Is your expense management system ready?

The world of business travel is changing at an ever-accelerating pace. Disruption has quickly become the norm with sharing economy services like Uber, Lyft and Airbnb recently gaining significant ground among corporate travelers. Mobile device usage has exploded, taking the smartphone from what was a nice-to-have just a short while ago to an essential business platform for everything from communications to payments to apps for every service imaginable.

With all these advancements and innovations in technology, it’s high time companies take a hard look at their expense management practices to ensure their systems are keeping pace. Based on the changing dynamics in the business travel marketplace, here are five expense reporting features that can help your company meet the demands facing today’s accounting professionals and travelling employees alike.

Mobile Reporting Smartphones are the perfect companion for business travelers, and usage in the U.S. has reached a point of near saturation. Its ubiquity and utility also make smartphones the ideal platform for expense reporting. Starting with smartphone-enabled receipt image capture that allows travelers to take and save digital photos of their expense receipts, to mobile report creation and manager review and approval, nothing simplifies the expense reporting process for employees like a mobile app.

Automation Automation is at the core of many of Certify’s expense reporting features. Fundamentally, automation streamlines workflow for employees and managers, and it also simplifies backend processes for accountants and administrators. This includes automatically linking receipts with expense line items, direct credit card data feeds, and integration with ERP and HRIS systems to reduce manual data entry. Unique to our solution, Certify ReportExecutive™ also automates the expense report creation process by allowing administrators to preschedule expense report build and submit dates for the entire company.

Compliance Tools Technology has expanded greatly the vendor and service options available to business travelers, making company T&E policy increasingly important as a tactic to control costs. Cloud-based expense management software like Certify offers a number of tools to help make travel policy compliance easy. These include features that automatically flag employee violations and notify managers of out-of-policy expenses, automatic review for duplicate expenses and receipts, expense category spending limits, mobile compliance tools, and more.

Integrated Travel Travel booking options today are limitless, but company accountants only want one thing; that is, the best rate for any given itinerary. Two features of an integrated travel and expense management platform—lowest logical fare and pre-trip approval—make this possible. First, lowest logical fare works by automatically limiting traveler choices to only the best available air or hotel rates. Next, as the name suggests, pre-trip approval requires manager authorization before an employee books any travel arrangements. Both features can be configured to meet various policy guidelines, and as an integrated platform, travel expenses are automatically captured in the system to further streamline process.

Reporting and Analytics It’s been said that you can’t control what you can’t see, and the same goes for company T&E expense spending. That’s why Certify offers a comprehensive suite of reporting tools to provide complete visibility into workflow and spending. Data that’s inaccessible or might require hours of number crunching in a manual expense process can be called up in seconds with Certify. And reports aren’t just limited to administrators or financial data. Employees, managers and senior executives can access an entirely new level of transparency and accountability with ease.

One more way cloud-based expense reporting can prepare your company for a brighter future: it will save you money. How much? Find out now with our online expense report calculator, it’s free to use and available anytime.

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The Right Time To Use Expense Reports in your Firm

Expense report is actually a piece of content with the info on expenditures sustained on the personal or formal visit of a person or even a group of persons. An expense report is generally used in official functions and presented by the staff to the manager to claim for repayment of charges incurred on travel that is covered by the business. However, expense reports are likewise used at times in personalized record keeping. It might be an individual practice of someone to retain record of all their travel expenditures; it could definitely help in domestic budget preparation and taxes administration matters.

Expense report frequently addresses items like commutation expenses (for instance air fare, train ticket, gas cost in case of personal vehicle), accommodation, dining costs and miscellaneous expenses related to travel. Although, it is in employee's own advantage to send the expense report as soon as possible to have earlier payments, it is normal for several reports to be late. This is exactly why most of the firms are switching to expense report software.

These kinds of expense report software demands the staff to send in the expense report on the internet to the employer as well as management and deliver the receipts by way of fax. That is a consistent process and so the blunders connected with manual entries are certainly not feasible and appropriate submitting of expense report also brings about quick reimbursement. This is much better for the business along with its staff and expense management gets to be better and much easier and the workers are gratified as well on account of obtaining hassle-free reimbursements.

