5 Key Travel and Expense Management Trends That May Impact Your Organization
An efficient and streamlined travel and expense management solution can do wonders for the company. Aside from reducing costs, maintaining budgets, and ensuring compliance, a simple and convenient solution can also boost employee morale. Read more
The Newer and Cooler Mobile App for Expense Reporting
The new updated mobile app from Gorilla Expense brings with it several nifty features. The main goal with these features is to make it easier for travelers to submit expenses, for managers to approve expense reports, and reimbursements to happen faster. Here is a quick look at some of the key features:
OCR – The new and updated OCR makes scanning even faster and spits out the results more accurately. Of course, this feature is more commonly used with out of pocket expenses rather than corporate credit card expenses.
Splitting an Expense – If you have scenarios where expenses need to be split between multiple expense types / GL codes or between different departments or companies, in the latest version of the mobile app, the user can apply splits either ‘By Amount’ or ‘By Percentage’. The actual splitting process is applied via a simple guided wizard type process, so that it is intuitive and easy for the user.
Timesheets – This one is a biggie! If you have also signed up for our timesheet solution, then the user can also create and submit timesheets from the mobile app, making it a one-stop app to get both time and expenses done.
Touch ID – In the latest version the user has the option of enabling touch ID. This way you don’t have to remember any pesky passwords. (Just make sure to bring your finger along with you… Ha!)
With this blurb, we wanted to offer a quick view of some of the new features that have already been released. Stay tuned for more. We are playing with some cool ideas and plan to release more new features in the coming months…..
If you would like to see a live demo or have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].
Gorilla Expense offer an innovate spend management solution for companies of all sizes. The three main components of this solution are T&E Expense Reporting, Timesheets, and P-card Reconciliation.
While the solution is typically deployed as SaaS, Gorilla Expense also supports On-Premise deployments.
New feature: Bulk Edit of Expenses as a Manager
In the latest web version of Gorilla Expense, you will see a Bulk Edit option within the Manager Approval process. While reviewing an expense report, when you click on Edit Report, at the bottom right, you will now see a Bulk Edit button.
Once you click on the Bulk Edit button, it will open up the transactions section of the expense report in an Excel grid format, as shown below. This allows the manager to swiftly make multiple changes from one place.
The manager can easily tab through the cells, make changes as needed and then save them without having to open every single expense. This was one of the top feature requests from our customers and Voila! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach us at [email protected] or you can email the Support team at [email protected]
The Grand Vision: 100% AP Automation
The recent economic downturn, difficult credit situation, and increasing costs have all arrived together. For many companies, this has forced them to take a closer look at their internal processes as they seek ways to cut costs, improve efficiencies and increase bottom lines.
One area we are seeing a lot of interest in is Accounts Payable (AP) automation, with many companies striving to make it 100% automation.
100%-AP-Automation
For these companies, cutting costs associated with the AP process, automating it, making it less time consuming and providing panoramic visibility to decision makers in Finance is a no-brainer. Take the example of Zappos – restructuring their financial processes reduced their month-end closing process by 10 days. For a $1Billion company, that is huge!
So what are some of the key areas that CFOs, Controllers, AP Managers, Purchasing Managers are looking to improve their internal processes with relative ease while contributing to the organization’s overall mission to streamline costs?
Automation is the key to efficiency (and success)
Consider the inefficiencies in a non-automated, manual, paper-based process:
- An Aberdeen Group study found that it can take anywhere from 3.5 to 15 days to process a single invoice. (The industry average for 50% of companies is 11 days to process a single invoice. Yikes!). The cost of processing can range from $5 to $25 for a single invoice
- On the T&E expense report side of things, another Aberdeen report found that it can take anywhere from 3 to 22 days to reconcile and reimburse a expense report. The cost of processing an expense report manually is $35.28 versus $10.75 for companies that have an automated process
- This includes the costs associated with manual processing, shuffling paper between individuals and departments, exceptions processing, missing data/receipts, accrual delays, failed audits, duplicates, and late payment fees
On the other hand, the efficiencies gained by automating these AP processes produce results that are definitely dramatic. These include a:
- 92-96% reduction in paperwork
- Greater than 29% improvement in labor productivity
Another way to look at this comparison is even if you have dedicated data entry staff and devices to help with managing the manual process, you can typically process 1,000 documents (invoices & expense reports) a month per full-time employee (FTE). By contrast, automated and rules-based matching increases that number to 6,500-9,000 documents a month per FTE.
