Here at Fulcrum, we often have people traveling for work to conferences, trade shows, presentations, and lectures. Upon their return to the office, they have to turn in the much dreaded expense report for approval and reimbursement. In my opinion, there isn’t anything worse you can do than making the employee do it over and over again because it didn’t include the complete trip details. If you use Fulcrum, I’ve created an expense app to create a hassle-free expense tracker.
The process of completing an expense report usually involves tracking down receipts for registrations, hotel, rental car, cabs, airfare, food, etc. Most times, the employee is not the one who actually books their own travel or registration, so ensuring they have included this on their expense report is often the most overlooked detail I see. Depending on the trip, gathering the necessary paperwork can take an hour or more, even if you are organized. In the past, I often got emails with multiple screenshots of receipts, along with wrinkled or smudged paper receipts, sometimes a business card from the cab driver, and I have been sent a picture of a plate of food. Don’t get me wrong, all these methods (some more creative than others) worked as documentation for us, but took a lot of unnecessary time to research and process when you have several different methods of submission and are lacking full details.
I wanted an easier and consistent way for employees to keep track of receipts and a way to prepare them for the expense report without the hassle of holding on to all their physical receipts. So, I built a simple Fulcrum form app that is easy to catalog receipts and quick to produce an itemized expense report. This app could be used by any Fulcrum user with no additional costs. Here is how it works:
Setup Instructions:
1) Once you are signed into Fulcrum, add a new app, search under Finance, and add the Expense Report App V2 to your organization.
2) After you have added the app to your organization, you will want to give those in your organization access through Settings > Members > Edit Button. By default, each new user is granted “standard user” permissions. Give your HR person who needs access to all expense reports a “Manager” role.
3) Make sure to check the box for “Auto Assign Records.” This makes it possible for owners and managers of the account to see expenses reports company wide, but each user can only view their own expense reports.
User Instructions:
1) Start by logging your trip details on the main page. These fields are mandatory. The bottom field lets you log each receipt on your trip.
2) If you are short on time just capture the photo of each receipt. You can enter the data from the receipt in your hotel room or at a later time if you are in a hurry.
3) Once your trip is complete you just tap the “Generate Report” button in the bottom left of the app. Email the document to yourself.
With Fulcrum, our employees now have a quick, hassle-free way to record their expenses without the pain of keeping up with all the paper receipts. This app not only saves time for travelers it makes expense reporting easy for users, approvers and administrators. Try it for free today, and your HR Manager will thank you later.