Your employees need to be reimbursed for their business expenses, and you need to make sure those expenses are all valid and properly accounted for.

That's where expense management comes in: with the right systems in place, employees can promptly report and get reimbursed for expenses, and you can accurately monitor and record them.

By adhering to a few best practices, you can ensure that your expense management strategy is as efficient and effective as possible.

• Establish a clear expense policy: Both employees and administrators should have a clear understanding of what qualifies as a business expense, how often expense reports should be created, who those reports should be sent to, and when they should be approved.

• Adopt easy reporting tools: Don't expect people to create Excel spreadsheets detailing all their expenses. Instead, choose expense management software that makes everyone's lives easier.

• Prioritize promptness: Keep employees and admins happy by ensuring that all expense reports can feasibly be processed in a timely manner. You can do so by setting deadlines by which employees must submit their reports, and giving admins a clear timeframe in which they must review and approve them.

• Embrace accountability: Make sure everyone knows who's responsible for ensuring all reports adhere to the expense policy.

• Audit often: Cut down on fraud by conducting regular receipt audits and keeping an eye out for overstated or mischaracterized expenses.

It all comes down to a few core benefits:

• Fewer mistakes: People make mistakes, but fine-tuned software is far less likely to. SmartScan, for example, eliminates the potential for human error when inputting information from receipts.

• Faster processing: Streamlined tools for creating, submitting, reviewing, and approving reports means those reports are taken care of in a snap.

• Increased productivity: The less time employees spend manually creating and examining expense reports, the more time they can spend doing, well, anything else.

• Reduced waste: Expense reporting mistakes cost money, both in unnecessary reimbursements and employee time. But when you leave the tedious calculations to expense management software, you can save that money for more important things.

And when it comes time to file taxes and validate employees' expenses, expense management software also makes it easier for companies to stay compliant and prevent fraud.

The easiest way to track expenses is to automate the process. With Expensify, you simply swipe your Expensify Card or snap a photo of a receipt and SmartScan takes care of the rest — categorizing, matching, and submitting expenses in realtime. No spreadsheets, no guesswork.

Common types of business expenses include travel (flights, hotels, transportation), meals and entertainment, office supplies, software subscriptions, and mileage. Expensify makes it easy to track, tag, and report these expenses by category for better visibility and control.

Expense management is focused on tracking and reimbursing employee expenses after they occur. Spend management takes it a step further — proactively controlling how money is spent in the first place. Expensify combines both in one platform, helping teams plan, monitor, and optimize spending in realtime.

It’s not the only key — but it’s a major one. Efficient expense management helps businesses reduce waste, catch errors early, and make informed decisions that protect margins. With Expensify, you get the insights and automation needed to keep spending lean and strategic.

Expenses are typically classified by category (like travel, meals, or software), department, and sometimes project or client. In Expensify, classification is automatic based on rules you set — so expenses are tagged accurately without the manual work.