Conclusion: Automation not only brings significant efficiencies to the AP process, but also helps grow the business with existing staff. Basically, you can do more with less.
Control – at your fingertips
By automating as much of the AP process as possible, you get greater control and better visibility into spend. And this applies to invoices and expenses. While rules, routing, policies can be configured to unique company configurations, the biggest advantage is being able to review spend on an expense report or invoice in a timely manner. Not having to review every single transaction means there is more time to focus on important violations that require attention.
Automating the process also captures the document and additional data so that AP Managers have full visibility into the process. No more expense receipts or invoices hiding on individual desks. AP and Finance can now maintain a more real-time view of their corporate spend at any point in time, thereby providing more control.
Conclusion: Automation results in greater, not less, control over your internal Accounts Payable process.
But what if this is too expensive
There are many solutions that offer end-to-end AP automation using the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model that require no upfront purchases. Choosing an AP solution that is offered as a service allows the company to truly pay-as-they-go! And with a typical SaaS model, the company can expect periodic upgrades and new features that add more value. This means companies can now reach their ROI much faster than before.
Conclusion: Automating the Accounts Payable process is more than ever available to a wider range of budgets.
Does company size matter?
Cloud-based solutions coupled with a SaaS business model offer a very low marginal cost to get started. With economies of scale and best practices, everyone benefits from automation. And, as discussed earlier, automation enables AP to focus on more strategic activities, such as, sourcing, reporting, spend analytics and vendor management.
Conclusion: Even small companies can save significant $$. Some research reports suggest annual savings can range from 4 to 17% of annual spend. Even for a small company, that can be big bucks!
How can analytics help?
Imagine now, you have all of this automation and data at your fingertips. How about a quick report on outstanding invoices for vendor ABC, LLC? How about a ‘spend to-date’ report on the AMEX corp. card for T&E expenses? Being able to massage the data and use it to arrive at meaningful conclusions is the key aspect of Analytics and Reporting modules. Providing such data to decision makers like AP Managers or CFOs provides tremendous value for the company to plan better, conserve money and be very strategic about growth. Several cloud-based solutions for Invoices & Expenses provide out of the box reporting and analytics that companies should definitely consider and incorporate.
Conclusion: With the amount of data churned out today, intelligent analytics is really a no-brainer. Smart companies utilize this data, make sense out of it and provide it to decision makers to really boost growth or drastically cut costs for companies. By paying attention to this, companies can put money back in their pockets.
Summary
It is very obvious to see that the benefits of AP automation are huge and cannot be ignored for the typical 21st century company. Let’s take a quick look at them again:
- Huge labor savings across the company
- Efficiency boost while processing Invoices & Expenses
- Reduced delays
- Improved transparency
- Panoramic visibility for decision makers
Whether the architecture is cloud-based and delivered as SaaS or an On-Premise Hosted solution, the move will get a company closer to becoming paperless. Automating and streamlining Invoices & Expenses will also provide a secure and serviceable archive for data.
Finally, process improvements can be realized in days, rather than months, resulting in a rapid ROI. This will leave the company with an end-to-end 100% automated AP solution that increases compliance, cuts costs, and reduces cycle times.
Now that’s a grand vision. But very much achievable!
Come See Innovation in Expense Management at Microsoft Convergence 2015
Convergence 2015, Booth # 1354
Microsoft Convergence 2015 is around the corner (3/16 to 3/19) and Gorilla Expense is excited to share several new features and updates for our T&E expense reporting solution. We will be doing live demos at booth # 1354. So come by, grab a seat and let’s chat!
Here is a quick recap of some of the new features:
- The new ‘never get in front of a computer’ mobile app
- Automated integration with Project module in Dynamics GP
- Do mileage expenses with integrated Google maps
- Ability to include multiple Dynamics NAV Dimensions
- The ‘FWD and forget’ email feature
- Advanced cost center allocation capability (split expenses across multiple companies, business units and cost categories)
- Plus several other additions and updates
We also have a secret new product launch at Convergence 2015 which will make (hint hint) expense reconciliation for AP a breeze! That is all we can say at this time. But come meet us at Convergence and learn more.
We look forward to meeting y’all in ATL! Follow us on Twitter: @GorillaExpense #CONV for the latest updates.
