Uncat’s Guide to Expense Management
Estimated Reading Time: 25 minutes
Introduction
When it comes to expense management, spreadsheets, ledger books, and girthy accounting software aren’t always the best solutions in our evolving business world. If you’re still using these traditional expense management methods, you’re missing out on a plethora of valuable features and solutions.
Modern business expense tracking apps are more dynamic than you might expect. This guide on the expense management industry will walk you through why expense management matters and help you learn more about traditional vs. modern expense management software, the benefits of expense management apps, the multitude of apps out there, and how you can choose the best apps for your business.
Table of Contents
Does Your Expense Management Need Automation?
Introduction to Expense Management
Types of Expense Management
Traditional Expense Management
Why Do I Need a Modern Form of Expense Management?
Automated Expense Management
Features of Automated Expense Management Apps
Benefits of Using Automated Expense Management Apps
Expense Management Apps
Picking the Right App
Apps
Uncat + Expense Management
Conclusion
Does your expense management need automation?
Introduction to expense management
Expense management is a multi-level, multi-step approach to tracking employee spending, determining how a company will reimburse the costs incurred, and controlling spending based on company policies and procedures.
Expense management is vital for any company, as companies must pay their bills on time to stay in business, and some of these bills are employee expenses. Especially given the recent COVID-19 pandemic and even before the pandemic, many companies have employees who work outside of or conduct business beyond the office building. For this reason, expense management is necessary. Whether it’s a paid client lunch or a business trip, the expenses need to be documented, approved, and reimbursed to the employee. Employees don’t like to wait months to get reimbursed.
While there are other ways to track and manage your expenses without an app—such as with spreadsheets—expense management apps have many benefits. Expense tracker apps sync to your credit cards (whether personal cards, charge cards, corporate/business cards, etc.) and bank accounts and categorize your expenses. These features help you understand a business’s or client’s spending habits and obtain accurate financial records, saving you time and money to focus on your business or advising your client.
Until the last few decades, traditional expense management involved piles upon piles of paper and physical receipts, hundreds of excel spreadsheets, emails, and time wasted chasing down the correct information to validate expense reports. Whether talking about employees or accounting and finance teams, these expense management issues affect both employees and accounting or finance departments.
Types of expense management
Companies have tracked and managed expenses in many ways:
Paper tracking
This outdated way to manage expenses typically resembled employees gathering and collecting paper receipts and submitting them to the accounting department for approval every month or quarter.
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are a popular way to reduce paper tracking methods that still aren't as new or modern as dedicated, automated expense management apps.
Spreadsheets have their purposes, and they have been and still are an integral part of the financial world. For expense management, spreadsheets do help record and manage expenses, though it’s a painstakingly difficult and time-consuming process.
They’ve also been used to collect information on uncategorized transactions from a client/business, though chasing down clients to all of the information can take days or weeks even.
However, just because old is gold, this isn’t always the case. As the world of business teaches us, keeping up-to-date with trends is vital for success and growth.
Modern expense management models—such as expense management apps—can help keep a business on track and prepared for success and growth by flagging and validating expenses, compiling reports, leaving a digital audit trail, and providing real-time insight into a business’s trends and any policy violations. Spreadsheets, sadly, typically cannot accomplish all of this, but automated expense management apps can easily manage these functions.
Traditional expense management
Traditional expense management might look something like this: an employee of a business will make an expense, collect the bill, compile and expense the report, and submit it to the finance or accounting department/firm for approval. However, if it’s rejected, the expense report gets sent back to the employee for corrections and repeats the process all over again until the expense report is approved and the reimbursement is issued. See the graphic below for a visual representation of the traditional expense management process.
Why do I need a modern form of expense management?
If you want your business or client to grow, the traditional expense management system isn’t viable for the future.
For example, if some employees are involved in networking, marketing, or sales, they are likely required to travel to promote and ultimately grow and scale the business. As a result, these employees might utilize their own finances for business needs.
With this added level for growing a business, it’s vital to have a streamlined expense management system for everyone involved in the business.
