A guaranteed cause of friction between sales staff
and the accounts department is the submission and payment of expenses
claims. If it's a drag to do,
then it doesn't get done on any sort of regular basis, which leads to
recoverable items not being charged and legitimate VAT inputs not being
recorded in the correct period. If staff have an attractive, well-thought-out,
user-friendly system on their PC they are going to be much more inclined
to use it than if they have to wrestle with some unforgiving spreadsheet,
knocked up in a hurry by someone who left the company five years ago.
By the same token, if the accounts people
receive expenses claims laid out in a logical format, under heading
which match their ledger codes, with VAT itemized, vouchers numbered,
and, where appropriate, details of the client and job, they are much
more likely to turn them round fast.
As with time recording, our expenses databases
are practical because we’ve been using them ourselves for yonks
and we customise them to match your accounting system.
This is something which will probably pay for itself within a few weeks.
After that, all the rest is extra profit.
