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Two Sides of the Same Coin – T&E Expense Reporting & Payroll Integration

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Here is a frequently heard request from Accounts Payable departments (AP) in companies around the world –

‘Can we integrate T&E with our Payroll system to issue reimbursements faster and error-free?’ And a very pertinent request at that – considering that AP is largely responsible for issuing T&E reimbursements.

A recently conducted survey, with results displayed below, showed that at least 74% of T&E reimbursements fall largely within the domain of AP. This becomes an additional burden to handle for AP among other important tasks. Plus, the ripple effects of delayed reimbursements or wrong reimbursements affects the heart of the business: the morale of the workforce. So it really is a no-brainer to automate this process through integration.

And this fits into the overall theme for companies in the 21st century which is – religiously examining ways towards becoming more efficient and effective at what they do. And on that list is frustration and delays with T&E reimbursements for employees after a trip. This is especially true after an international trip where the employee could have sizable out of pocket expenses with imminent due dates on their credit cards. Therefore integration of T&E and Payroll systems is paramount and companies are investigating in more detail on how to maintain a seamless integration between these two systems which are essentially two sides of the same coin.

 

Payroll systems look at an employee at one point in time, chiefly, what is that employee’s salary or hourly wage today. They automatically calculate net pay for a given pay period, federal, state and local taxes, deductions for such items as health care copays and contributions to charities etc. These systems also automatically cut checks to employees or have their pay automatically deposited into their bank account.

T&E Expense Reporting systems, on the other hand, help manage the employees expenses from a trip. If the company utilizes a corporate card, then the employee submits those expenses are part of the same system. The key pieces of the expense transaction includes details about the trip, expense type, vendor and mainly the receipt of the transaction.

The benefits of integration between these two systems are:

– Reduce reimbursement time

– No more manual keying of data in multiple places

– Utilize the existing flow and scheduling for T&E reimbursements

– Real-time visibility of reimbursement status for all parties

– And most importantly, the emotional aspect – employees expect the company to reimburse them for out-of-pocket expenses ASAP. And by automating the process as much as possible (which in turn reduces errors, delays and frustrations), it shows the employees that the company cares!

So how does this typically work?

 

The natural next step for T&E data after it has been reconciled in the expense reporting & ERP systems is sending it to the Payroll system. Think of it as ‘Passing the expense report data baton’!

Expense-Reporting-Payroll-Integration

Here is how it works in steps –

– Once the expense reports are approved within the Gorilla Expense web application, Gorilla Expense can automatically generate 2 files 1) Payroll file precisely in the same format as expected by your payroll provider 2) GL File precisely in the same format as expected by ERP System

– The payroll file can be imported into the Payroll system to issue reimbursement

– The GL file can be imported into the ERP system for GL entries

– If the Payroll system setup for T&E reimbursements is the same as payroll, then the employee will be reimbursed for T&E expenses during the next payroll cycle

Contact us at info@gorillaexpense.com if you have any questions or if we can help you manage this process more efficiently for your company.

Automated T&E Expense Reporting for the 21st Century

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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!

Credit Card Integration for Expense Reports

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Our expense reporting customers love our credit card integration module and find it to be a huge time-saver and hassle-minimizer for their users. The main purpose of this post is to quickly explain how the credit card integration works with our system. So here goes….

Two Words – Very Easy!

