expenses

QuickBooks Integration for your Free Purchase Order Software

QuickBooks is the most popular Accounting system in use by the Free-Procurement community, so we thought we’d give you a little bonus gift with the 2014 release of SpendMap.

We’ve built direct integration with QuickBooks to push approved invoices (bills) and expense reimbursement transactions directly into your QuickBooks database, without the need for batch file exports and imports.

So, for example, once you have approved a supplier’s invoice for payment, SpendMap will create a pending Bill in QuickBooks, so you can cut a check to the supplier and post the transaction to your G/L, with no duplicate data entry.

Direct QuickBooks integration is coming soon, along with 20 or so other new features and capabilities, in the 2014 release of the free version of SpendMap.

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New Expense Reimbursement Requests in 2014 Release of SpendMap

We are happy to officially announce the new Expense Reimbursement Approval functionality as part of the 2014 release of SpendMap, which also includes more than a dozen other new features and capabilities.

Companies usually spend money in two ways; either employees process Requisitions and Purchase Orders, or they just spend their own money and expense it later. By adding Expense Reimbursement Requests to our world-class e-procurement toolset, we are empowering our clients to capture and report on all non-payroll spending in one place.

With the new Expense Reimbursement approval features in SpendMap (sometimes called Expense Management, Expense Reporting, Travel and Expense, or T&E), you can replace your paper or Excel-based “expense sheets”, to reduce paperwork, accelerate the approval process, and simplify reporting for employee expense reimbursements.

expense reimbursements and approval

Much like Purchase Requisitions in SpendMap, Expense Reimbursement Requests can be routed for online approval based on predefined business rules, to ensure that proper approvals are obtained for every expense, every time, and Managers can receive automatic e-mail notifications of pending Requests.  Complete expense details are at the Approver’s fingertips, including previous spending history, up-to-date budget status, as well as a copy of any scanned receipts.

Once approved, SpendMap can send a “check request” to the Accounting, ERP or Payroll System to issue payment to the employee, with no duplicate data entry.

In addition to eliminating paperwork and accelerating the approval process, approved Expense Reimbursement Requests will update spending history, budgets, and many other areas of SpendMap.

Stay tuned for more details about the 2014 release in the new year…

Expense Reimbursement Requests in your Free PO System

We’ve had a few requests from the Free-Procurement community for the ability to enter a “Request for Reimbursement” in SpendMap.  This has already been added to the system and is coming in the 2014 release of SpendMap.

Also known as “expense management” and “expense reports”, this includes the ability for staff to request reimbursement for something that they purchased and paid for personally, instead of creating a Requisition or Purchase Order in the procurement system.

expense reimbursementsWhat role do expense reimbursements play in your Purchasing process?

Some would argue that it should be avoided and that expense reimbursement is not ideal from a Spend Management perspective, since the approval process comes after the purchase transaction (in a perfect world, all spending would be approved before the products or services are ordered).  But in some cases it’s just not practical to create a Purchase Order for everything that you buy.  Common examples include things like travel expenses, meals and entertainment, and so on.

In any event, while we always advocate for pre-purchase spend control whenever possible, we understand that expense reimbursements play an important role in some Purchasing environments, and we have already added Expense Reimbursement functionality to SpendMap, allowing users to submit expense reimbursement requests, which can be routed for online approval based on user-definable business rules, just like Purchase Requisitions.  Once approved, SpendMap will send a “check request” to your Accounting System to process payment to the employee, update the status of the cost center’s budgets, and so on, all without the hassle, errors and delays that are inherent with paper-based expense reports.

These new features will be available in the 2014 release of the Free Version of SpendMap.

On a separate but related note, don’t forget that SpendMap also supports Non-PO Invoice approval, for things like rent and utilities, where it’s also not practical to create Purchase Orders in advance, but approval of a supplier’s invoice is still required.  For details, check out this section of the Online Help…
– Invoice Approval > Types of Invoices and Workflow