Question 1

What is expense management?

Accepted Answer

Expense management is the process of tracking and controlling employee spending for travel, events, supplies, procurement, stipends, and more. Companies do this by setting and enforcing policies to govern employee expenses and reimbursements. Expense management involves ensuring that IRS-compliant documentation is collected for each expense, including receipts and memos, so the accounting team has what they need to close the books at month end. The traditional approach to expense management is paper expense tracking. Employees manually submit receipts and expense reports with details from the receipts, the reason for the expense, and any teammates or clients in attendance. The accounting team must manually review expense reports and enter data into the ERP to close the books.

The most effective, automated way to manage expenses is expense management software. This software can automatically approve expenses that comply with a company’s expense policy and alert managers to expenses needing review. Modern expense management software can also remind employees to submit receipts and memos and make it easy for them to upload photos of receipts via text message and Slack. It can use OCR technology to automatically match receipts to the right transactions and populate fields, and even auto-generate receipts with no human data entry. Approved expenses with all required documentation are automatically routed to accounting for close or reimbursement. This increases compliance and the speed of reconciliation.

Question 2

How to manage expenses?

Accepted Answer

Managing expenses requires visibility across multiple types of spending — travel, procurement, operating expenses, and more. Most companies use multiple tools for these types of spend, so to manage expenses, they need to sign in and out of multiple tools all day just to manage expenses.

This is not an efficient or accurate way to manage expenses because it wastes time, incurs excess SaaS costs, and requires a lot of manual work to compile a single view. This approach to manage expenses also forces companies to be reactive because they have to wait for data to populate in their various tools and then carry it over to a single source for analysis and review.

The best way to manage expenses is through a proactive approach with real-time visibility of budgets and actual expenses. This will allow companies to plan a budget in advance of the required spend, allocate the budget to employees and managers with embedded policies, track their expenses against the plan, and make adjustments if a budget is approaching limits in one area or there is unused budget to reallocate. To manage expenses the right way, companies also need real-time reporting and anomaly detection to improve and accelerate their decision-making.

Question 3

What types of expenses does a business need to manage?

Accepted Answer

Common business expenses include travel and entertainment or T&E costs, consulting fees, internet bills, advertising and marketing, rent, and taxes. By organizing these costs into business expense categories, companies can more effectively create budgets, correctly file taxes, controls expenses, and maintain accurate books.

Every industry has a set of commonly used business expense categories. Depending on the accounting tool a company uses, there may already be expense categories set up. Business travel and entertainment (T&E) is one of the biggest expense categories and is highly important to track and control closely. Group events, flights, tickets to sports and concerts, galas, and networking events fall into this category. Business meals and travel expenses can get out of hand, so it's imperative to keep accurate records and receipts and control costs for this expense category from the outset.

Without a solid expense management software and accounting system, the potential for overspending is high across these expense categories. Fortunately, having clear categories and policies and effective expense management software can ensure that you proactively control spend and spot any deviations in real time.

Spend management software

The future of expense management.

Manage global spend and close the books in real time — with unmatched automation of manual expense work.

The future of expense management.

Manage global spend and close the books in real time — with unmatched automation of manual expense work.

All your spend, all in one place.

Control global spend smarter with a single source of truth.

Cards

Reimbursements

Bill pay

Business account

Travel

Embed your policy in every swipe.

You can’t be everywhere, but with Brex your policy can. AI will auto-enforce your custom controls across Brex card, reimbursements, travel platform, and invoices.

Automate expense reviews.

Don’t waste hours reviewing every expense and risk missing ones that actually need a closer look — let Brex AI assist you.

“By making it easier for employees to comply, finance went from the bad cop to the hero.”

Get expense reports on time, automatically.

Brex automates document collection, and Brex Assistant helps employees with questions and tasks — so you can close the books faster.

Increase accountability with Live Budgets.™

Create budgets in 100+ currencies to enable spend by department, individual, or entity, and compare vs. actuals in real time. Brex AI will even flag anomalous activity to help you keep everyone on budget globally.

“P&L owners have a real-time view into their budgets.”

End the month-end hassle.

Brex is built for continuous close.

Insights you can act on.

Run real-time spend and budget reports across cards, reimbursements, travel, and payments to find ways to save and improve ROI. Customize AI-powered insights, such as for spikes in spending, that help improve decision making.

Reimburse employees anywhere, fast.

US and international employees can get reimbursed in three days or less — and your policy will be auto-applied.

Manage spend globally, operate locally.

Brex makes it easy to manage global spend across locations and operate in virtually any currency.

Welcome to the future of expense management.

Let’s talk about how Brex can help you automate control and compliance, and gain real-time insights to improve ROI.

Welcome to the future of expense management.

Let’s talk about how Brex can help you automate control and compliance, and gain real-time insights to improve ROI.

FAQ