In our application, users can automatically download transactions from their corporate and personal credit cards with the click of a button. This uses the standard OFX format, supported by most banks and credit card companies. As a 1st step, the user must setup the credit card profile in the system. Each user can setup multiple profiles and they can be a mix of corporate and personal cards. Each credit card profile can be allocated to different pay methods, as defined by the Accounting person in the company. Once this is done, the user can toggle between the various cards from a list and select one, as shown here

Expense-Report-Credit-Card-Integration

After a card is selected, the user would enter the login credentials as they would if they were logging into their online account, pick a start and end date and Voila! – all the transactions within that date range are imported into the transactions bucket of the application and ready to be pulled into a report, as shown below. This process can be automated a 100%

Expense-Report-Credit-Card-Integration

Allocating Transactions

Once this is done, the user can then assign these transactions to different expense types or GL codes. All information supplied by the credit card merchant is available within the transaction, including the meta-data. So each transaction will include the date, amount, vendor, city and additional fields depending on what is supplied by the bank/CC company. The user can also choose to break down transactions in more detail if needed. For example, a hotel transaction imported from a credit card will typically show the total amount. But the user can break it down into Room rate, Tax, Room Service and Laundry by using the sub-amount fields within the application. Remember, ‘More visibility = More Compliance’

Reconciliation of Credit Card Data

Once all the credit card data is available in the system, reconciliation, which normally takes hours or even days becomes very quick & simple too. Within the Gorilla Expense system, the accounting / AP person can quickly run a report by a pay method and filter by specific employees as well. This report can be exported in multiple formats (PDF, Word, Excel) and compared to the credit card data supplied by the bank for a quick analysis. This will quickly tell if the transactions are valid or if any transactions have been missed by the employee. Since reports can be created for specific date ranges, there is no need to wait till month end (when there are typically 15 other bigger issues to take care of!) to do this. The Accounting person can reconcile every day, week or 2 weeks to make it easier to manage.

Other Credit Card File Formats

Besides the standard OFX format discussed above, we support numerous other corporate card file formats as well. A few examples of key formats are – GL1025 from American Express, CDF3 from MasterCard, VCF from VISA, among many others.

The operating mechanism for these is slightly different from the one described above. These files supplied by the credit card merchant typically include credit card data for ALL users within the company. So unlike the mechanism above where users can import transactions themselves, here the Accounting person (or Admin) will use our proprietary utility called ‘Gorilla Integration Manager’ (GIM) to import the data into the system. Once the merchant’s daily credit card feed for the company is available and imported into GIM, it will automatically correlate specific transactions to specific users and push them to the respective user accounts. So the Admin can, for example, push 5000 transactions to the various user accounts in the system with the click of a button!! From there on, the user has to simply pull these transactions into a report and submit!

Hope you find this information to be useful. Contact us for more information or any specific questions we can help with at info@gorillaexpense.com.

Automated Expense Reporting Integration with ERP & Accounting Systems

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In the last few months, we have been receiving inquiries regarding our integration with ERP & Accounting systems in relation to some of the other expense reporting solutions out there. I think the key difference can be summarized as – Full Automation

Most of the other systems out there say that they can ‘integrate’ but what they really mean is that they provide a flat-file that can then be imported into the ERP system. Nothing wrong with this and it may actually work better for some companies. But when we refer to integration, we mean full 100% automated integration, which means – the Accounting person pushes a button and the expenses are available in the ERP system as GL entries or into AP. This makes a huge difference for our customers.

Using our integration manager utility, they are able to pick and choose expense reports they want to send. After that, they click on a button to push the expense data. Simple as that! We have heard from our customers that With this approach, there is lesser chances of errors, much fewer manual steps that need to be taken and it can be performed by anyone in Accounting or AP without any expert training. Plus, the mapping of parameters can be tweaked very easily within the integration manager by the Admin without having to redesign the flat file format. Thus the Accounting folks will have lot more flexibility in how the data is pushed to the ERP or Accounting systems. We guarantee that this approach is 21st century proof! 🙂

So, come take a look at this and some of the other advancements we are making in the expense reporting space. To see a list of some of the systems we integrate with, go to the ‘Advanced Functions’ tab here. If you’d like to learn more or have any questions, as always, send us an email – info@gorillaexpense.com

Three Amigos: NAV2013, Gorilla Expense and The Cloud

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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

Adios!