Additionally, the traditional expense management models feature many drawbacks:
Lower levels of productivity and efficiency
Productivity and efficiency are lowered on numerous levels through traditional expense tracking and management models. Employees must manually collect and compile their expenses into spreadsheets, which are sent to the accounting or finance department for approval.
These expenses get more complicated when expenses vary across states and countries with different currencies or when expenses must abide by expense policies. You or the accounting/finance department must check and validate expense claims manually and meet deadlines, all while dealing with late submissions, policy violations, and ineffective back and forth communication with employees.
Every step of this process wastes energy better used for other tasks, thereby impacting the growth and scale of the business, and could be simplified by automation through expense management apps.
Time-consuming
Manually entering and verifying data costs your accounting or finance team hours upon hours of essential productive work.
Higher risk of human error
When you manually input or validate claims, you face a higher chance of human error and bias, which can harm your business and potentially cost your business money. Fraudulent claims are also at a higher risk of occurring through traditional expense management processes.
Lowered visibility into the business
Without expense management apps, you lack sufficient insight into what the data gleaned from your expenses conveys. This can even lead to poor advising and ill-informed decisions that detrimentally harm your business. It’s also challenging to find issues impacting a business with traditional, manual systems.
Automated expense management
A model of modern automated expense management and reporting might look something like this:
Features of automated expense management
Some notable features of modern expense management systems include:
Accounting and business integrations
Software or applications that integrate with other software or apps can simplify your expense management system and other financial management processes (like categorizing uncategorized transactions to reconcile and close the books—aka Uncat).
Mobile apps for reporting expenses
One major element of expense management is travel expenses. With mobile apps compatible across multiple devices, employees can file expenses wherever and whenever, and approvers can access and approve or reject the expense from their location.
Automatic data extraction
Expense management apps free up your time and energy by automatically extracting data from uploaded receipts, so you don’t have to manually sort through the data yourself, and you can quickly approve/reject expenses and generate reports.
A streamlined process for filing expenses and a centralized dashboard
A streamlined process for filing expenses permits employees to easily click and submit images of receipts directly, and the automation feature of expense management apps can automatically extract the data from the uploaded receipt. Approvers can also view expenses and expense reports from a single dashboard to manage them. A seamless process for filing, storing, and viewing expenses and receipts makes expense management that much simpler.
Flags violating expenses
Many expense management apps can automate the process of validating and flagging expenses. In the traditional expense management system, the employee and/or accounting team might not know what expense warrants a red flag. But with an automatic process to flag these error-filled or policy-violating expenses, this is no longer an issue.
Data analytics
Through data analytics, you can easily see what the numbers say. This type of insight can help you understand what expense to curb to optimize business processes and make informed decisions based on numbers. For example, you could see the differences in spending week to week, month to month, and year to year or even create budgets and assign expenses to a specific budget to see if you’re spending within your means.
Flexible approval/rejection system
Expense management apps often allow you to set up custom approvals where submitted expense reports are approved or rejected based on a company’s reporting hierarchy. Create multi-level approval flows that fit your desired hierarchy or even automate approvals and rejections based on the nature of the expense report.
Digital trail
With an automated process, expense management has a digital trail that logs all expenses and expense reports. If there is a policy violation, anyone can easily track the possible explanations for the violation because of the digital trail.
Policy compliance and violations
Traditional expense management requires an approver to manually validate each expense to eliminate the manual entry errors, and then the approver can check for policy violations. But with an automated expense management app, you can save productive time previously spent analyzing expenses for errors or violations to focus on other pressing needs.
Track work mileage and travel expenses
Frequently, travel expenses and mileage are some of the most common expenses for businesses. So, many expense management apps track mileage, automatically calculate your expenses through GPS or entered locations/distances traveled, and allow you to easily track, scan, and save business expense receipts on any device.
Benefits of automated expense management apps
Modern automated expense management models feature many benefits:
Save money
According to a 2015 survey by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and HRS, processing an expense report takes around 20 minutes and costs $58 in resources.
