. With significant improvements in functionality and several new capabilities, this launch was hailed as the most significant release of NAV yet
– Functionality such as Cash Flow Forecast, Cost Accounting, and Excel Integration to Query enable greater accounting efficiency for customers while offering partners the ability to develop customized solutions
– The new NAV web client allows users to access NAV from virtually any device. Improved query and charting offer compelling ways to analyze and display data for more users
– Improvements to the migration tool, partner development tools, and increased interoperability with Microsoft technologies mean less time is needed for partners to customize and deploy solutions, and they are easier for customers to learn and have impact
– Specifically useful for partners, NAV2013 enables easier deployment, configuration and installation through the RoleTailored developer experience. The new .NET Framework enhancements makes it easier to build, deploy and integrate high-performing add-ons with existing NAV solutions, and share data more easily
Microsoft Dynamics GP2013 which was released on Dec. 19 has several new features that are designed to help SMBs grow their businesses. These features are powerful and very easy to use. From our preliminary research, some of the key enhancements that we have seen include:
A rich web client to access information when you need it and on the device of your choice
Improved cloud-deployment model to streamline deploying and managing GP in the cloud
Faster deployment with new “RapidStart” tools that significantly reduce time to configure GP for each customer
Deeper interoperability with Office 365, other Microsoft technologies & ISV products
Microsoft has indeed made interoperability very easy for ISVs like us. We integrate fully with GP2013 and it is seamless while the implementation time for our solution is almost immediate. The mechanism is similar to GP2010, in that once expense reports are approved by the manager within our system, the data is automatically pushed as GL entries to GP2013 with the single click of a button! This definitely provides a robust value add-on for T&E expense reporting and also extends the company’s investment in GP2013. We are extremely thrilled with the advancements made by Microsoft in GP2013 and look forward to seeing more.
2012 was a great year for us. We advanced our product to the next level through some very innovative features and updates. Some of the ideas came from our customers who love our solution and what it did to solve their T&E pain. Many thanks to them!
Now 2013 is here and we are bustling with new ideas. Our goal is still the same – No more hassle with expense reporting.
(Finance Speak is a series where we discuss typical questions & concerns expressed by our customers. We will delve into each of the points and discuss the best way for the company to handle it. If you’d like to contribute or ask a question, send a message to info@gorillaexpense.com with ‘Finance Speak’ in the subject line.)
Executive (E) at a large manufacturing company – We have a sizeable mobile workforce. This mainly includes sales folks and purchasing managers who travel to meet with vendors and OEMs. We currently have no visibility into how we spend on travel. We have a very manual expense reporting process and travel expenses are approved without any due diligence. This leads to almost no visibility in where & how we spend. I would like to establish a process without rocking the boat too much. How do I go about this and what would be your recommendations…..
G – Do you currently have an established and well communicated process to manage T&E spend at all?
E – Not really. Some of the travel we do is last minute and there is minimal planning. After that, there is almost no reconciliation with the spend, not to mention our travelers take forever to send in their reports. The whole process pretty much runs open loop
G – Do you have a policies document for travel expenses? Do you know what your spend limits needs to be in a year?
E – We don’t have a policies document. We are paying more attention on how to budget our spend and making serious attempts to be within that budget. Some of these vary by projects so it does become a little hard to tackle
G – So, it sounds like managing spend by projects would definitely be an area of interest. It would also appear that you would like to automate this process as much as possible so that all stakeholders are involved. Would this be a correct assumption?
E – Absolutely! We would like for your company to guide us on how to setup a process and gradually automate it as we bring in more tools for the traveling folks. Can we connect this afternoon and discuss this in more detail?…….
This was definitely a very engaging discussion with our customer. Every company struggles with visibility into spend. Even the ones with a mature process. As companies grow their needs change and their tracking of parameters evolve – much more so for T&E because of the dynamic nature.
So what did we propose to our customer? We discussed many items but we recommended to take small steps that would converge at measurable goals over time. Due to the company’s culture, it made sense for them to not try too much at once. Here’s what we discussed –
T&E expense reporting process – We talked about the typical expense reporting process (See our website). This was a great way for them to start thinking about it. The key point was the importance of communicating this process and guidelines clearly & frequently to employees. After they looked at it, we helped them fine-tune it much more to meet their needs.
Expense reporting automation – A no-brainer really. This would solve several of the immediate inefficiencies and move them away from the manual process they have today. With this, their employees cannot make excuses for delays in submission. The other advantages are discussed below.
Policies for Expense Reporting – Our application includes setup of policies on various parameters. They were broken down into expense types for this company. This made a huge difference for them in being able to enforce limits. Here is an example screenshot –
Manager Approval – The application also has the ability for managers to view, correct, redirect & approve/reject expenses (See video). This way the right stakeholders were involved in the process and it wasn’t open loop anymore. The company setup a list of approving managers and specific employees to these managers for approval. Over the last few weeks, they have started creating additional layers of managers to review and monitor expense reports. A far cry from what they were doing a few months back!