GP2013 new features and integration with Gorilla Expense

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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:

  1. A rich web client to access information when you need it and on the device of your choice
  2. Improved cloud-deployment model to streamline deploying and managing GP in the cloud
  3. Faster deployment with new “RapidStart” tools that significantly reduce time to configure GP for each customer
  4. 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.

New Feature: Multi-Level Approval

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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!

Benefits of T&E Automation

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Over the last few months we have encountered numerous questions and discussions related to automation of the T&E process; specifically the advantages of automation. Here is a quick background of the challenges and synopsis of the advantages.

Some background

Surveys based on millions of expense reports submitted by 3,000 companies reveal that U.S. T&E costs are constantly rising. The largest increases were in airfare (up 5.7%), hotels (up 4.5%), and meetings (up 7.7%).

With T&E spend accounting for 7% percent of the total budget for the average mid-market company ($50 million to $800 million in revenue), according to recent Aberdeen Group research, the challenge facing CFOs and Controllers in this area is dramatic.

Scope of challenge

Fundamentally, most companies struggle to tackle these challenges because of not knowing where to start. Aberdeen’s 2011 report (Expense Management for a New Decade and The Mid-Market Expense Management Program) shows that:

* 56% of mid-market companies have limited visibility into T&E spending

* Less than 45% track their expenses via analytics and business intelligence in real time

* Only 33% leverage cloud-based expense management solutions and 28% integrate corporate card and expense management

* Just 15% provide T&E data to C-level executives for financial forecasting purposes

* Finally only a mere 6% utilize mobile expense management apps

Solutions for a new decade

The good news is that cloud-based solutions have significantly brought down the cost of automating T&E expense management. Solutions such as ours have been shown to deliver huge reductions in expense processing costs.

What steps to take?

1. Benchmark T&E costs against industry averages

2. Audit expenses against corporate travel policies with an automated expense auditing system

3. Leverage expense data to improve budgeting and forecasting. This data should allow companies to adjust travel policies to match realities and trends

4. Sign up for a cloud-based and mobile expense-management application. For example the up-front costs to get going with our solution is very minimal while being very economical to own

5. Integrate corporate card solutions (if a company has a corporate card program)

More than just cost control

Automating T&E does even more than just reduce costs.

* It makes it harder for employees to inflate expenses — and far easier for companies to detect fraud. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, up to 13% of company fraud arises in this area, so that’s a huge advantage.

* Expense reporting time is reduced and employees are reimbursed faster which is a major boost to morale. Automation results in an average 28% reduction in expense approval times and 27% reduction in employee expense report creation times according to the latest Aberdeen reports.

nefits of T&E Automation

Over the last few months we have encountered numerous questions and discussions related to automation of the T&E process; specifically the advantages of automation. Here is a quick background of the challenges and synopsis of the advantages.

Some background –

Surveys based on millions of expense reports submitted by 3,000 companies reveal that U.S. T&E costs are constantly rising. The largest increases were in airfare (up 5.7%), hotels (up 4.5%), and meetings (up 7.7%).

With T&E spend accounting for 7% percent of the total budget for the average mid-market company ($50 million to $800 million in revenue), according to recent Aberdeen Group research, the challenge facing CFOs and Controllers in this area is dramatic.

Scope of challenge

Fundamentally, most companies struggle to tackle these challenges. Aberdeen’s 2011 report (Expense Management for a New Decade and The Mid-Market Expense Management Program) shows that:

* 56% of mid-market companies have limited visibility into T&E spending

* Less than 45% track their expenses via analytics and business intelligence in real time

* Only 33% leverage cloud-based expense management solutions and 28% integrate corporate card and expense management

* Just 15% provide T&E data to C-level executives for financial forecasting purposes

* Finally only a mere 6% utilize mobile expense management apps

Solutions for a new decade

The good news is that cloud-based solutions have significantly brought down the cost of automating T&E expense management. These new solutions have been shown to deliver a whopping 46% average reduction in expense-processing costs.

