A mid-sized organization has its share of challenges especially in this era of technology and globalization. Particularly in business travel and expense management, finance managers in these organizations can find several pain points that eventually trickle its way to company operations, and finally the bottom line. Therefore, it goes without saying that an effective expense management tool is necessary for any organization if they want to succeed in what they do and find this success reflected in their financials.
There is always room for improvement when it comes to anything, and so, you’re probably reading this because you want to improve the current expense management system and processes you have.
So before shopping and procuring an expense management software, you have to look at the specific requirements of your organization. What does the day to day operations look like from an expense standpoint? Is the software going to scale and adapt to your needs? Do you deal with international travel and booking that needs to be addressed? Does your business use corporate credit cards?
Now that you have figured out your unique requirements, you have a better idea of what to look for to make your expense management so much more efficient. Take a look at these expense management software must-haves:
Corporate credit card integration. This avoids corporate credit card expenses from slipping through the cracks, which can cost the company a lot in the long run. The software should be able to automatically import corporate card expenses and provide to the user for reconciliation.
Mobile apps for Real-time tracking. Today’s technology makes it easy to capture receipts with just a click of a smartphone camera. This should be a standard feature of your software, in addition to easy mileage tracking using maps. If there is OCR in the mobile app, that would be a bonus!
Real-time reporting. Time is money, and reports should be easy to create and submit without any delay. The software must be able to organize reports while providing a clear picture of T&E spend, which helps with improved visibility for the organization.
Timely reimbursements. Reimbursements must occur in a timely manner, and automation plays a big part in this. The software should be able to support reimbursements either via payroll or through the ERP/Accounting system. It also helps to have automatic notifications and reminders for employees to submit their receipts to move things along.
Easy Accounting system integration. The software must seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Dynamics ERP so that all the data can be automatically pushed into Dynamics and reconciled. This also avoids manual work, duplications and redundancy, while making the finance team’s lives much more efficient.
Customer support. You should be able to easily implement your system, with solid adoption amongst your employees. If there are any issues, the software vendor must be able to address these promptly and thoroughly.
As you can see, there is not really one perfect solution that it comes down to. The best solution out there is really the one that works best for your company and your needs.
It is also important to understand how the expense management solution can configured to fit your organization. And there is where Gorilla Expense comes in. Gorilla Expense can accommodate various expense management needs, and we specialize in integrating the data into Microsoft Dynamics ERP. We work with various customers across the world and across myriad industries.
If you would like to see a live demo of the solution or have any questions, please contact us at sales@gorillaexpense.com
Gorilla Expense’s philosophy is ‘No More Hassle with Expense Reports & Reimbursements!’
With Gorilla Expense, companies can make the expense reporting process super simple, realize savings through automation and gain 100% visibility into corporate spend.
Gorilla Expense was selected from several companies and sponsored by Microsoft to showcase innovation in T&E expense reporting at the DEMO Conference.
Key Customer Benefits:
Choose between a SaaS (Subscription) model OR On-Premise Licensed-to-Own model
Use our OCR enabled mobile app to automatically extract data from receipts
Submit mileage related expenses accurately through our Google Maps integration
Automatically download AMEX, VISA & MasterCard Corporate Credit Card data
Gain 100% visibility with expenses using our Analytics & Reporting module
Besides our core T&E Expense Reporting product, Gorilla Expense has also recently launched a new Timesheet product for Time & Expense capture as well as a very cool Purchase Card Reconciliation product for Microsoft Dynamics NAV that fit into our overall vision of creating the premier ‘Spend Management Platform’ for companies.
Contact us to learn more, discuss how we can help solve your challenges, and schedule a live demo of our solution.
Gorilla Expense offers a robust and fully automated integration of credit card data into Dynamics NAV. This is available for all versions of NAV. Using our proprietary Gorilla Expense Integration App, the AP Manager can import credit card transactions (or the App can do it 100% automatically), auto-categorize the transactions to specific expense types/cost categories using our mapping algorithm and then send the data to Navision with a click of a button!
Typically the data is sent to the Purchase Journals in NAV (video of integrating expenses to Purchase Journals) so that an invoice is created to pay the credit card company. But we can also send the data to the General Journals (video of integrating expenses to General Journals) as well as Purchase Invoice screen (Visit our main Expense Reporting for Dynamics NAV page for more details). Any relevant information supplied by the credit card company in the data file can also be referenced in the ‘Description’ field within the Journals or Purchase Invoice Lines in NAV.
The advantages that the Gorilla Integration App offers are:
* Send credit card data to NAV through automation
* Complete visibility of credit card expenses in NAV
* Prevent duplicate expenses in NAV
* 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 NAV 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 NAV. The screenshot below shows that two transactions were selected to send to NAV. 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 NAV 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 NAV 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 ‘American Express’ Vendor ID defined in NAV. Here is a screenshot that show the expense data in Purchase Journals in NAV.
Expenses in Purchase Journals
All the details from the credit card transaction, 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 NAV.
This explains how credit card data can be integrated into NAV 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 info@gorillaexpense.com
Within the Gorilla Expense application, when users create travel expenses, depending on their location additional tax reclaim fields can be enabled and the data can be sent to Dynamics NAV. We provide a total of 4 sub-amount fields in the application. These sub-amounts can also be configured differently to Add-to the value entered in the Transaction Amount.
For our Canadian customers (or customers with users that travel to Canada), the frequently used fields are GST, PST and HST. The user can enter amounts for these fields within the transaction from the receipt, and of course, also attach the receipt. For our European customers, these are the different flavors of VATs, based on the country.
Shown below, as an example, is a completed transaction with the tax values entered for a Canadian customer:
Canadian-tax-reclaim-fields
The Gorilla Expense integration app, which automates the integration between our web application and Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 and above can send the amounts listed in these fields directly to Dynamics NAV with the click of a button.
If the company has different GL codes associated with each of these fields, then those can be setup in the integration app as well. Once done, our integration app will post amounts in the specific fields to the respective GL code(s). Once the data is sent to NAV, then the accounting manager can reconcile it and issue a cumulative report from within NAV for reclaim from the government. This report will usually include the total reclaim amount based on expenses submitted by all users. Typically, the taxation rules are setup in NAV since the tax rates can vary based on province and as the ERP system, it makes sense for NAV to manage that complexity.
To learn more, discuss your requirements and view this travel expense integration with NAV in detail, send an email to info@gorillaexpense.com. We always love hearing from you!
