Webinar: Reduce Your Administrative Burden With Expense Management

Jeff Plakans | President & Founder, CommPayHR

Jeff Plakans founded CommPayHR in 2006, for a better, holistic solution for SMB payroll and HR. He is passionate about improving employment practices and compliance to create the best business environment.

Shaun Fowler | Account Manager, isolved

David Braby | Solution Consultant, isolved

Shaun and David join CommPayHR to share their knowledge and expertise in Expense Management.

Jeff Plakans (00:04):

Good afternoon everybody. I’m Jeff Plakans. I’m the founder and president of Commonwealth Payroll & HR. Thank you for joining us today for our webinar about expense management and reducing your administrative burden. As always, I’m joined by Shaun and David from isolved, and we’re going to talk again on the expense [00:00:30] management tools that we have in isolved. Why is this important to you? Well, expense reimbursement and most expense reimbursement processes are very messy because they require someone to submit proof that the money was spent.

(00:49):

They require someone to approve that it was okay that they spent it, and then it requires somebody to be paid back as a result. Lots [00:01:00] of moving parts, lots of messiness. We feel like we have the solution for you. That’s what you’re going to learn about today on our agenda. So without further ado, Shaun, David, take it away.

Shaun Fowler (01:13):

All right, perfect. Thank you Jeff. And thank you everyone for joining us today for this expense management webinar. We’ll just go through the agenda here real quick. So you’ll get to meet myself and David and of course Jeff, the presenters here. We’ll talk about some key features [00:01:30] and benefits of that expense management platform. And then we will have David show us the demonstration, which you’ll be able to see the user interface, the functionality of that. And of course, as you have questions, go ahead and put them in the Q&A section of the webinar and we’ll pick those up as we go along.

(01:51):

So without further ado, I’ll present… I’ll talk a little bit about our presenters here. Of course you all know [00:02:00] Jeff Plakans over at Commonwealth, founder and president there. We’ve been working with him for years now on bringing these solutions to their clients there. My name is Shaun Fowler. I’m the isolved account manager helping with these ancillary products and of course we’re joined by David Braby, who is the solution consultant here, which will be walking us through that demonstration as well. All right, so [00:02:30] what are some of the key features of this expense management platform?

(02:34):

Of course, Jeff teed it up very nicely as the expense reports can get a little messy. You have employees that are remitting or turning in expense receipts and reports, and of course that has to go through an approval process. Make sure that it’s within your spend policy of course, of where those [00:03:00] employees are spending. You may have different policies depending on where they go throughout the US, local or national, and then of course you have to pay them. So that all has to be seamless and to avoid any kind of mistakes within the solution. So first we want to talk about the analysis dashboards and reports.

(03:25):

Now whether you’re using this to improve the financial [00:03:30] health of your business, we find that about 46% of companies that move from a paper system to a electronic system, especially one that’s integrated within their payroll. They see about a 46% return on investment within the first year. Or maybe you’re doing it for compliance reasons or just overall wanting to automate your workflow and reduce the administrative burden. Those dashboards and reports will be able to [00:04:00] help you out there.

(04:01):

You’ll have a configurable approval workflow, whether that goes through one or multiple approvals. And again, tying it to a spend policy that you put in place for your employees. They’ll be able to consolidate the different expenses for their different payments. So looking at it from an employee standpoint, they spend their own money and they submit their receipts and of course they want to see that money returned to them [00:04:30] as quick as possible. So you’ll be able to consolidate those expenses. You’ll have different ways of customizing the expense types in there as well.

(04:38):

So it’s not just a static solution depending on what your employees and your company as far as needs for an expense management platform. You’ll be able to customize those different expense types. Of course, we want to automate and make this as seamless as possible so you can create different shortcuts [00:05:00] within the system just to get to things quicker and move it through the process faster as well. Of course, we have multi-country and currency support within the platform as well. And your employees will be able to take pictures of those images, those receipts and upload them.

(05:21):

So no longer having to carry around a lot of different paper receipts. And just makes it easier to get [00:05:30] the expenses into the system quicker so your employees can get paid quicker. So some of the key benefits of this solution is that of course we’re looking to reimburse your employees faster, and as Jeff had pointed out, with minimal friction. There’s a lot of moving parts and we want to ensure that this is as seamless as possible. We want to help you increase your productivity and reduce that overhead cost by [00:06:00] making sure you know where your spend is going and adhering to those different expense policies.

