Ricoh Canada

Employee​​ Expense Management Solution

Automated expense management saves money, frees staff time and improves reporting and visibility

About Ricoh Canada

For over 80 years, Ricoh has been helping customers with their workplace needs. As a global technology company specializing in business services, imaging equipment, production print solutions, document management solutions and IT services, Ricoh delivers innovative solutions that empower the digital workplace. Ricoh is committed to providing excellence and improving the quality of work and living as well as the sustainability of its customers.

“The Employee Expense Management Solution has helped us gain lean proficiencies in our accounts payable department, which now processes over a thousand expense reports on a monthly basis with less than 50 percent of the work effort."

Rich Perri

Chief Financial Officer

Ricoh Canada

The Challenge

Expense management is a notoriously time-consuming and labour intensive task — and Ricoh's own expense management was no exception. Office personnel had to manage receipts, spreadsheets, reports, submittals and routing for management approvals, all in a paper-based system that was prone to delays and errors.

Some of our biggest challenges were around getting approvals. If expenses take a month to process, some people could have several thousand dollars in expenses outstanding.

The reliance on manual, paper-based processing caused significant bottlenecks throughout the expense workflow. This led to delayed reimbursement and also created headaches for the finance department around reconciliation at month and quarter end periods.

Solution

Ricoh's Employee Expense Management Solution has automated the expense management process from start to finish — freeing up staff time, reducing delays and improving reporting and visibility.

The process starts by taking a picture of a receipt, entering the data online and submitting it through the system. When it's approved by their manager and by finance, the employee gets an alert.

As a web-based, cloud-enabled ERP integrated solution, it streamlines the entire lifecycle of expense submissions and approvals. All steps of the process that were formerly manual are combined into a single, automated workflow.

Both office and mobile workers can now use the solution to submit expenses and attach receipts from any location, and receive automated notifications at every step of the approval process. It also equips employees, managers and the finance department with reporting and records access for increased visibility.

Result

Man using calculator and laptop computer.

Now, expenses are processed more quickly and easily—with fewer errors than before. Ricoh's Employee Expense Management Solution allows the staff to submit their expenses in a fraction of the time compared to the previous system. This has allowed salespeople to go back to their core function: driving business and working with customers.

As a digital solution, it has eliminated or reduced costs for Ricoh across a number of areas, including a 30 percent reduction in courier costs and significantly lowered printing costs. It has also enabled us to gain lean proficiencies in our accounts payable department, which now processes over a thousand expense reports on a monthly basis with less than 50 percent of the work effort.

Now that employees have regained control over their time, they are more productive and better focused. All manual steps have been combined into a simplified and automated workflow, leading to a reduction in the total time to process an expense report and a decrease in the number of errors. Finally, management now has more visibility into the lifecycle of expense documents, providing opportunities for ongoing streamlining and optimisation.

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