How to Avoid Manual Receipt Collection

If you dread employee receipt collection on a monthly basis, there’s some good news for you.

Automation is bringing relief to overburdened finance teams by eliminating repetitive manual work. Most businesses have started including automation in some of their workflows, including when it comes to managing their spend.

A significant part of automation is tied with receipt collection, management, and reconciliation. Many finance departments haven’t been able to get complete control over receipt management, stuck in paper processes that invite manual labor, create confusion and consume too much time.

In this article, we will discuss the challenges of manual receipt and invoice management and why it can be a barrier to productivity. We will also find out how a spend management solution like Mesh Payments can help you sail troubled waters smoothly and streamline your workflow.

The Perils of Receipt Management for Modern Finance Teams

Expense management software doesn’t ensure productivity. Most businesses are far behind when it comes to managing receipts and matching them with transactions. The process is filled with manual work and hard copies, which take a toll on efficiency and accuracy.

The most common challenges in receipt collection and management are:

Loss of Receipts

Over 50% of organizations say the biggest pain point in expense management is the loss of paper receipts. Additionally, employees submit reports without receipts that create more problems for accounts departments.  Once you have the invoice it can easily be misplaced and you’ll end up spending hours searching for them.

Added Costs

According to research by the Global Business Travel Association, organizations can spend $58 when processing a single expense report that contains paper receipts as a result of correcting errors or leaving out information. These costs can add up significantly and take a toll on your budget.

Employees Are Not Bothered

While the general policy for receipt collection is only for expenses above $75, businesses may implement different policies depending on their needs. That being said, even for expenses that do fall within this policy, you’ll often find that employees forget to submit receipts, as this isn’t an immediate priority for them. You’re probably familiar with the dreaded “chase after employees” to remind them about sending in their receipts.

This approach hampers productivity and creates delays in filing reports. As a result, you cannot make sound projections to secure your future.

Waste of Time

Employees spend 20 minutes filling out an expense report for a single night in one hotel. They spend an additional 18 minutes correcting them if errors or wrong categorization occurs.

Paper receipts and manual processes create room for errors. That can be bad news for the accounts department, as they are the ones to match the books. Plus, you waste countless hours in every step of the process.

Businesses need a way to automate receipt management to harness productivity and growth.

What Is Spend Management and How Can It Help

Mesh is an end-to-end spend management solution that empowers finance teams to manage and control their spend. The platform enables companies to gain real-time visibility and insights over their payments in one platform. In addition, Mesh provides automation throughout the payment flow, from approvals, to receipt collection & upload, all the way to reconciliation.

Mesh offers multiple features that help finance teams overcome the various challenges that come along with receipt and invoice management such as worrying about paper receipts and running after employees to send in invoices.

Using Mesh as your spend management solution will enable you to set a receipt policy based on the amount and type of transaction. You’ll also be able to set automatic reminders for your employees every week so that you don’t have to be the bad guy asking for receipts, and you don’t need to worry about missing anything, ensuring full compliance with the IRS.

Employees’ lives will also be made easier as they can simply upload receipts to the platform without needing to hold onto that one paper receipt from a lunch they had with a client.  Finally, the Mesh platform will match your receipts to the transactions with OCR and you can integrate Mesh with your ERP system so that you can sync and reconcile all your accounts in one-click, further streamlining your workflow.

Final Thoughts

Paper receipts and manual collection processes are not fit for modern businesses. By automating your receipt management you can conserve resources and free up your finance teams time so they can spend their time more wisely. Finally, your expense management becomes better with accurate data and quick reporting.

• Get the latest blogs from Mesh by subscribing to our newsletter

Sarah Murphy

Sarah is a Content Manager for Mesh Payments. Before working in marketing, she completed her Master of Journalism degree at Toronto Metropolitan University (f.k.a. Ryerson University) and worked as an arts journalist in Toronto. She was a content writer for tech companies in the retail and workforce management sectors before joining Mesh in 2022.