(06:08):

And maintaining accurate financial records and planning, that kind of stands alone by itself. Understanding where the money is being driven to and how your spend is affecting your bottom line is valuable information there. So the idea of this is to help you reduce [00:06:30] errors by making it electronic format and having those checks and balances in place. And of course this is designed to help enhance fraud prevention. So making sure… Again, understanding where your dollars are going and that they’re going to the right place. With this, I know some companies will have different qualifications or requirements from a compliance standpoint.

(06:57):

Maybe nonprofits out there are some of the key [00:07:00] companies that I’m thinking about. You’ll be able to maintain that compliance by having those reports in an expense policy, easy at hand there. And of course it’s all driven to enable your employees to upload those receipts and track expenses in the adaptive employee experience. And so now we’re going to turn it over to David. I’m going to stop sharing my screen and make him the presenter [00:07:30] and he will take us through the demonstration.

David Braby (07:40):

Very good. So are you able to see my screen?

Shaun Fowler (07:46):

Yes, we can.

David Braby (07:48):

Very good. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to walk through that expense reimbursement process so you can see what it looks like from not only an employee perspective to submit those expenses, [00:08:00] but the review process that can be applied as well. And keep in mind that as I’m going through this, everything is configurable within this solution. So from your business types to your expense types, to the information that you want to make required for the employee to enter in as they’re putting that expense information in.

(08:23):

So as Shaun mentioned from the adaptive employee experience, the employee is able to access this of course [00:08:30] via their phone, which again makes it very convenient for them When they need to submit expenses. They can just pull this up on their phone, take a picture of that receipt, upload it into the system, and then submit that for processing. It’s interesting to note that there was a study done that indicated about 55% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. So the faster [00:09:00] that you can get that expense money back to the employee, the happier that they’re going to be.

(09:07):

And this solution really streamlines that process. So as you can see, I’m in My Expenses in the employee experience for this particular employee. And up here in the upper left-hand corner, there’s actually a little dashboard that the employee is able to see all their expense information, from those that are still pending approval to those that have been [00:09:30] paid within the solution, to those that have been returned for any type of reason. And if an expense is returned to the employee, the system will require that supervisor or whomever is denying that request will allow them to enter in a note there so that the employee knows that the reason why that particular expense was rejected.

(09:59):

So anyway, that [00:10:00] dashboard gives the employee the ability just to track those expenses as they move through the process. Submitting an expense is very simple, they can just upload a receipt from here, go into the details, even attach that receipt at this point. But as we build out those different types of business purposes for you, and this is where the system is highly configurable. You’re going to be able to come in, enter in that type of information, the employee select from different drop-down menus. So [00:10:30] it makes it again, very simple.

(10:31):

This is an example of a mileage reimbursement where the employee can just enter in a starting point and an ending point and actually have the system calculate out the mileage. And you notice as it calculates that out, it actually pulls up a Google map that can be saved as a round trip and then also saved as a receipt to attach to that expense reimbursement. So again, makes it very simple for the employee to be able to enter in those expenses. [00:11:00] I have in here where I’ve required the starting odometer and ending odometer as well. So I’m just going to quickly key that in. And then also some details.

(11:23):

Now you notice that this is defaulted to reimbursable, but this also allows for those expenses to be [00:11:30] entered in that aren’t going to be reimbursed, that maybe have been done on a company credit card. That way you can track all those types of expenses, both the reimbursable and the non-reimbursable expenses. So I’m going to submit that as that employee, and you’ll notice it stopped me from submitting because I didn’t put in the dates. And then the mileage [00:12:00] needed to be calculated again because I didn’t put in the dates. So there we go.

(12:05):

Now it’s been submitted. It says it’s in pending status. So what that does is that will now alert whomever needs to review that particular expense. And it could be a multi-level approval process where maybe it goes to the supervisor for that initial approval and then maybe to someone in your accounting or finance area. These particular approvers don’t have to be [00:12:30] administrators within the solution. So it could be any employee like an accountant or someone that actually doesn’t have administrative access to the system.

(12:44):

So we’re going to hop in as that supervisor. Supervisor receives a notification that there’s been an expense submitted. They can then come into the expense section under tasks. And very similar to that employee, they’re going to have a dashboard up here [00:13:00] that’s going to show any action required from them as far as approvals, those that have been returned and then a complete history here. Supervisor has a couple of different views. It can be just a expense by expense review or it could be summarized.

(13:16):

So if there’s a lot of expenses, they can just come in here, they can check the box and approve those all at once. So again, making it very easy and streamlined for that approval process. There’s that mileage reimbursement that Aldo [00:13:30] just submitted. I’m going to go ahead and approve that. But as you notice, as you click on the view button, it’s going to open up the details of all that expense and then that receipt is also attached. So I could, as a supervisor, pull up that Google map to see exactly where the employee went.

