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A guide to getting your head around digital expense jargon

1st Sep 2017
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Webexpenses provides award-winning, cloud-based software.

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Accountants are used to coping with a scary amount of industry acronyms and terminology. There are entire dictionaries devoted to the various terms a finance professional can expect to face, from COGS to liquidity ratios.

If that wasn’t tough enough, a new layer has been added to the accountancy lexicon, thanks to the transition from paper to digital processes. Along with smarter and faster ways to work - technology has brought a new set of techy terms to grapple with.

This poses a particular challenge when it comes to expense management. Whether you’re advising clients on expense systems or trying to find one for yourself, it really does pay to ‘speak the language’.

Here’s a look at some of the most common terms you’re liable to face when delving into the world of digital expense management:

API

This is an acronym for ‘Application Programme Interface’. It’s basically the way that a system is set up to speak to other systems. For expense management, it’s a really important feature because it’s what determines how well it integrates with third party accounting packages.

A system such as webexpenses provides an API which is constantly updated and refined to make sure it’s fully compatible with all of the major accountancy suites from providers such as Sage and Xero.

BYOD or COPE?

The move to digital systems means that expense management is no longer something that needs to be done from behind an office desk and a desktop PC. So BYOD and COPE are two acronyms to describe alternative ways that companies can provide a more flexible way to access technology.

BYOD stands for ‘bring your own device’. This is an approach in which the business will allow staff to use their personal devices, whether it’s a laptop, tablet or smartphone.

COPE is an acronym for ‘corporate owned, personally enabled’. This is when a company will provide employees with a business phone but allow it to be also used for non-work purposes.

Data Analytics

It’s an impressive sounding term for something really simple - using data to scrunch numbers. For something like expense management, it’s finding new ways to use the wealth of data that’s automatically generated on every aspect of employee costs.

With powerful reporting tools, analytics allows a light to be shined on those areas of company finances that may have previously remained hidden. It lets areas of weakness to be exposed and spending patterns and trends to be identified.

The Cloud

It’s one of those terms that’s ubiquitous - cloud accounting, cloud systems, cloud apps, cloud storage - but it’s not always obvious what it actually means. It’s a slightly fuzzy term but it’s generally used to describe any process in which data is shared and stored via the Internet.

So a cloud-based expense management system doesn’t need to be loaded into each and every device that uses it. The software and data is stored on a third-party server and can be accessed in exactly the same way as you would access any website.

It creates a fast and simple way to handle employee reimbursements with systems having the scalability and flexibility to grow alongside a business. They’re equally effective handling a simple start-up as they are multinational corporation.

Real-Time Data

A consequence of handling information via the ‘cloud’ is that it’s instantly available. This is what’s referred to when you see references to ‘real-time processes’ and ‘real-time systems’.

Applied to expense management, it means that rather than having to wait days or even weeks for costs to be processed, the information is available instantly. This unlocks the ability to use real-time tools such as the way webexpenses feature which allows automatic checks to be made, at point-of-entry, to ensure all costs fall within policy.

Webexpenses provides a smarter way to manage and monitor employee expenses. Find out how it can handle your petty cash by requesting a free demo

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