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Sincerely,
The Gorilla Expense Team
Dynamics GP Credit Card Integration
Gorilla Expense offers a robust and fully automated integration of credit card data into Dynamics GP. This is available for GP10, GP2010 and GP2013. Using our proprietary Gorilla Expense Integration App, the AP Manager can import credit card transactions (or the App can do it automatically), auto-categorize the transactions to specific expense types/cost categories using our mapping algorithm and then send the data to GP with a click of a button. Any relevant information supplied by the credit card company in the data file can also be referenced in the ‘Memo’ field in GP, within Payables > Distributions.
The advantages that the Gorilla Integration App offers are:
* Send credit card data to GP through automation
* Complete visibility of credit card expenses in GP
* Prevent duplicate expenses in GP
* Improve the reconciliation process through reporting and analytics within Gorilla Expense
* Eliminate time consuming manual work of keying in data
Gorilla Expense supports integration with all the major credit card companies – AMEX, VISA and MasterCard and their various file formats. The flavors of credit cards that we support range from the standard Corporate Credit Card for T&E Expenses to Purchase Cards or P-Cards for making purchases on behalf of the employer.
Here is how the process works:
Step 1> The AP Manager opens the Gorilla Integration App and logs in as the Admin. Here we have selected GP2013 as the system to send the data to. The Integration App is typically accessed by the Admin user (belongs to Accounting/AP/IT etc.) in a company.
Logging into Integration App as Admin
Step 2> Once logged in we want to select and import the credit card file supplied by the card provider that is typically downloaded by the Admin on a weekly or monthly basis. In this example, we are using a file supplied by our AMEX corporate card on a monthly basis. The following screenshot shows how the Admin can select the respective card and its format.
Selecting the card and format
**Note: Depending on how the credit card program is setup and services offered by the card provider, Step 2 can be fully automated with no human intervention. In that case, the Gorilla Integration App will automatically ‘pick up’ and import the latest file supplied by the card provider from an FTP site. AMEX typically enables this offering by default for all their corporate card and P-card programs and Gorilla Expense supports this approach**
In the screenshot below, the admin has selected the AMEX file – ‘Transactions.csv’ for import. The file was downloaded from our online AMEX account.
Selecting the file downloaded from the AMEX website
Step 3> Once the file is selected, the Integration App automatically associates the expense type and vendor using our mapping algorithm as shown in the screenshot below. This makes the transactions complete and no manual work is need to categorize the transactions.
Auto-allocation of expense type and vendor
Step 4> The Admin can now select all transactions or select specific transactions to import into the system and send to GP. The screenshot below shows that two transactions were selected to send to GP. Out of the two, only the one shaded in Green was sent. The transaction shaded in Yellow was already submitted earlier and is highlighted as a duplicate transaction. The Gorilla Integration App prevents duplicate transactions from being sent to GP by using the ‘Unique Identifier’ number supplied by the credit card as part of their file. This a is a powerful feature that saves AP Managers lots of time in checking for duplicates and also makes the reconciliation process easier.
Import transactions and prevent duplicates
Step 5> Once all the transactions are imported into the Gorilla application, they are dragged and dropped into a batch and send to GP through automation using the same Integration App. The transactions show up as invoices within a batch called ‘GORILLA’. Depending on the payment method defined in the Gorilla application, the invoices are created to pay the employee or the corporate credit card.
In this example, our AMEX card has the payment method defined as AMEX which is tied to the ‘AMEX’ Vendor ID defined in GP. Here are a couple of screenshots that show the expense data in GP > Payables.
Invoice in Payables
When Distributions is opened, the details from the transactions, namely the vendor and the report number are also made available to provide additional visibility for the CFO / accounting manager and to make it easier to search for expense data in GP.
Distributions in GP
This explains how credit card data can be integrated into GP using the Gorilla Expense Integration App. The App is very flexible in allowing credit card data from multiple cards and various formats to be imported into the system. If you would like to see a live demo of the App or have any additional questions, please contact us at [email protected]
New Feature: FWD Receipts Over Email
On the heels of our recent and popular ‘track mileage expenses with Google maps integration’ feature we have come out with another zinger of a feature (currently in beta mode). This is the ReceiptFWD feature that is available on the web application AND on our mobile app (in the Email tab).
Let’s discuss the current challenge:
Users receive receipts in emails from Airline or Hotel vendors that they have to download and then attach -OR- have to save the email as a PDF and attach it to the expense transaction
Our solution:
Our new email feature (in beta mode) allows users to FWD an email that has a single PDF receipt attachment to a fixed email account (example: [email protected]). If there is an attachment in the email, the application will automatically insert that into the receipt box within Gorilla Expense.