(13:50):

So I’m going to go ahead and approve that as that supervisor. That then, in my case, is feeding into the administrative view [00:14:00] to be able to see that. So very convenient, accessible on any device including the phones to get those expenses moving through the system and to get those employees paid a little bit quicker. So I’m going to come in now as an administrator. So you can see what that looks like. And this is where of course all the build out is and those dashboards that Shaun mentioned earlier. So under the client management solution [00:14:30] menu item, you’ll notice that there is expense management and the expense dashboard.

(14:36):

On the expense dashboard, this is where all the expenses are aggregated. And you notice that down below is showing graphical information. Now I have mine, I defaulted to the last 60 days, but you can put in 30 days, 90 days and even go back and view historical information too. But these graphical dashlets [00:15:00] can be output to PNG, JPEG, PDF. So if you’re doing some type of a PowerPoint presentation, you can download these and add that to the PowerPoint. But gives all the information from business purposes and as you can see, these are flyovers.

(15:16):

So you can actually see the data as you’re flying over any of the graphical information. You’re also going to be able to see where the expenses are in the process, how many have been returned, what has [00:15:30] been submitted. And this is where those receipts are automatically going to pull up. And it’s also going to show you the approval process and where this particular expense is in that process. Back on the dashboard, once those expenses have gone through the approval process, they’re going to land on this ready-to-commit dashboard. So here’s all those expenses that have gone through that approval process.

(15:59):

All you have [00:16:00] to do at this point is check a couple boxes for those that you want to pay and determine the payout option. Payout options include just pay it on the next regular check or do it as an additional check. So a separate check or direct deposit if the employees set up for direct deposit. And then even the ability to just cut a manual check at this point too. Once you check the boxes and click the commit button, that’s when it moves that information into payroll if you’ve selected [00:16:30] the next regular check or additional check.

(16:34):

So very easy to commit those right from the dashboard. And then once they’ve been paid, again, you can put in the date ranges that you want to appear, but that information is available now to export out to Excel just by clicking the export button. Similar to the other dashboards within the isolved solution. But here’s where it also gives you the ability to add the columns that you want. So [00:17:00] here’s where you can add your business purposes, your different business types and build out that report that can now be exported to Excel.

(17:09):

The other advantage of this solution is that these expenses can also be mapped to your general ledger to automate that entire process for you. So as you can see, there’s a lot of configurability within the solution when it comes to the expense management, but the idea behind this is to reduce some of that [00:17:30] administrative burden and allowing the system to move those expenses efficiently through that approval process and get those employees paid quicker. So with that, I’m going to turn it back over to Shaun and he can pick it up from there.

Shaun Fowler (17:50):

All right, thank you David and really appreciate you walking us through that demonstration. A lot of cool stuff in there. It’s one thing to hear what the [00:18:00] solution can do, but it’s another to see what it looks like and the functionality. And I’ll go ahead and share my screen and we will take us home. So as far as… We understand that looking for this type of solution is not something that you want to do all the time. So within our solution, we’re always looking to upgrade and update it for compliance updates or competitive updates in the market.

(18:29):

Understanding what [00:18:30] companies are looking for in an expense management platform, adding those features and the functionality. And especially as AI comes more and more to the mainstream, some of those developmental aspects will be put into expense management just to make it a little bit more user-friendly and more integrated and just generally automate the workflow a little bit more for you. So keeping that modern responsive web design and the bi-weekly [00:19:00] release cycle on these solutions is something that we do to future-proof this so that you know that you’re getting the best for what you’re paying for out there.

(19:13):

And so with that, I will go ahead and ask Jeff if we have any questions out there that we can address.

Jeff Plakans (19:23):

So interestingly enough for as short as a webinar this is, it’s yielded lots of questions.

Shaun Fowler (19:30):

[00:19:30] Perfect.

Jeff Plakans (19:31):

So let’s dive in here. The first one being, let me see here. You mentioned the charges that you can make on credit cards. Is there a form of reconciliation or a reconciliation report for those credit card charges that’s available to be used?

David Braby (19:58):

So within the [00:20:00] dashboard that I showed, the paid dashboard, that’s one of the fields that you can load in there is if it was reimbursable or not reimbursable. So that way you can separate those that were reimbursed versus those that were paid on the company credit card.