The same 2015 survey found that 19% of expense reports are full of errors, which take 18 minutes and $52 to remedy. If you multiply that by the number of expense reports for your company or client’s company, you’ll see how inefficient traditional expense management is and how much time and money is wasted.
Reduce manual labor
Employees can directly submit images of receipts that the expense management software automatically extracts data from and quickly generate expense reports. This automation reduces the manual labor required for expense management and allows you and others to prioritize your energy on tasks that require your attention. Reduced manual labor also means fewer manual errors or mistakes.
Maintain productivity and efficiency
Automation allows accountants and finance teams to reduce the manual labor and time spent on expense management processes compared to traditional means. By directly uploading images of receipts for the expense management app to automatically extract data from and generating expense reports, all of the hours wasted can take a few minutes and clicks. Approvers only need to access and approve reports from one centralized dashboard. Automated expense management grants you the ability to use your time in more productive ways.
Additionally, if any policy violation or error is recorded, employers and the employees are notified together, smoothing the path for communication because everything is documented and easily accessible. Employees can provide detailed explanations for any violations or errors, and employers can approve or reject the spend based on the explanation, saving time instead of chasing each other down or waiting for information.
More compliance
Since most expense management apps are automated, practically all expense management processes are automated for you, with virtually no human intervention or error. Such a simple, automated process ensures higher compliance and accountability rates.
Increased visibility and transparency
Automated expense management apps make expense management simplified, which leads to transparency of business processes and trends via analytics (such as information on high category spends, vendors, and spending trends).
With such visibility and transparency, you and any employee can always stay audit-ready and take care of policy violations quickly and clearly because of the documented trail of information and data.
Faster turnaround on reimbursements
An employee will log their expenses, submit an expense, wait for the expense to be approved or rejected, and then the expense management system can generate reports. This simple process translates into a quicker turnaround time for employee reimbursements. Additionally, since all expense claims are verified and flagged if they violate an expense policy, you can feel confident all reimbursements are validated before they’re processed.
Expense management apps
Picking the right app
As technology rapidly advances, so does the number of expense management apps out there. So, we know how challenging and daunting it can be to pick the right app for your business or client. To alleviate this issue, we’ve generated a list of some of the most important features that you should look out for in your expense management apps.
Integrates with other apps
Having an application that smoothly integrates with other apps can help streamline your expense management process and save you more time and energy. For example, most expense management apps integrate into your accounting software for a smooth transfer of information, and many popular expense management apps can even integrate with Uncat. So make sure to look for any possible expense management app integrations to understand how the app and its integrations can further augment your client or business.
Advanced data analytics
An expense management app with advanced data analytics can elevate your business. This feature illustrates what your numbers say. Reports based on data analytics can help you understand employee behavior, company culture, and what expenses a company should curb to optimize its business processes.
Numbers allow you to make informed decisions based on numbers, which is vital in the business world. For example, advanced data analytics provide insight into the differences in spending week to week, month to month, and year to year to help you or a business create new plans and budgets. Without data analytics and reports, you lack numerical values to validate your business proposals.
Organized, seamless process for filing and managing expenses
Any expense management application without an organized, seamless process for filing and managing expenses isn’t worth your time. This is an essential element of automated expense management apps because it relieves you time to spend on tasks worthy of your attention and energy. This feature typically permits employees to easily upload images of receipts directly and see everything from a centralized dashboard.
Most expense management apps also include an automatic data extraction feature, which makes the process even more efficient and organized instead of relying on manual labor. And you can view and manage the expenses from an organized, central dashboard.
Mobile-friendly expense management software
Another must-have feature of expense management apps is being mobile-friendly. You and any employees should be able to file expenses and manage expenses on any device, on the go. This mobile-friendly feature would also provide receipt image capture technology and potentially optical character recognition, which automatically converts printed or handwritten text into machine text.
Overall, this mobile-friendly feature of expense management apps reduces the turnaround time for reimbursements and helps a business eliminate the potential for fraud and policy violations.
User-friendly
If you or any employee submits expenses on behalf of the company, the expense management apps should be user-friendly and easy to set up. Being user-friendly will prevent long-term issues with managing expenses in the future and encourage a smooth expense management process all around.