Expense management software also causes it to become hassle-free for the workers to send in their expense reports. They can do so while relaxing in their residence over the internet. The business even offers multiple advantages of such expense management systems. They could use these expense reports not just to reimburse employee's expenses but also for expense management and minimization.

Diverse business reviews from all throughout the United States reveal that at the moment the travel expenses would be the second highest source of spending for companies and businesses in the USA. It only rates second to the pays of the employees. It indicates that there is a whole lot of spending in this region and therefore valuable expense management can conserve big money towards the business owners. Expense report software enables us to do that if we understand how to employ them properly.

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Best Benefits of Expense Reporting Software Can Give In

If you are a business owner, then you are surely spending money to manage your business. The primary concern for most small to mid-sized companies is to control expenses on travel and entertainment that’s also a big cost area. This is why most companies look to control and cut your firm expenses.

Most small and mid-sized businesses use paper or spreadsheets to report on daily, weekly or monthly expenses. Most of the times, you don’t get a complete picture of the expenses with the conventional processes and procedures. The paper based processes or procedures will give you little or no ability to actively control and manage expenses.

There are some very good expense reporting software available in the market that will open the window into all travel and entertainment spending. Such software will also provide in-depth visibility over company-wide expense report. Expense tracking software is managed electronically, so there is no loss of time and effort. Without a central tracking system it is very difficult to enforce expense policies and get the best visibility into project related and reimbursable expenses.

Expense tracking relies heavily on manual entry and receipt collection, which makes collecting expense data from employees very cumbersome. Also, such processes are time consuming and error prone the consequences an administrative nightmare. Without accurate expense data, managers cannot be sure if the policies are being enforced or if the reimbursements are happening on time. This can also lead to employee dissatisfaction and in turn, it can result in a high employee turnover rate.

To make things very simple, there are many cloud based expense tracking systems that have gained a lot of popularity these days. These cloud-based expense tracking applications provide managers and decision makers with real time visibility into reimbursable and project related expenses. Using the cloud-based expense tracking platforms, employees don’t have to be physically present in the office to submit their expense data. The online submission of the expense data is convenient and easy. So, employees don’t have to lose on time and effort.

Managers can monitor their team’s spending in real time and ensure that all policies are being met. If you are a business owner looking out for the best expense software, make sure that you select the best one that fits into your existing infrastructure and processes. In other words, the expense tracking application that you will be buying needs to be compatible with any project management or financial systems.

If you are using the cloud based expense software, you don’t need to be worried about security, upgrades, maintenance or infrastructure. Why? Well, that’s because the cloud service provider will be doing all that for you which will definitely cost you a nominal amount. You can research the internet and get several names for the cloud-based expense tracking tool, but it is important that you choose the one that will provide you the best customized solutions. You can get a free trial from any popular cloud computing service provider and ensure that you have seen all the facets of the tool before you take the final call.

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The Healthcare Solution

I think everyone would agree that lowering healthcare costs is a really cool idea. Before we ask the government to take over the entire industry, we may want to look at it little closer.

There are two questions we should ask before taking the governmental leap: What are the real costs...to us? And, is there a better solution? After boring you with some statistics, I plan on offering you my version of a solution.

By showing you these stats, I hope you will gain a better idea of what the healthcare industry means to our overall economy. When I say economy, I am not just referring to Wall Street or corporate profits... I am referring to your pockets and paychecks

According to the US department of labor's Bureau of Statistics, the Healthcare industry is the largest industry in the land. As of 2006, the industry accounted for over 14 million jobs. In addition, 7 of the 20 fastest growing occupations fall under its umbrella. 5% of the total US population works for some form of medical care facility. As we say in the south, "That's a heap o' folks."

These stats do not include sub-industries like pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, insurance agencies, and medical paraphernalia manufacturers. Millions of others rely on these sub-industries for their paychecks. If we add these jobs into our stats, we're probably closer to 10% of the total population relying on the healthcare industry for their bread and butter. That's almost 30 million jobs.