Allocation of Expenses to Projects – We helped them track project expenses within the application. Project numbers are available to employees who allocate them to the report. We are working through the integration to their ERP system so that all these expenses are pushed to specific project accounts with no manual data entry. Their Accounts Payable manager now does more AP work instead of entering expenses!
T&E Analytics and Reporting – Finally, we walked them through our reporting and analytics engine that helps them slice and dice data to find out biggest areas of spend, expenses that were out of line, budgeted VS spent analysis, expenses by employees, expense types etc. so that they have better visibility on the where and how of travel spend. This has helped them review areas they would have never thought of looking at before.
End Result?
– The company now saves thousands of dollars per month by taking these steps
– The finance team has more details on travel spend
– Employees now submit expenses faster and they love the tools that have enabled improvements
– We helped them expand on their travel policies document when they had none
– The executive we interfaced with is loving his new approach and system having implemented all these steps without breaking the bank
While the company still needs to address other challenges, they are definitely on the right path towards tackling these tricky T&E problems one at a time. At the end of the day a big win-win for all!
We had a very successful exhibition of our T&E expense reporting solution at DEMO last week. DEMO is one of the biggest technology launchpad conferences in the US that provides a stage for young companies with disruptive and game-changing solutions. The event has been in existence since the 1980s. Some of the name brands that have emerged from DEMO include Salesforce.com, Tivo, VMWare and WebEx among others.
Microsoft selected us from several global companies and sponsored us to attend and present at this show (thanks again Microsoft!). It was great to receive kudos and recognition from someone like Microsoft. Our solid integration with Dynamics GP, NAV, AX and SL caught their attention and they wanted us to discuss the innovations we were making in T&E expense reporting – an old pain point that hasn’t been solved yet!
It was very exciting to fly out to SFO and showcase our solution in the heart of the Silicon Valley. We were also 1 of the 2 companies from Georgia. This is great news for the Southeast hi-tech scene. It puts Georgia on the map for hi-tech innovation compared to the bigger players like Boston, New York and of course the Silicon Valley.
We look forward to being part of the DEMO alumni and continue taking the pain out of expense reporting for companies and employees!
By popular demand, Gorilla Expense has released a new feature where Multi-Levels Approvals of expense reports can be setup. The approvers can be designated as different types of users, viz. ‘Manager’, ‘Admin’, ‘Accounting’ etc. This feature adapts to a company’s existing work-flow. And similar to other areas, this feature can be customized by us to meet your specific needs.
Note that the Multi-Level Approval is different from the Redirect Expense Report feature. In Redirect Expense Report, the approver can redirect an expense report to someone else is he/she is unavailable. The Multi-Level approval is disparate but works in conjunction with expense report redirection.
With this feature, different departments within a company will have visibility into T&E spend. There is also enhanced accountability because people who need to sign off on expenses are now fully involved. Hope you enjoy this functionality!
Over the last few months, we have been interfacing with several companies that use Microsoft Dynamics GP. The inevitable question that we hear during the requirements phase is related to importing transactions from the corporate credit card. How does it work? Basically, a corporate card is provided to each employee and they are expected to enter/import expenses on the card within the reporting system. Once the expense report is approved, the data is pushed to GP. After this, the accounting department then does the reconciliation between the employee-submitted corporate card expenses and the card statement. If everything is correct, this should balance out. That’s the gist of it.
As we know, GP has an Expense Management add-on called eExpense. This provides online expense reporting and helps companies automate their expense submission process. But eExpense does not provide an interface for managing and tagging corporate credit card expenses. That’s where we come in!
Within the Gorilla Expense application, users can import transactions from their corporate card and even their personal cards. For this discussion, we will stick to the corporate card only. After the transactions are imported, our application allows the users to tag them with specifics – such as expense type, codes, projects, cost centers or account numbers. These fields are setup in the Gorilla application based on how it is setup in GP. The user can also split each card transaction into multiple cost centers. Once the compiling and tagging is done, the report is then available to the manager and finally the accounting folks to approve.
Once the approval is complete, the final ‘gatekeeper’ sends the transactions to GP using the Gorilla Integration Manager (GIM). The GIM is a very versatile & flexible tool that allows the gatekeeper to map specific parameters and fields to codes and accounts within GP. So, with the push of a button, all the transactions are available within GP and they have been tagged appropriately and immediately.
Our application combined with the GIM takes the pain out of importing and processing corporate credit card transactions. It is a “cannot live without” (actual customer quote) tool for accounting folks that cuts-down the processing time, effort involved and importantly data entry errors. So there you have it. A quick synopsis of the Gorilla Expense – Great Plains symbiosis!
If you have any questions or need assistance in implementing or customizing our application with GP, send us a message at info@gorillaexpense.com or 877.973.6737.