Real-time policy checks and digital documentation
Another necessary feature for expense management apps is having real-time policy checks backed by digital documentation. If there is a policy violation from an expense, the expense is flagged, and the approver and employee both get notified, enhancing the clarity and credibility of your expense management. And the automated nature of the expense management system has a documentation trail to follow to account for potential reasons for the violation and keep businesses prepared for audits.
Compliance
Most automated expense management apps will comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) or the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, which protects investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures.
Additionally, expense management apps should illustrate a capacity for data storage for up to 7 years, which is required by the IRS if an audit request is ever made. Double-check your potential expense management app to ensure it meets these compliance requirements.
Apps
Now that you have an understanding of what to look for in an expense management application, we’ve provided a list of the most popular expense management apps based on their features and customer reviews from app stores.
Certify Expense
(Feature-rich app)
Emburse Certify Expense is one of the best feature-rich expense management apps for small to midsize-companies.
Numerous features will automate most expense management processes to save your time and money. ReceiptParse extracts data from expense receipts via an optical character recognition. ReportExecutive can auto-generate expense reports by establishing a reporting schedule, creating reminders, and reviewing submissions and submitting reports. And Spend Smart is a vendor rating system to help businesses make informed spending decisions.
Some of the popular features include:
Mobile access and app
Fraud detection
Mileage tracking
ReceiptParse’s optical character recognition
ReportExecutive auto-generation of expense reports
Accounting and app integrations
Audit trail
Spending control
Financial analysis and reporting
Real-time notifications
Compliance and policy management
Spend Smart vendor rating system
In terms of pricing, Certify Expense has 3 pricing plans: Certify Now!, the Professional Plan, and the Enterprise Plan.
Certify Now! Costs $8 per user per month and allows up to 25 users. The Professional plan is quote-based and allows up to 200 employees. The Enterprise plan is also quote-based and is made for businesses with more than 200 employees. The Professional and Enterprise plans also grant additional features in addition to the popular features of the Certify Now! Plan, including a dashboard for travel management, automated invoicing, more integrations, receipt backup, and other features.
Dext
Dext is a popular expense tracking solution that sorts through a business or client’s documents via optical recognition technology and smoothly integrates them with your accounting software, automating manual processes that typically take you hours.
With accurate data extraction from photos, physical receipts, or pdfs from emails, accountants and bookkeepers can work hands-free and prioritize their energy using those extracted numbers to provide meaningful reporting and advice for their business or client’s financial decisions.
At the heart of Dext are two products: Dext Prepare (formerly Receipt Bank) and Dext Precision (formerly Xavier). Dext Prepare lets you digitally capture, code, and manage your business or client’s financial transactions. Dext Precision identifies errors in financial transactions before they become issues.
Some of the popular features include:
Compliance with tax laws and audits through 10 year minimum data storage
Accounting integrations
Mobile access
Financial reporting
Budgeting/Forecasting
User friendly interface
Real-time updates
Dext’s pricing varies for accounting/bookkeeping firms and small to medium businesses, but there are enterprise solutions available too. The Premium solution permits up to 20 users and 3,000 monthly documents. The Enterprise solution allows up to 30 users and 4,000 monthly documents.
Divvy
Divvy is an expense management software with two main components: physical and virtual charge cards and expense management software to track spending from the cards.
Divvy makes it easy to manage spending by combining the ability to manage individuals and budgets while recording receipts and seamlessly syncing with accounting software. With Divvy, you can get a business credit card for employees, an expense management and budgeting tool, and integration into accounting software all-in-one.
Plus, Divvy admins can easily view and manage expenses from all charge cards, send funds requested by employees, categorize or set auto-categorizations for transactions, and see spending in real-time from a single location.
