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How to Find the Right Expense Tracking Software for Your Business

Business expense tracking software solutions have eliminated the manual hassle of monitoring expenses in many offices. That’s because they are fast, efficient and will actually save you a lot of money and time.

So, what exactly is business expense tracking software?

Well, business expense tracking software is nothing but a cloud based solution with tools for your employees and management to record, report and approve business expenses. You can access all business expenses through a platform, and process reimbursements for your employees.

Such software will automatically generate expense reports for you and streamline the entire business expense processing exercise.

But, how do you find the right business expense tracking software for your business?

There are a few simple things you should look for in such software:

1. Generate per diem expense reports
2. Automated expense reports
3. Policy compliance
4. Cross platform access and Integrations

1. Generate per diem expense reports
Every country will have different per diem policies. For instance, the IRS in the United States has issues certain guidelines to be maintained for expense reports. Per diem expense reports require receipts of meals, lodging, purpose of trips, location and dates.

So, the business expense tracking software that you choose should include federal government guidelines and the subsequent rates.

You should go for the best expense management software that allows you to upload IRS regulations according to your state and county. These are then generally automatically applied to receipts, and you are notified if any expense receipt submitted by your employees doesn’t follow the guidelines.

This streamlines the business expense tracking process, and simplifies it according to your business and its guidelines.

Also Read: Why Your Small Business Needs Time Tracking Software

2. Automated expense reports
This is something you must look for in any good business expense tracking software. Usually, the management in any office spends hours approving expense reports filed by employees. However, with expense tracking software, it becomes exceedingly easy to approve such reports.

Most free business expense trackers will also allow you to automate the approving system. Automatic submissions for business expenses from employees is a must have feature as well. And with the right software, you can set up rules for automatic approvals.

Auto submissions and auto approvals make business expense tracking software a complete bag of goodies. Workflow automations make the process of expense tracking time-saving and efficient. That’s because, the management and employees don’t have to go through countless Excel sheets anymore.

3. Policy Compliance
Just like per diem expense reports have to follow some legal guidelines, every expense also needs to follow a policy. This means, not every expense counts as a business expense, as a lot of these might be personal expenses that employees tend to club. Although, it might seem harmless, but business expenses are subject to legal bindings.

Therefore, the best expense management software will always have a powerful policy checking feature. This ensures that within every expense receipt, there is no room of discrepancy. And admin gets notified every time an employee files in an expense.

Expense tracking software will auto flag receipts that are non compliant and depending on the severity of the violation, send alerts. This is a must have feature for businesses that struggle to analyze expense receipts.

Also Read: 3 Steps for Tracking Your Business Monthly Expenses

4. Cross Platform Access and Integrations
Any business expense tracking software will work within the framework of your operations. Starting from how you are collecting the data in your business, to how the invoicing is processed, the tracking software should fit your business model well.

So, if you would like to do business on the fly, it is important that you have access to the said business expense tracking software from every platform, including mobile and desktop. This will help when expenses need to be filed and reviewed on the go. Also, the best expense management software should integrate with your invoicing channel with process expense receipts, to make sure that you are not filing duplicate data on multiple software solutions.

Find Out Whether an Invoice is Same as Bill

Whether an invoice is same as a bill is something many business owners and companies are confused about. Invoice and bill are not synonymous terms, and are not even interchangeable. However, the difference between bill and invoice is not a night and day difference. Bills and invoices are generally documents that somewhat convey a similar information. Still, they are not the same.
When you are generating an invoice, it is more like a request of payment for the services that you provided to your client. The same transaction when viewed by your client will be looked upon as a bill. The bill to invoice meaning finds its roots at the client’s end. So, it is all about perspective.

Let’s dive in and take a deeper look into the difference between invoice and billing statement. Also, find out how invoicing software and billing software function.

Bill and Invoice definition
Let’s start with the basics.
Now that you have a general idea of both bills and invoices, let’s look at what they exactly are.

Also Read: Important Key Aspect of Every Billing Software

What is a bill?
A bill is a transactional document produced by the consumer for personal records as an informational account of what they need to pay.
It is generated or issued before making out the payment for the services. The consumer uses the said bill as a matter of their record. And a bill is generated after receiving an invoice for the services or products the consumer consumed.

Bills generally act as a reminder for the consumer or client for what they owe to a client.

What is an invoice?
An invoice is a transactional document produced by a business towards a client requesting payment for the listed services they provided.

An invoice is generated post the completion of services or on a recurring basis as per the contract. An invoice generated before providing services is known as an estimate.

Invoices outline the exact nature of services, the due date for payment and banking information as a means of requesting payment. It is produced by the business and sent out to the client. It is maintained in the record of the business.

