Employee expense management is a vital part of your business operations. Your fiscal year begins by setting a budget to cover various categories of expenses that are common to conducting business. Some expenses are given small budgets to account for commonly occurring incidentals. Other employee expense budgets are more sizable and set-up for travel, client meals, and office supplies. Employee expense budgets fall under the variable expenses accounting definition.
Whatever employee expense management tool you use for your POS app, it needs to be able to send the data seamlessly to your accounting software. Automation will be a crucial timesaver once you and your employees enter all necessary tracking data into the system and save it. The sales data from your POS system should also be able to link to the same accounting software. There are three key areas you need to review whether you’re starting or improving employee expense management for your business:
- Set-up and training
- Accounting and reporting
- Policy reinforcement and audits
For years, only large retailers or business franchises could implement very customizable expensing solutions. Employee expense tracking software was previously available on SAP, NetSuite, and other enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms. Nowadays, cloud-based POS software is developed with ERP tools that integrate with your existing back-end accounting software for comprehensive (and simple) employee expense management tracking.
Setting Up Employee Expense Management Software
Whether you have been in business twenty years or two, it’s always good to have an annual employee expense accounting review. Needs for successfully operating businesses are always changing and evolving. This is especially true now that many small companies are experiencing uncertainty with the mass public health threat we are facing.
When you begin, it’s important to meet with employees who qualify for expense budgets to find out how they found themselves spending money. These occurrences can be backed up by current or archived receipt files. Remove “types” that no longer apply and add new accounting code “types.” PC Magazine recommends that you “create an organizational map, including reporting/supervisory structure.” If you are initiating an expense budget, have your accounting professional assist in setting-up the categories in a POS system with that capability.
Expect to schedule time for training employees on your new POS software. Create a POS test environment or recreate testing scenarios, at a minimum, for training on a new system. The POS software provider should have 24-hour technical support and initial training to get you started. Also, be sure to provide updated procedures to them ahead of time when you make any changes to how expenses are tracked and entered.
Accounting and Reporting on POS and Expense Data
It takes skills, experience, and grit to continuously maintain successful front-end and back-end operations as a business owner or manager. Tracking employee expense management does not need to be a haphazard process. Choose a cloud-based POS platform that will have you and your accountant feeling good about the accuracy and timeliness of your quarterly IRS tax filing.
You may ask if a POS software can be easy to use for your employees who aren’t computer or finance savvy. Fortunately, great POS software for iPad or other tablets will have a friendly menu that is easy to navigate. If you’re a busy company considering a POS solution, you probably want to have an additional iPad for employee administrative purposes. Workers who want to check their expected paycheck, progress towards sales goals, and enter expense receipts can have easy access this way and see all of their information in one place.
Policy Reinforcement and Internal Audits
No one likes to spend much time discussing expense policy reinforcements or internal audits. It’s timely to write out employee notices and schedule audits, but it needs to be done in best practice for business operations. When you formalize HR policies and post them in a conspicuous place in the office, the responsibility belongs to your employees.
Internal audit reports give you the tools necessary to review how well your employees are keeping up with expensing requirements that many view as tedious. Give yourself, your CPA, or business manager access to audit reports that allow you to review each employee’s entries or set-up summary level reports to run automatically. The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act requires businesses to review how effective their compliance programs are every year. You can appoint whoever you want to serve as Chief Compliance Officer (CCC), but even small businesses should treat these matters seriously, and beginning with powerful software that keeps everything you need in one place is a solid first step.
Using employee expense management software doesn’t have to be a risky decision. Look at how many business intelligence tools are featured in the software. Find out of the vendor has experience with POS platforms for your industry. Experienced solution providers like talech are ready to help you. Click here to find out more or reach out to our Support Team at support@talech.com