Some of the popular features include:
User-friendly system
Budgeting/Forecasting
Receipt capture and simple digital receipt management
Mobile and desktop access
Audit trail
Automated receipt matching, rule-based auto-categorization, and expense reports
Accounting and app integrations
Enforceable budgets to prevent fraud and overcharges
Easy credit line control and user customization
Quick reimbursements
Real-time visibility
Advanced data analytics
One of the most notable elements of Divvy’s service is that it is free, regardless of your firm or business’s size. Whether you’re a startup, small business, enterprise, or accounting/bookkeeping firm, Divvy is free to use with the potential to earn rewards.
Emburse Abacus
(Popular for quick expense approvals)
Emburse Abacus is an expense management app noted for its quick expense approvals. Abacus has a great system of reimbursement, reconciliation of corporate credit cards, and implementation of the company expense policy.
Abacus drafts expenses from receipts, card transactions, previous behavior/actions, CRM fields, and geolocation—which ensures your records are thorough and error-free. Automation of expense policy and customized approval hierarchy makes Abacus stand out.
To eliminate policy violations from the start, Abacus applies a company’s policy rules to the expenses before they’re even submitted. Once submitted, you can create customized approval flows to send the expense to the proper approver, and then Abacus reimburses the expense with direct deposits to the employee’s bank account.
Some of the popular features include:
Customized approval flows to the best-matched approver
Custom analysis reports
Mileage tracking
Mobile access
Audited and documented trail
Real-time reporting and analytics
Emburse card issuing
Automated expense policy and approval hierarchy
In terms of pricing, Emburse Abacus has 3 pricing plans.
Emburse Spend is a free solution best for small businesses and firms. The Professional plan is ideal for companies or firms with high expense volumes and advanced workflows and includes all features from Emburse Spend and more, but the pricing varies per customer. The Enterprise plan is a solution best for companies or firms with complex workflows and multiple subsidiaries and includes all features from the Professional plan and more, but the pricing varies per customer.
Expensify (Highly rated overall)
Expensify is one of the best overall expense tracker and management apps a business can use. It’s a good all-around solution for firms and businesses of any size. From expense report management to tracking receipts, Expensify does it all.
Expense receipts can be submitted by taking a picture or scanning it directly to accountants, and its SmartScan technology eliminates manual data entry, allowing for immediate expense approval or rejection from the application. Uploaded receipts and expenses can be categorized, coded, grouped, and entered into the books without any extra work or steps. Expensify manages your receipts and expenses and can even automatically submit a client’s business expenses for approval and reimbursement.
Some of the popular features include:
Unlimited receipt scanning
Mobile access
Audit trail
GPS mileage tracking built into the app with real-time travel notifications
Next-day reimbursement on approved expense reports
Accounting and app integration (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, and others)
Import personal and business /corporate credit cards
Configuration of policy rules and spending limits
Custom expense reports
User friendly interface
Price-wise, Expensify offers many plans to fit your needs. For businesses, there is the Collect Plan—which is $5 per user per month with additional tax tracking features—and the Control Plan—which is $9 per user per month and includes the Collect Plan plus the ability to reconcile statements from multiple cards and greater customization and integration. Expensify also offers pay-per-use plans and individual/self-employed plans as well.
Ramp
Ramp is an expense management solution for any business size, but especially mid-sized companies and firms.
By consolidating corporate cards, expense management, bill payments, accounting, and reporting into one simple and free solution, Ramp is a popular finance platform to save you time and money. Get immediate responses—either texts or emails— after purchases to complete the submission and respond to pass receipts and notes live in real-time to close the books faster.
Some of the popular features include:
User friendly
Mobile friendly
Budgeting/Forecasting
1.5% cash back on all card purchases
Limits and transaction-level card restrictions
Pay bills easily
Multi-level approvals
Accounting and app integrations
Real-time visibility, reporting, and analytics
Reimbursement
Policy management
Audit trail and clear documentation
One surprising benefit of Ramp is that there is no cost, as Ramp is free to use!
SAP Concur (Most popular for travel-related expense management)
SAP Concur is one of the best-integrated travel, expense, and invoice management solutions and is especially noted for its travel-related expense management.
