Employee wellness claims, business travel expenses, and work benefit claims. Throughout their duties, employees are typically expected to rack up business expenses.
As an employer, you have a responsibility to ensure that employees are rightfully reimbursed. However, from a 2019 local survey, it was determined that 56% of Singaporean business travelers forfeited expense claims in the previous year.
This added up to a total of more than $1,300 in claims being forfeited by employees. Respondents reported that laborious paperwork and inaccurate reimbursements were the main reasons why they chose not to submit their claims.
As HR professionals and employers, this is a rather worrisome trend. An overly convoluted system will only cause employees to make mistakes when submitting expense claims. Consequently, this can result in employees being under or over-reimbursed which can complicate financial reporting and compliance.
Advancements in system automation now mean that all of this can be easily simplified. In this article, we look at why organizations should consider digitalizing their claims processing systems.
Automation has eliminated the need for employees to be involved in a multitude of non-value-added tasks. Filing and processing employee travel expense claims are one of those tasks. As can be seen in the demonstration below, expense claims can be extremely time-consuming and paper-intensive.
Without the use of automation, a typical expense claims would be processed as follows:
Now, imagine duplicating this process for 20,000 employees, 365 days a year. The large volume of documents and paperwork required means that administrative staff are forced to spend time searching for, copying, and filing documents.
Besides being non-value added, there is also the added risk of documents being misplaced or damaged along the way. This results in delays or mistakes being made when processing claims.
In many ways, organizations often fail to recognize the importance of having an efficient claims processing system. Usually, employees are forced to fill up pages of forms just to submit a simple claim. This is a nightmare for both the HR department and employees alike as both parties are required to jump through various hoops just to get things done.
With IQ Dynamics’ benefit and claims system, employees can submit their expenses via an online web portal that can be accessed from both PCs and mobile devices. This eliminates the need for paperwork to be submitted which eliminates the need for filing whilst reducing the risk of documents becoming lost in transit.
Also, thanks to its user-friendly interface, employees will find our system both intuitive and easy-to-use. Our claims system also recognizes the type of claim being made and will toggle to the respective form, reducing the risk of errors being made when submitting claims.
Delays in payout claims can be frustrating for employees who have made payments out of pocket throughout their duties. This is especially relevant for wellness benefit claims such as those related to medical treatment or employee welfare. Consequently, this can have a negative effect on an employee’s cash flow and morale.
The situation above highlights exactly why organizations need to ensure that claims are processed and paid back quickly to employees. Besides keeping things efficient, ensuring that employees are quickly reimbursed sends a positive message to the workforce i.e. a declaration that employee well-being is of utmost importance.
Unfortunately, this is not usually the case with many employers. The fact that claims are passed through various departments before finally being processed for payout means that reimbursements can be delayed by as much as 2 months at a time. This is because documents can sometimes be misplaced or lost which further slows things down.
Recognizing this problem, IQ Dynamics’ HRMS suite ensures seamless integration between the travel expense claims process with that of employee payroll. Integrating both functions reduces the need for rework and ensures the quick processing of claims. Hence, ensuring a reduced workload for both HR and accounting whilst minimizing reimbursement payouts.
Traveling for business is without a doubt extremely stressful. As was mentioned in the Straits Times, some 43% of Singaporean travelers were often stressed out by having to plan out the logistics of their trip. Besides having to work in an unfamiliar location, employees also had to worry about being out of pocket when making travel arrangements.
Instead of subjecting employees to such stress needlessly, IQ Dynamics’ utilizes a prerequisite travel claim function that allows employees to pre-approve travel expense claims. This cuts out plenty of red tape and helps to reduce non-value-added administrative tasks.
This will undoubtedly reduce an employee’s stress levels and help him/her to focus on achieving key business goals. As an added safeguard, managers and employers can set the limit on pre-approved claims whilst also maintaining visibility over the nature of any submitted travel expense claims.
The processing of employee travel expense claims while admittedly dull is a crucial part of any organization’s business operations. At IQ Dynamics, we aim to make this process as painless as possible for both employees and employers. If you would like to get a demo of our Benefit and Claims System, you can drop us an enquiry here!