Jeff Plakans (20:23):

I know the answer to this one, but someone said, “Can I take a picture of my receipts with my phone rather than uploading [00:20:30] a picture?”

David Braby (20:31):

Absolutely. So I was showing it in computer mode, but in phone mode, yes. Just take a picture of the receipt and that can be then uploaded into the expense system.

Jeff Plakans (20:45):

And it’s worth mentioning that works equally as well on Android and on iOS devices. Just for you Android types, that question always comes up. How flexible [00:21:00] are the categories that are being used?

David Braby (21:05):

So it’s completely flexible. So whatever categories that you have as part of your expenses, we can build out into the system. So we’re going to call those business purposes and business types or what the official labels are, but those could be your categories that we’ll build out. And we’ll also build out your expense policy within the [00:21:30] solution, which allows you to set limits as far as what is going to be reimbursable.

Jeff Plakans (21:42):

Excellent. So someone asked, “Can you run through a little more detail of how it gets through payroll and into the journal entry?”

David Braby (21:59):

And if you want me to reshare [00:22:00] my screen, I could do that.

Shaun Fowler (22:03):

I’ll make you the presenter.

David Braby (22:16):

And are you seeing what I’m seeing my dashboard?

Shaun Fowler (22:20):

We can see it.

David Braby (22:21):

Within the setup, and this is where those different categories are going to be set up, so business purposes. And the expense [00:22:30] types is where we build out all those different types. So your business purpose could be entertainment and then a type of that could be lodging and airfare, whatever that looks like. But here is where we’re going to map out where is going to route to the general ledger in the GL rules. So based off of whatever labor fields that you have, again, it’s just as simple as [00:23:00] selecting the labor field so that it maps to the general ledger.

(23:04):

This is the screen that we do that on. This is also where you can see we can require information. So I’ve got mileage pulled up, that’s where I’ve got the odometer start and odometer end that are required. So you can have up to three of those expense fields is what we’re going to call these, that can also be incorporated in that. So a lot’s happening right on this screen as far as mapping to [00:23:30] whatever earnings. So it’ll pull up the earnings table and remember we’re going to configure all this, but this is just a little detail to show you how it maps that information to your general ledger.

Jeff Plakans (23:42):

So I’m glad you’re here because we actually had a question about that checkbox that says client billable that I see right there. So somebody was asking how that works and how does that become usable for somebody [00:24:00] who’s on the reporting side of this.

David Braby (24:04):

So with that expense field, so client billable, that’s where again, it can be a required field, in this case mine’s not. But that’s an expense field that can then be pulled into that dashboard. So when you come back out here to the expense dashboard and go into the approved and the paid, [00:24:30] now you can add that expense filled to that list. And this is where you can filter based off of, was it client billable or not?

Jeff Plakans (24:43):

Excellent.

David Braby (24:44):

And then output that to Excel.

Jeff Plakans (24:47):

Sweet. Excellent. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right, let me see. Let me make sure I got everything here. That’s the credit card. More credit card. [00:25:00] That’s all the questions that we had, but that’s more questions than we normally have. So excellent. David, thank you for that. And thank you for the secondary drop-in on the demonstration side. Hopefully that was helpful for you folks that asked the questions and anybody who might be viewing this later. So I do want to mention that we are recording this and as a result we’ll be sending out a recording to all of the folks that are [00:25:30] signed up for today.

(25:31):

We know some folks sign up and do not attend. So to make sure that everyone sees it, we’ll be getting that out to you. If you are interested or you want to know more about how this expense management tool might be able to help you and your teams, go ahead and reach out to your customer service and support specialist or reach out to your account manager. Either one of them will be able to get you moving in the right direction, talk about pricing and whatnot. [00:26:00] And again, we think this is… I personally believe that this is a very, very valuable tool.

(26:06):

It takes so much pain out of the process, not just for those of us on the admin side, but certainly for the employees as well. And isn’t that the best way to get employees to comply, to make it easy for them to do so? We’ve found that this tool will absolutely work to that. So thank you so much for attending. We appreciate you sharing your lunch hour with us. Shaun [00:26:30] and David, thank you so much for your time today.

Shaun Fowler (26:33):

And thank you everyone that has joined. Thank you Jeff for allowing us the opportunity to present this solution to your clients. Always appreciate it.

Jeff Plakans (26:42):

Alrighty, any other questions, just reach out to us and if you want to reach out to me personally, my information, phone number, email address are available right here on the slide that you can see. Other than that, have a great productive rest of your day and we’ll see you soon. Thank [00:27:00] you.

Shaun Fowler (27:00):

Thank you all.