Keeping tabs on your and your employees’ expenses can be a right pain, especially if left until a lengthy time after the event. But one web-based solution being touted by BT may be the answer.
Currently on offer as a free trial, online tool BT Web Expenses is designed to help small businesses manage employee expenses “easily and effectively”.
The new expense-management software means employees can submit travel and entertainment expenses claims online or by text message and managers can process and approve them electronically. Because it is web-based there is nothing to install and no in-house IT support is needed.
Firms can try out a free trial “Lite” version of BT Web Expenses for five claims. BT Business offers two paid-for versions – BT Web Expenses Standard and BT Web Expenses Premium.
BT Web Expenses Standard, priced at £6.99 (excl VAT) per month for an unlimited number of claims, offers comprehensive reporting features allowing managers to create their own customised reports to help control cash flow.
Managers can also analyse outgoings, which in turn can help them identify where cost savings may be made, for example by using conference calling rather than travelling to meetings, or by identifying where policies are required to limit excessive expenditure on particular items. It can be customised for individual companies and it is easy to add users as the company grows.
The Premium service, priced at £8.99 (excl VAT) per month, offers a range of more advanced features, including the ability to upload credit card entries and allow different departments, for example, Finance and HR, to feed their expenses information into a single central system, which can then reflect the various departments of the company.
Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, said: “Expenses can be a significant cost and administrative issue for small businesses, so it’s essential to manage them effectively to stay in control of cash flow. The trouble is, to manage them properly can be time consuming and the responsibility often falls to the owner-manager.
“Using a web-based expenses tool really helps to simplify the process – both for employees and managers – as it means that claims can be entered, processed, approved and tracked, whether people are in the office, working from home or on the other side of the world.”
BT Web Expenses is one of a series of “Software as a Service” (SaaS) applications designed to help small businesses with administration and cost control. These services are available free or free to trial from BT Business, and include: BT Business Builder, which brings together a series of online tools to support basic business administration processes; BT eSignature, an electronic signature application so companies to get documents signed in seconds over the web; and BT Workspace, an online collaboration tool that allows employees to access, save and share documents from wherever they are.
To sign up for the free trial of BT Web Expenses or to get further information, go to: www.bt.com/btwebexpenses
