To make better, more strategic financial decisions, your organization must know what’s in the bank right now and what’s going to hit the ledgers soon.

Getting a handle on spending can be challenging, especially if your organization uses manual processes, spreadsheets, and semi-automated systems that provide an incomplete and outdated picture of where the dollars are.

Here are just a few ways spending goes astray and bogs organizations down in tedious tasks:

• Travel Expenses: Employees that travel on business and hang on to receipts delay submitting expense reports because the process is time-consuming. As a result, the organization doesn’t know the total cost of those travel expenses until weeks after they occur.
• Accounts Payable Invoices: It takes an estimated 11 days1 to get sign-off approval for a vendor invoice payment from time of receipt. With invoices that are received by paper and over email, the whole process can be slower than it needs to be. And without a system to track the spending throughout the process, the accounting team doesn’t have a clear, accurate view of overall spending.
• Overall Processing Time: As for accounting and finance team members, they each spend an estimated 14 hours2 a week processing expenses and another 13 hours3 handling vendor invoices. With that amount of time punching details into spreadsheets, fewer hours are left for the value-adding work your county needs and team members want.

These are examples where a more automated finance process would help reduce time spent on manual work and increase control over compliance, giving you the clarity needed to make decisions and seize opportunities.

Capture spending early on

The inherent challenge with manual processes is that the clear view of spending they provide often comes too late to make sound organizational decisions. Spreadsheets and paper forms also can trap information in silos instead of making it available to eyes across the organization that need it.

As organizations grow, so does the paper trail – making the process even more challenging. Automated expense and invoice solutions, on the other hand, can scale up as your county grows.

One way to gather spending numbers earlier in the process is a central portal for submitting vendor invoices. Additionally, using a purchase order process lets you know spending is coming before it hits your books.

On the expense side, a mobile app can reduce the spending-data lag by letting employees snap pictures of receipts and automatically adding the expense to an expense report. At that point, you know what expenses are coming and aren’t waiting on employees who are slow to file reports. The employees, too, will appreciate not having to tote around piles of receipts.

Cut errors and fraud risk

Mistakes occur when you combine people, paper, and manual data entry.

Cutting and pasting details between receipts, forms, and spreadsheets is a time-consuming task prone to error, whether by the traveling employee or a member of the accounting staff. On the AP side, duplicate invoices can be another recurring problem.

Manual processes carry another risk beyond simple error: the potential for fraud, whether it’s fudging on mileage or faking invoices for goods or services never received.

Automation solutions that incorporate intelligent technology can detect overstated, non-compliant or phony expenses and close the gaps in processes that can foster unintentional error or potential fraud. They can spot invoices that came from unrecognized suppliers or didn’t match purchase orders or use a built-in mileage tracker to accurately measures mileage expenses.

*Separate callout* Interested in learning more about how automation can bring control to your AP spend? Take a look at our tip sheet, 7 Essentials for Bringing Control & Compliance to Unmanaged Spend.

Make better decisions with holistic data

Automated spending processes bring visibility and unity to data currently hidden on paper or amid disconnected systems across the county.

By gathering data from multiple sources into a single platform, you and others who need to can see spending no matter where or when it occurs. With data presented in an easy-to-use format, you can identify areas to cut costs, highlight risks, and negotiate discounts with suppliers.

With the assistance of automation, your finance team can be confident in the spending numbers and insights they can see and share. And your county will gain the visibility it needs to make critical spending decisions.

Automating and controlling spending

Regardless of where you’re at in your automation journey, it’s important to continue moving forward so you can keep up with the status quo and fuel future growth. For additional insights into controlling spend with SAP® Concur® solutions, check out the Top Five Ways to Improve Control Over Spend eBook, or visit the SAP Concur partner page at the National Association of Counties.

Ready to see what SAP Concur solutions can do for your county? Visit our solutions for State and Local Governments page.

1, 2, 3. Source: Analysys Mason 2022, Travel, Expense, and Vendor Invoice Management Study