Users can book business flights and approve travel invoices wherever and whenever. Accountants can use SAP Concur’s app to quickly review and approve/reject reports and travel requests or even make changes to travel plans and itineraries (meetings, meals, hotel bookings, flights). Even when planning for a business trip or traveling, users can use an estimated travel budget for their company to get customized travel suggestions and prices.
With SAP Concur, charges are quickly populated into expense reports, and invoice approvals are automated. See what you or your client’s business is spending without fearing blind spots in the budget with real-time data and AI auditing of transactions. But SAP Concur is a resource useful for those without major travel expenses as well.
Some of the popular features include:
Fraud detection
Mileage tracking
Mobile access and app
Policy management and compliance enforcement
Enhanced reporting and analytics
Real-time alerts and updates
Booking and itinerary management
User friendly
Real-time reporting and analytics
Restriction management
1099 preparation and audit trails
Accounting and app integrations
Price-wise, SAP Concur and its solutions are quote-based, so you’ll need to reach out to create a pricing plan or package to suit your needs.
Shoeboxed (Highly rated for digitization of receipts)
Shoeboxed is an expense tracking application with some of the best digitization of receipts. This app helps sole proprietors and small to medium-sized businesses sort through and categorize business expense receipts and track mileage and business cards.
Clients can submit receipts via a mobile app, postage-paid Magic Envelopes, or eReceipt uploaders, which Shoeboxed automatically scans for data, enters the data, and categorizes the data into an online account accepted by the IRS. Receipts are sorted and instantly archived, but they can also be exported to integrated solutions like QuickBooks, Excel, Xero, and other solutions. Shoeboxed also helps maximize tax deductions during tax season and ensures you or your client’s business is audited.
Some of the popular features include:
Accounting and app integration
Mobile apps for Android and iOS
Easy expense filing and tracking
Optical character recognition
Human verification of converted reportsDigital receipt management and storage
Detailed, custom reporting
Automatic detection and categorization of expenses
Shoeboxed offers different pricing plans to fit your needs that vary depending on whether you pay monthly or annually.
The Startup Plan is used by individuals and freelancers. It typically costs $29 per month (or $23 per month if paying annually) and includes 50 digital documents per month, 25 physical documents per month, unlimited users, unlimited file storage, access to the iOS App, and 1 prepaid Magic Envelope per month.
The Professional Plan, used by professionals and small businesses, typically costs $59 per month (or $47 per month if paying annually) and includes 150 digital documents per month, 150 physical documents per month, unlimited prepaid Magic Envelopes, QBO integration, and the rest of the Startup Plan’s features.
The Business Plan, for businesses and firms with high volumes, typically costs $89 (or $71 per month if paying annually) and includes 300 digital documents per month, 300 physical documents per month, and the rest of the Business Plan’s features.
Tallie
Tallie by Emburse is a cloud expense management application for micro and small businesses and accounting firms.
Tallie scans receipts through its Optical Character Recognition algorithms to find key expense information to import, whether it's automatically matching credit card transactions and receipts or categorizing your transactions based on your experience, so you can save time and eliminate manual errors. Plus, Tallie uses existing configurations in your accounting software to pre-configure your expense environment to match.
Some of the popular features include:
Accounting and app integrations
Mobile app access
Mileage tracking
Auto-categorization
Real-time reporting
Audit trail
Unlimited receipt uploads and scans
Multi-level approval routing
Policy management and enforcement
Tallie’s pricing consists of three tiers.
The Basic Accounting tier—$50 per month—includes 5 users (though you can add additional users for $9 per month per user) and captures receipts and expenses on the go, tracks and manages company card and employee expenses, and offers customizable approval chains and QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, and Xero integrations.
The Cash Control tier—$95 per month—includes 9 users (though you can add additional users for $10 per month per user) and The Basic Accounting tier’s features in addition to automation of expense reimbursements and integration with Bill.com.
The Enterprise tier—$200 per month—includes 18 users (though you can add additional users for $11 per month per user) and The Cash Control tier features in addition to Cash Control, Sage Intacct, and Oracle NetSuite integrations.
Zoho Expense (Highly rated and low-cost)
Zoho Expense is another one of the best overall and low-cost expense management apps on the market.
