Five Benefits of Mobile ERP Expense Reporting



The manual process of expense reporting is a thing of the past. In its place stands ERP software with mobile functionality that facilitates efficient and accurate expense reporting via smartphones and tablets. Mobile expense reporting is more than a trendy discussion topic among industry experts – it’s quickly becoming a reality for thousands of organizations.

From expense capture to expense approval, mobile ERP software automates and improves the entire process of expense reporting. Following are five reasons organizations are turning to this new technology (and saying goodbye to traditional ERP systems without it):
1.    To Better Analyze Spending. Mobile ERP systems can aggregate spending into categories based on project, customer, employee and department. When expenses are categorized, travel and entertainment spending becomes easier to analyze which enables smoother negotiation with vendors when asking for discounts.

2.    To Enforce Expense Policies. When an employee violates a company expense policy, the mobile ERP system will send out an alert to management. This feature helps hold employees accountable and encourages responsible spending.

3.    To Eliminate Human Error. The majority of employees’ travel expenses are credit card purchases so it makes sense to look for an ERP solution to automate this process and save employees time and hassle. After downloading the appropriate app, employees can use their smartphones to take pictures of receipts and automatically upload them to the main ERP system.

4.    To Give Employees Mobile Flexibility. Using smartphones to capture digital photos of receipts gives employees more flexibility to record expenses as they occur. Mobile expense reporting also gives managers the freedom to approve reports on-the-go without having to be at the office.

5.    To Quickly Reconcile Credit Card Charges. Mobile ERP systems can drastically reduce the turnaround time for expense reconciliation. Because auditors do not have to spend time deciphering handwritten, hard-to-read reports, employees can be reimbursed more quickly for out-of-pocket expenses.

While mobile ERP software can provide many benefits to an organization, it’s not the right choice for every company. It’s important to assess the business value it could bring to your organization in particular. One of the main reasons organizations are turning to mobile ERP is to keep up with the changing preferences of end-users. Ultimately, there’s one question to ask: Will end-users be willing and eager to use mobile ERP? If not, your organization may need to create an organizational change management plan before beginning an ERP implementation involving mobile technology.


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