Difference between Invoice and Billing Statement
So, it should be clear by now that the difference between bill and invoice is more to do with perspective than anything else. An invoice will be produced at the business’ end to convey information about services provided, due date etc.

An invoice is received by the consumer or client as a bill. A consumer might also regenerate the bill using this invoice to serve their operations appropriately. This means they will change the format. Basically, the difference between bill and invoice is simply about who you are in the transaction.

And remember that a receipt is issued post payment, as a proof of payment, by the business towards the client.

Also Read: How to Create and Send Beautiful Invoices to Your Clients

Invoicing Software and Billing software
Surprisingly, both invoicing software and billing software pretty much mean the same thing. Such software manages invoices and bills, and many more things involved in a business transaction.

Any business will act as a provider and a consumer during different transactions. So, any invoicing software or billing software will manage and create outgoing invoices and incoming bills as well.
These software solutions take into consideration the various elements of multiple things, and only in the context of such software can the terms “billing” and “invoicing” be used interchangeably. This is because any invoicing software will include billing nuances as well. I.e., it will automatically send out an invoice to the client which will be looked upon as a bill from the client’s side.

Further, such software will accept payments on the generated invoice, from the client’s side, where the same invoice will be looked upon as a bill.

So, now you know the subtle difference between a bill and an invoice, which will hopefully help you operate your business more efficiently.

Top 4 Surprising Benefits of Tracking Your Business Expenses

Business owners often tend to forget their monthly expenses, as they have a lot on their plate at any given time. Most of you probably forget to file your business expenses too, and never get the reimbursements you deserve. However, there are a few reasons why you absolutely need to know how to track business expenses.

Benefits of tracking your expenses are endless
Plus, by using a business expense tracking software, you can actually improve the way you spend your business budget. Hence, the best way to track business expenses is by embracing technology. That’s because, even when businesses delegate the expense tracking task to employees, they lose money due to incorrect filing or processing by employees. So, what to do?

Use a business tracking software to track expenses smartly
Business expense tracking, when done right, can give you the following benefits:

1. Keep Projects under the Budget
2. Quick Profit Estimation
3. On time Approvals
4. Understanding Spending Habits

1. Keep Projects Under Budget
Once the ball starts rolling for a project, it can easily get out of hand. To keep your projects strictly under budget, you need to know the best way to track business expenses. For this, specifically in budgeting, look at a few important things:

Also Read: 3 Steps for Tracking Your Business Monthly Expenses

• Budget Source
Where is your budget actually coming from? Is the client providing for the project beforehand or will you have to file an invoice later? By using a business expense tracking software, you can set up a maximum limit when sourcing from the client. And use tracking to maintain a gap between the estimate and expenditure.

• Fixed Expenses
You can directly allocate such expenses through your business expense tracking software to maintain transparency in your spending.

• Variable Expenses
Variable expenses are why you urgently need to track business expenses. Set specific limits to the type of variable expenses. And use a business expense tracking software with an alert system to track variable expenses.

By keeping these few types of expenses in control, you will be able to stick to your budget.

2. Quick Profit Estimation
Your profit is nothing but the expenses deducted from your revenue. After all, the purpose of running a business is to make it profitable, right? And you can now track business expenses free of cost and use it to generate a healthy profitability graph. Here’s how.

Well, tracking business expenses will keep you in touch with accurate expenditure records. This means, no more digging into old databases to find out where you spent what. With daily business expense tracking, you can actually make accurate estimates about your spending behavior for that particular project. And hence, determine your overall profit.

3. Be Tax Season Ready
Most businesses struggle during the tax season, trying to somehow maintain a good record. Business expense tracking will help you create meticulous records on the fly. And that’s simply because tracking software can record every transaction.

In other words, all expenses, ranging from a cup of coffee to the latest laser printer you bought, everything will be on record under a single tracking module. And many expenses are tax deductible too, like coffee, lunches, rent, office supplies and travel expense. Saving money via taxes is one of the biggest benefits of tracking your expenses.

Also Read: Software for Tracking Income & Expenses for a Personal Business – The top 7

4. Understanding Spending Habits
Your employees are working hard to achieve your business goals. And for this, you allow them a certain set of expenses, on your account. By tracking expenses daily, you can actually understand and manage the money you spend on them better. How?

Well, simply because a business expense tracking software records every transaction. And managers get notified to approve expenses instantly. Using this data and simple analytics, you can make better expenditure decisions. For instance, you can take a look at your recurring expenses and control whatever is unnecessary.

All in all, tracking your business expenses has plenty of benefits and it’s time you make the most of such software that makes the process easy and flawless.