Prior to the 2000s, expense reporting was a time-consuming process. Employees meticulously filled out paper forms, attached physical receipts and submitted them to accounting for processing. This system, as many would expect, was prone to errors, delays and lost paperwork.
The arrival of desktop and mobile applications in the 2000s changed things. These digital tools let employees submit expense reports electronically, often by taking a picture of a receipt with their smartphone. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and reduces the risk of losing receipts.
With that said, the shift to digital hasn't eliminated all challenges. While UIs have become more intuitive, there's still a learning curve associated with navigating new expense management software. Employees need to familiarize themselves with the specific application's features to submit reports efficiently.
Another hurdle lies with receipt collection. Despite the convenience of digital submissions, the responsibility of ensuring proper documentation often falls on accountants. They may still need to chase down missing receipts from employees, which can hinder overall efficiency.
Future solutions need to be intuitive enough to require minimal training and automate tasks like receipt capture and data extraction. This would free up valuable time for employees and accountants, allowing them to focus on more strategic endeavors.
Well, as cliche as it might sound, the future is now as Fyle, an expense management platform that works with customers' existing credit cards, launched its Conversational AI platform, where employees can submit expense receipts and other details via text messages.
With Fyle's Conversational AI, a new era of app-less expense management emerges, where employees simply text their receipts to Fyle, for credit card and reimbursable expenses. Fyle's AI creates and matches expenses to the correct transactions and prompts users by text to provide essential details like Projects, Cost Centers and Categories, for precise AI-based coding.
This is beneficial for employees. Here’s how.
Businesses no longer have to worry about the time-consuming task for accountants of chasing employees for missing receipts and clarification on expense details. For employees, this translates to a frictionless user experience, with no learning curve required for expense reporting. They can ditch the hassle of storing paper receipts and complete expense submissions quickly and effortlessly.
“Text messaging has become the No. 1 mode of turning in receipts and submitting additional expense details for our customers,” said Yashwanth Madhusudan, co-founder and CEO of Fyle. “Our users love this experience, as they no longer need to open an app to submit their receipts.”
Edited by
Alex Passett