The user can also enter keywords in the body of the email (like: ‘Expense Type Meals’, ‘Total $200’) and the application will enter those values in the expense transaction within Gorilla Expense. This way when the user logs in to the application, the transaction in complete. See below for an email example, where the user is FWDing an email with a PDF receipt and has inserted keywords for the application to complete the transaction.
Painless-Receipt-Scanning-and-Expense-Tracking
If the email does not have a PDF receipt attached and if the email itself functions as a receipt, then the user simple needs to FWD the email for the application to create a PDF of the body of the email and attach it to the receipt box in Gorilla Expense. Similar to above, the user can use keywords to fill in the other details of the transaction. This is especially useful since many airline companies no longer provide attachments. Below is an example of a user FWDing the email itself.
Submit-receipts-and-expenses-using-email
The benefit of this feature is that solves the pain of having to manage expense related data that can come in from another source, namely email. We expect this to make traveler’s lives a lot easier.
So, the next time you get ready to do your expense report, these transactions along with receipts are waiting in the mobile app or the web app, ready to be dropped into an expense report. Click – Click – 4 seconds and your expense report is done!
As always we love hearing from you. If you have any questions, we are here – [email protected]
Gorilla Expense – Our Story
We get asked about ‘our story’ at different times by different folks – customers, prospects, partners, new employees and even competitors! What is our story? Why are we doing this? Why now? Well, it is very simple:
Our team has been in the Travel + Expense Reporting space for many years with a combined experience of several decades. The backgrounds of our management team comes from working with / implementing / developing other T&E expense reporting systems like Concur, SAP, Oracle’s iExpense and other Goliaths in the past.
These are large companies with big legacy systems. And we fully understand what works and what doesn’t work with the solutions provided by these companies, which not only includes products but also support.
Learning from the mistakes of our competitors, we wanted to offer a solution that was nimble yet powerful in being able to handle all requirements ranging from a 20 user application to one used by our large multi-national customers. (And this caught the attention of Microsoft for their Dynamics ERP product line, when they sponsored us to attend DEMO – read more here)
But our focus is more than just the product – we also pride ourselves in providing exceptional support, where our competitors don’t do the best job. Every customer that signs up with us becomes THE customer for us while they may be A customer for our competitors, which is a big difference.
Our customers don’t just subscribe to our solution or buy our products – they approach us for advice and guidance to solve their challenges with expense reporting and support our mission. And we love solving their problems while putting a smile on the faces of their Travelers and Finance teams.
So, that’s our raison d’etre. As far as we know the T&E pain point hasn’t been solved yet. And that’s why we are here today – to finally fix it for customers like you and have fun while doing it! Hope you enjoyed this post and thanks for your support….
Different Flavors of T&E Expense Integration with Dynamics GP – Series (Intro)
Dynamics-GP-Expense-Tracking
As we all know Dynamics GP provides an organization with solid agility and flexibility in meeting their business needs today and also into the future. With such flexibility, comes the ability to configure GP in many different ways to meet unique requirements of the organization – and this extends to expense reporting as well.
Gorilla Expense offers a fully automated and seamless integration with GP. We refer to this as ‘1-click’ integration’. We do this by using web services and eConnect, depending on the customer’s preference. While we can do a flat-file based integration, our customers love the way our integration app sends the data from several expense reports to GP with just a click! When it comes to expense reporting, there are multiple ways to integrate the data from our system to GP. In this series, we will be exploring the different flavors of our integration with GP.
Integration with Payables in GP – Series (1 of 3)
This is the standard and most common format of our integration with GP. Here, we send the expense data as a Payable Transaction Entry within the Purchasing module in GP. Expenses sent from our system will show up as invoices. Depending on the payment method defined in our system and the setup of vendors, the invoice will be issued for the employee or the corporate credit card.
Integration with Project Accounting in GP – Series (2 of 3)
Here, we send the expense data from our system to the Project Accounting module in GP, where expenses will be captured against different cost categories and tied to specific open projects. The project workflow is also mapped within our system such that the respective project owner(s) will be approving the expense reports before they are sent to GP.
Integration with Receivings in GP – Series (3 of 3)
Here, we will send the data as a Receivings Transaction Entry within the Purchasing module. The expenses are allocated to different cost categories and the PO number is referenced. Since these expenses will show up as Receivables once posted, this integration is used when the customer is planning to bill back their clients. The customer name /PO number is referenced in our application so that the expenses are tied to it.
Besides these, we can also configure our Integration App to do other forms of integration as needed. In the next article, we will showcase our integration with Payables in GP. Stay tuned!