For Expense Reporting in Dynamics GP, there are 2 viable options:
Excel Templates & Integration Tools
Option 1.) Look, there’s nothing wrong with using Excel for Expense Reporting. The employee travels, completes an Excel sheet (if you’re crafty, you can make it so that they can do it on their phone while on the go), they get it to their manager to approve & then it works its way to accounting.
The piece that many Dynamics GP accounting teams miss is INTEGRATING that activity instead of manually keying it in Dynamics GP.
This can EASILY be done with Integration Manager or our favorite integration tool (Eone Soutions’ SmartConnect). You can setup your integration so that when the employee sends their Excel file, you literally drop it into a folder & press ‘Run’ on your integration.
OR
You can set it up so that as you receive approve expensed reports, you drop the detail (employee, codings, etc.) into a standard Payables Transaction (with distributions) import & press ‘Run’.
Pros / Cons to Using Excel for Expense Reporting
Pros
- It's Free
- Everyone knows how to use Excel & can complete a simple template
- "Paper" trail
Cons
- Self-developed integration or manually keying into GP
- A pretty poor user-experience for employees
- Stapling receipts? Yikes!
Recommendation for When to / When Not to Use Excel
There is no magic sauce to make this process better outside of using Excel templates and integration tools that can be fed into GP. You can likely find some slick free or cost-effective Excel templates but even those are going to have their overall limitations. There is no Expense Reporting module in Dynamics GP and I would not expect to see this functionality provided in the future. ☹
3rd Party Solutions (ISVs)
Option 2.) Look into the ~50+ Expense Reporting software solutions that integrate well with Dynamics GP.
One of the beauties of Dynamics GP is that the software partner (ISVs) market is strong so there are tons of great solutions to choose from (picking the right one is always tricky but more on that later).
Pros / Cons to a 3rd Party Solution
Pros
- Cost justifiable (overall time savings)
- Easier process for the employees and accounting teams
- Tight integrations with payables in GP
- Electronic receipt management
- Hundreds of features that improve any Excel process
Cons
- Typically a cost per expense report or cost per user
- Additional software to maintain
Expense Reporting Software Recommendations
You and your organization know when it’s time to make the jump to expense reporting software. Almost any implementation is going to return immediate returns (mainly on time-saved) and will provide literally hundreds of other benefits that this post could cover for a solid week. Point being, when you’re ready to make the jump to Expense Reporting Software for Dynamics GP, there are great options available.
One of my personal favorites in the Dynamics GP world is Gorilla Expense. They have a direct-integration with GP, have a good reputation & presence at GP-focused conferences, & have many customers using Dynamics GP.
However, certainly don’t take my word for it (or really anyone’s word for it as every business is different). Take a look @ Solugence.com to find the Best Expense Reporting Software for Dynamics GP. 👍
*Solugence provides free data-driven software recommendations based on what your business requirements & preferences are.
Did we miss anything or do you have experience handling Expense Reporting differently in Microsoft Dynamics GP? Let us know in the comments below.
