We have always known that an expense management tool saves people time. But knowing this and being able to prove it are two very different things. That’s why Rydooer’s were incredibly pleased to see their belief backed up by the “The State of Expense Management 2022” report.

Every year at Rydoo, we commission independent survey experts to gather data from CFOs and senior finance professionals about digitisation in finance and the evolution of finance departments.

The 2022 report highlighted some very interesting statistics, not least the fact that most companies that have implemented Rydoo have found a real and lasting reduction in the time taken to process their claims.

But how exactly can an expense management tool help you save time? And how much time are we talking about?

Can an expense management tool actually save time?

Among the findings from our survey was the impressive statistic that 75% of the companies that have implemented a digital expense management tool claimed that they saved at least 5-10 hours a week.

In short, you’ll save company costs while allowing trained and experienced people to carry out value-add activities.

This changing face of the finance team is also borne out by our survey, since we found that 77% of respondents said they had welcomed people with new skill sets to fulfil changing roles.

How does it work?

After learning that companies were experiencing real-life time savings, we wanted to figure out exactly how digitisation could help achieve this?

The reduction in handling paper receipts comes as a big benefit. Survey results show that the vast majority of digitised companies no longer keep paper receipts and bills, preferring to use digital copies instead.

If nothing else, this alone saves time managing the filing and then finding copies at a later date.

The removal of manual processes can’t be overestimated. Having people doing things that are adding real value to the business is so much more preferable than simply cutting and pasting numbers or manually keying information into journals or payment systems. It saves time in doing the job initially and in spotting errors that are introduced as a result.

We have also seen a drop year-on-year in the number of violations in need of reviewing. Only 0.8% of total expenses were violations, down from 1.1% gathered from the 2019/20 survey. This suggests that as digitised expense management becomes the norm, people are able to understand the rules better.

Another important point to keep in mind is that expense violations take a lot of time to sort out, so the fewer the company has, the more time they’ll be able to save.

Checking expenses against policy manually is a very time-consuming job. With a cutting-edge system like Rydoo, the vast majority of expenses can be a part of the expense management flow, so that if they are in policy, they get approved.

Faster reimbursements (33%) are cited as a reason for incorporating a digitised expense-management system into the finance team, which highlights one of the best parts of a fully digitised system.

The results from the survey also show that when the staff is able to make claims faster, they also get reimbursed much faster as a result. This can be a significant boost for morale as it means that people aren’t out of pocket for as long as when expenses are done digitally.

Digitising your systems doesn’t have to be a chore

There are lots of benefits to digitisation, and time savings is only one of them. But if there’s one thing that puts people off implementing a digitisation system is that it seems like a massive chore. The reality is that it really doesn’t have to be.

The best advice is to chunk it up and do the quicker and simpler processes first. Expense management can be hugely time-consuming, but a new system can transform the situation.

Rydoo is usually up and running within 100 days, which means that you can use this as a ‘low-hanging fruit’ when you start your digitisation journey.

If you want to find out how to make the break and start saving time and effort with your expense management, get in touch with one of our sales experts and we’ll arrange a free demo so you can see for yourself.

About our report —The State of Expense Management 2022

When we initially started commissioning our annual The State of Expense Management reports in 2020, little did we (or anyone else) know that the world was due for 3 tumultuous years with the effects of COVID.

But the timing was actually very useful as it gave us a clear sight of what was happening as the world came to terms with a global pandemic.

This year we asked survey experts Firefly in collaboration with 4media group to run our survey to find out what has changed in expense management over the last twelve months.

Speaking with over 400 senior finance professionals, CFOs, and executives at companies with more than 1,000 employees. The respondents were all located in the UK, France, and DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland).

We also added in data from Rydoo users across France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the UK to increase the depth and breadth of information available.