What steps to take?

1. Benchmark T&E costs against industry averages

2. Audit expenses against corporate travel policies with an automated expense auditing systems

3. Leverage expense data to improve budgeting and forecasting. This data should allow companies to adjust travel policies to match realities and trends

4. Sign up for cloud-based and mobile expense-management applications. Typically, they don’t have huge up-front costs and are economical to own

5. Integrate corporate card solutions (if a company has a corporate card program)

6. Implement an end-to-end expense management solution

More than just cost control

Automating T&E does even more than reduce costs.

* It makes it harder for employees to inflate expenses — and far easier for companies to detect fraud. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, up to 13% of company fraud arises in this area, so that’s a huge advantage.

* Expense reporting time is reduced and employees are reimbursed faster which is a major boost to morale. Automation results in an average 28% reduction in expense approval times and 27% reduction in employee expense report creation times according to the latest Aberdeen reports

New Feature – Setting Defaults for Transactions

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Gorilla Expense released a new feature where users can set default values to certain transactional fields within the web application. Some of the fields are ‘Country’, ‘Currency Type’, ‘Pay Method’, ‘State’ and ”City’. The goal with this feature is to reduce the hassle of data entry for every user. Plus, if certain non-changing fields are defaulted, the chances of errors are reduced.

This feature is expected to expedite the expense creation process for users. Used in conjunction with our intuitive and simple mobile app, users can expect to compile and submit their expense reports in seconds!

Year End Introspection on Benefits and Value

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As we approach the end of 2011, we have been discussing with our customers about the benefits they have seen from using our system. The feedback we received was plenty and came in several flavors.

Some of our customers loved getting away from the manual systems they used before. Some others loved the mobile app and how it simplified their lives. Others found huge benefits in integrating with their back-end system, which minimized manual work at two places – one at the user level and other at the accounting level.

We found a common theme running through several pages of feedback we received. It is no surprise that this resonated with research published by The Aberdeen Group in 2007.

It all boils down to this – At the end of the day, an expense management system must help a company achieve the following:

Cost reduction: Companies must cut costs associated with the managing of expense reports. With the help of a vendor who knows the game, companies can trim the fat at every step in the lifecycle – creating, submitting, processing, tracking and auditing of expense reports.

Enhance Productivity – By incorporating a system that is user-friendly and intuitive, employee productivity takes a shot in the arm. Using the latest technology, employees spend less time on unbillable work such as expense reports, thereby leaving more time for the important tasks.

Reduce Compliance Risk – Compliance comes in two flavors – internal compliance and government/tax compliance. Internal compliance includes the set up of policies that are lenient in nature, well understood and constantly communicated. Government/Tax compliance includes compliance to Sarbanes-Oxley, receipt capture and expense data as required by the IRS and other regulatory requirements.

Economical to Own – The application must not break the bank. It must be economical for the company to use while providing a modest if not quick ROI.

Seamless Interoperability – The application must be able to seamlessly integrate with the back-end system. Typically, this is less complicated with certain systems such as QuickBooks but can be complex for ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle etc.

Quality Intel – The application must provide access to data that can be used to fine-tune various aspects of the process. Stakeholders should be able to slice and dice the data which should help them take steps that directly improve the bottom-line.

If all of these points can be achieved, the application’s implementation may be considered a success. It is also important to note that the process of selecting and implementing a solution is not linear. There are various dynamic parameters that vary drastically from organization to organization.

We specialize in implementing our application with least disruption to existing processes. We help customers recognize the pertinent level of implementation while evaluating potential risk at every stage. Our expertise in integration with almost every ERP system under the Sun helps customers understand the benefits of going 100% automated.

If you haven’t contacted us yet, lets talk. We can be reached at info AT gorillaexpense.com. We’d love to hear from you and look forward to meeting your requirements.

2011 was great strides and 2012 is going to be greater strides. We are excited!