Keep in mind that Corporations aren't the only ones who profit from the industry. Your friends, your family, your wives, your fellow church members, and your neighbors may be getting their paychecks from healthcare. Those of us who aren't have 401(k)'s, IRA's, mutual funds, and other investments tied to medicine and its auxiliaries. In other words, we all have a vested interest and should want healthcare to be efficient, profitable and long lived.

In summary (if it's not too late), IT healthcare solution is a huge pillar of our economic foundation. It is almost completely domestic and for the most part, can never be shipped overseas. It effects every man, woman, and child in this land? As a result, we have to use extreme caution when considering a change to its structure.

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IT Managed Services Benefits can give you

Entry-level businesses, Fortune 100 level enterprises, and every organization in between rely on computing operations to run smoothly. Companies even invest thousands of dollars every year to build and maintain their information technology infrastructure, but lately organizational leaders have been asking themselves whether there is a cheaper way to manage an IT department. In order to improve efficiency in a cost effective way, many organizations are turning to managed services companies. These competent companies provide server solutions that are built around outsourcing routine IT management activities so that the company can operate its IT configuration more efficiently. An increase in efficiency means that the company spends more money, but these server solutions also decrease the amount of risk to which all on-site servers are exposed. While there are many components associated with a standard IT infrastructure, this article will describe several services that are frequently outsourced to a managed services business.

Managed Security Services. It has become a weekly occurrence to turn on the news and learn that another tech company is reeling from a privacy breach. Hackers have become more technologically savvy and have taken advantage of minor security flaws to steal personal information and sensitive data from large companies like LinkedIn and eHarmony, and even major celebrities. Security server solutions are a great way for companies to protect private information and critical data. A managed services company will monitor log entries to locate threats, vulnerabilities, and privacy breaches. Protecting critical data and private customer or employee information will not only help the company rest easy knowing that it can focus on core competencies but will also keep the company from being exposed to lawsuits later on.

Information Backup. When a disaster or outage causes servers to shut down, data that has been recorded but not backed up will be lost forever. This means that companies will have to sacrifice hours in employee labor to get systems back up to speed so that employees can re-record or re-enter lost data. A managed services company will reduce the time that a company needs to recover from a disaster by creating an information backup plan that protects the organization during a crisis. The best information backup plan will allow employees to be more productive because it will allow the company to resume where it left off when the system went down.

Managed Server Solutions. These offerings are designed to make it far easier for companies to run their servers. One way that they do this is by showing the organization how to consolidate servers and suggest hardware upgrades. A managed services maine company will offer: server optimization to make sure that machines are always running at their peak performance, server migration to move data from older, less efficient devices to newer and more technologically advanced devices, and server configuration for all newly purchased servers.

Given how much money companies invest in their servers, the last thing they want to find is that all of that money is going down the drain. By hiring a managed services company to provide managed security services, information backup assistance, and managed server solutions, tech companies can decrease costs while boosting productivity.

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The Increasing Need for Healthcare IT Solutions

As medical advances in patient treatments emerge, healthcare IT needs to keep pace. IT solutions must deliver readily available and secure electronic medical data, such as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). Innovative treatment options, like Telemedicine, require reliable and robust IT infrastructures. And the overall IT environment must comply with stringent government regulations.

Now more than ever, healthcare organizations require secure, reliable and compliant IT solutions to deliver quality patient care. A Safe and Secure Healthcare IT Environment Compromised security can significantly interfere with healthcare's ability to care for patients. Healthcare IT threats pop up everywhere. Computer viruses, hackers, human error and disgruntled employees can be a significant threat to mission critical applications and patient data. Therefore, rock-solid physical and network security becomes a top priority for all data center service providers.

SAS 70 Type II audited processes ensure a provider's operational procedures, security, and controls are working effectively to safeguard and protect your data and equipment. A safe and secure healthcare IT network contributes to quality patient care, enhanced productivity, increased mobile point of care access to information and reduced costs. In addition, healthcare IT solutions require up to five levels of physical and electronic systems working 24/7 to protect your equipment. These systems include around-the-clock monitored closed circuit televisions, onsite support and security teams, biometrics security systems and/or military-grade key cards, and various alarms and sensors tied to fire and police departments.

