End the Pain of Filing and Approving Business Expenses
October 29, 2014
By Mini Swamy, TMCnet Contributor
The tsunami of information technologies has left many of us gasping, and the changes it has brought about in the form of the Internet, videoconferencing, email, smart home solutions and more have succeeded in eliminating or at least blurring many traditional boundaries. That being so, why should we stick to submitting an expense report and get reimbursed the traditional way? The three founders of the New York City-based startup company, Abacus, couldn't agree more.
The Abacus tool is a simple, fast way for businesses to reimburse their employees for company expenses without painful Excel spreadsheets or envelopes bursting at the seams with business trip receipts.
“Employees have to hold onto receipts and wait to create the report, managers get delayed reporting that’s weeks overdue, and accountants have to sift through a lot of paperwork to understand what’s going on,” said Dev Anand, head of business operations for Abacus, who spoke to AccountingWEB.
So if an employee spends money on a business trip to meet a new client, all he/she has to do is to open the Abacus app on his or her smartphone, enter the amount, snap a photo of the receipt, add a note about the expense, add a category and they're done.
“We believe that when you hop out of a cab, you should be able to file that taxi expense right then and there, instead of having to wait a couple weeks to create a report with that taxi as a line item,” noted Anand.
When employees send the expense report, it goes to an expenses inbox, where it is reviewed and approved (or disapproved, as the case may be). Accountants, too, can add their own comments before approving and can create customized reports for the future.
Abacus then takes over and issues an automated clearinghouse payment to the employee; all this just takes a day or two. As Abacus integrates with QuickBooks, Xero, and several other platforms, expenses are synced to the employer’s cloud accounting software.
“Administrators want the best experience for their employees, but they also think about cost savings and time savings for their organization. We incorporate both by focusing on great product design and streamlining the workflow – from expense submission to accounting sync,” said Anand.
The app is free, but businesses have to pay $5 per active user, per month, for the service, and implementation is almost immediate.
Abacus has re-imagined from the ground up how expense reporting ought to work. Now, employees don't have to wait an eternity before being reimbursed and accountants find it easier to tackle expense reports in real-time -- a win-win for both.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson