Breaking The Cycle Of Manual Expense Tracking
A Smarter, Automated Approach
Expense tracking has long been a pain point for both employees and organizations. Despite advances in financial technology, many firms still rely on manual or semi-manual processes to review, reconcile, and reimburse employee expenses. This consumes valuable time, increases the potential for errors, and creates frustration across the business.
Many of the challenges compliance teams face stem from fragmented processes and limited visibility. Without access to real-time data, teams struggle to identify potential breaches in spending thresholds before they occur. Managing expenses and reconciliations across multiple systems makes it difficult to maintain a single, accurate source of truth, often leading to incomplete records and weak audit trails. Compliance officers also spend valuable time correcting discrepancies that employees could easily resolve themselves, adding unnecessary administrative work. Manual data entry and spreadsheet comparisons further drain efficiency and increase the risk of human error.
In contrast, firms that automate expense tracking from start to finish typically see significant reductions in processing time and cost, while improving accuracy and control. Automation enables faster reimbursements, reduces the risk of fraud, and allows employees and compliance teams to focus on higher-value work.
The Power of Automation
Automation offers a clear path forward. By integrating expense systems with compliance software, like StarCompliance, firms can eliminate manual steps, accelerate approvals, and ensure that every dollar is properly accounted for.
Automation doesn’t just improve efficiency; it strengthens compliance. Rules-based systems automatically flag discrepancies in amount, recipient, or policy alignment, ensuring that potential errors or policy breaches are reviewed and corrected in real time. With complete audit trails and scheduled reminders, organizations can maintain transparency while easing the workload on compliance teams.
StarCompliance and SAP Concur: A New Era of Expense Tracking
To help firms overcome these challenges, Star recently announced its Expense Tracking Connector — an integration with Concur® Expense, now available in the SAP Concur App Center. This new capability brings automation, accuracy, and oversight to the forefront of expense management, connecting financial and compliance processes in one streamlined platform.
Tips for Modernizing Expense Tracking
- Automate Expense Matching: Integrate your expense system with a compliance platform to automatically import and match reported expenses to declarations—saving time and reducing manual review.
- Address Discrepancies Early: Use automation to flag data discrepancies in amount, recipient, or venue between the expense and the pre-cleared declaration, allowing quick review and correction.
- Centralize Your Data: Eliminate the need to download and review data from multiple systems and across multiple spreadsheets. This not only saves time but also improves accuracy and visibility across employee expenses.
- Leverage Alerts: Use automated email alerts and in-app messaging to improve communication between compliance teams and employees, ensuring faster responses, greater accountability, and stronger collaboration.
- Utilize Audit Trails: Systematically capture matches, discrepancies, and compliance notes to maintain complete and accurate gifts and hospitality records, ensuring a transparent and reliable audit trail.
The burden of expense tracking doesn’t have to be a given. By embracing automation, firms can shift from reactive reconciliation to proactive compliance—reducing risk, saving time, and empowering employees to focus on what truly matters: driving business growth.
Learn more about Star’s Expense Tracking solution and how automation can transform your expense tracking workflows. Schedule a personalized demo here.
Global Risk, Local Impact