Reliable Healthcare IT Solutions with 100% Guaranteed Uptime With life or death decisions at stake, downtime is not an option. Your medical and healthcare IT infrastructure must guarantee 100% availability. In addition to guaranteed uptime, service level agreement should cover key elements and service metrics like power, temperature and network availability.

Healthcare IT solutions should eliminate any worry about your critical healthcare IT infrastructure experiencing issues or downtime. Redundancy and reliability built into data center operations, including critical power and cooling infrastructure, can ensure fast, easy access to patient information for your healthcare personnel. Healthcare providers must maintain uptime even in the event of a disaster. Data center solutions need to provide hospitals, physicians and other healthcare providers with cost efficient disaster recovery facilities, systems and infrastructure. In addition, your critical data must be backed-up and safe.

Finally, your healthcare business must adapt quickly to changing technologies, regulatory requirements and patient needs. Data center solutions must provide scalable infrastructures to easily address any changes in your operations. Meeting the Challenges of Regulatory Compliance Healthcare providers are challenged with conforming to legislation and guidelines that govern the security and confidentiality of stored information. The Health Insurance and Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) mandate the safeguarding of Protected Health Information (PHI). Information breaches can result in millions of dollars of lost business, penalties and fines.

IT shares the responsibility for HIPAA protection of all medical electronic records and patient information. With the recent HIPAA enforcement actions, it's becoming increasingly important that health care IT operates in a secure, audited data center. The HIPAA Security Rule applies to all health plans, health care clearinghouses, and to any health care provider who transmits health information in electronic form. The following is a more specific list of who needs to be HIPAA compliant: Covered health care providers (hospitals, clinics, regional health services, individual medical practitioners) that carry out transactions in electronic form Health care clearinghouses

Many healthcare organizations struggle with IT issues related to security, reliability and compliance. They strive to ensure their IT infrastructure is able to support all of their healthcare applications. Your IT healthcare solution should combine extensive clinical best practice knowledge with innovation, business sense, technological expertise and a thorough knowledge of the healthcare industry to help optimize your patient services.

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The Rise of IT Outsourcing in the Market

If you have been following developments in the world of business over the past few years, then it is not lost on you that outsourcing is the new way of doing business all over the world. The advent of the internet and information technology greatly transformed business operations as was known in the 60s and 70s. Simply speaking outsourcing is basically getting an outside company to do specific tasks for your business at a fee. Apart from incredible cost saving, there are several other strategic reasons that have made small businesses go the outsourcing way. Of special interest is the rise in firms that outsource it support. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), US businesses outsource IT services worth tens of billions of dollars every year. You might have been wondering why small and medium businesses are opting to take this route. Well, here's why: some of the key strategic reasons behind the exponential rise in IT outsourcing Maine include maximizing the flexibility of the business model and access to new capabilities and talents. If you've ever operated a small business, then it's not lost on you that some years back, businesses undertook each and every aspect of their operations. Not even the mundane letter was outsourced. Then they started by contracting the post offices to deliver their mail, commercial couriers and ultimately the internet. Outsourcing of services has developed explosively over the past few years to a point where precise functions of any business such as IT services can be carried out under the most optimal conditions anywhere in the world.

According to a study carried out by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), 87 percent of IT outsourcing clients are satisfied with the services offered with a majority saying they felt the outsourcing services were actually in line with the original business plan and profit projections. Ninety one percent of the clients said they'd definitely outsource their IT needs again. If you are the proud owner of a small business and you have been searching for small business outsourcing services, then you are definitely headed in the right direction. Small enterprises look to gain access to talent that they may not have or to farm out their activities to IT specialized firms that they feel can do a better job in IT related services.

Apart from accessing refined resources and talent, IT support for business helps your business expand geographically, enhance your customer relationship and improve your market segment foothold. According to the US Department of Commerce, two of the biggest challenges that businesses seeking IT outsourcing face is the cost benefit rationalization or justification and inexperience. Deliberate steps to overcome these challenges have however been taken by both IT service providers who provide IT support for business and the service seekers: they have adopted a collaborative business model that is more efficient than the traditional models.

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