This app allows you to easily store digital copies of receipts and record expenses in real-time. Pin receipts to reports, categorize expenses, and add additional fields. Connect credit cards to Zoho Expense to automatically import and manage transactions and use analytics to curb excessive spending and keep policy violations in check.
Some of the popular features include:
Built-in GPS and maps to automatically log mileage and travel expenses
Add information while offline
Batch expenses together
Accounting and app integration
Automatic imports of transactions
Enhanced reporting and analytics
Scalable platform
Multilevel approval
Audit trail report
In terms of pricing, Zoho Expense has very cost-effective plans. Zoho Expense is free for up to 3 users to start but has three additional plans: the Standard Plan—which is $3 per user per month and includes the Free Plan plus other features—the Premium Plan—which is $5 per user per month and includes the Standard Plan and other features—and the Enterprise Plan—which is $8 per user per month and includes the Premium Plan and additional features.
Uncat + expense management
While many expense tracking and management applications allow your clients, employees, or staff members to upload receipts into your accounting software through the application, email, or mobile app, receipts don’t always provide the clarity needed to categorize transactions.
Uncategorized expenses are any expenses that appear in a transaction record—typically within an accounting software like QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero—that don’t have an accounting category attached to it—such as meals and entertainment, software, costs of goods sold, etc. Popular sources of uncategorized expenses include Amazon, Walmart, Costco, Staples, and other companies.
Uncategorized expenses are especially tiresome and headache-inducing for accountants and bookkeepers because accounting and bookkeeping professionals rely on categorization to accurately maintain accounting records and tie expenses to specific accounts in the general ledger. Without proper expense categorization, it’s impossible to manage and close the books successfully.
For example, a charge appears in the transaction record for $65.23 at Amazon. Accountants and bookkeepers have no way of knowing if the charge was for office supplies, a gift card, a new accounting book, or something else entirely. So, accountants and bookkeepers cannot accurately categorize the transaction and charge it to a specific account. In the end, everyone is left frustrated with inaccurate books.
But even with the advent of self-serving accounting software like QuickBooks online or expense management apps where users can add upload expenses and receipts (which often don’t provide enough information themselves) and categorize the transactions, it’s still challenging for many users to enter the information or accurate information, especially through the standard spreadsheet and email exporting process of traditional expense management.
Uncat is a great solution to integrate with popular expense management applications. Uncat’s simple, automated approach frees up your time and energy.
Here’s how it works:
Uncat syncs uncategorized transactions from QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and Xero, automatically notifying your client when there are transactions that need answers and attention.
Your client enters descriptions, uploads receipts, and fills out any other information you might need from them via Uncat.
Uncat notifies you—the accountant/bookkeeper—when your client updates transactions so you can review and categorize them in Uncat.
Uncat syncs your selections into your accounting software so you can close books.
⭐️ Did you know Uncat saves an average of 12 hours and $283 per month on basic bookkeeping tasks? Check out our time-savings calculator ⭐️
Uncat integrates well with many expense management applications—including Dext, Expensify, Tallie, Shoeboxed, AutoEntry, Hubdoc, and many others—by retrieving information from your clients about uncategorized expenses, so you have more transparency. Quickly and easily collect the necessary information to categorize and track uncategorized expenses in most expense management and tracking applications via Uncat.
As an uncategorized expense management software, Uncat can be a friction-reducing component alongside your expense management software and tech stack to free up your time and focus on tasks that are worthy of your energy and dedicated attention. No more exporting and waiting on dozens of spreadsheets to categorize your uncategorized expenses!
Conclusion
Thanks for sticking around! We hope this resource can help you deepen your understanding of the expense management industry and move forward with a better grasp of automated, modern expense management solutions. With the rapid advancement of technology, it’s important to consider optimizing and streamlining your firm by automating expense management and eliminating manual data entry so you can focus on what matters most for your firm or business.
While we’re at it, make sure to check out our tutorials page for a recorded demo and other videos, book a live demo, or claim your 14-day free trial of Uncat!