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Efficiently Monitor Your Business Expenses with an Expense Report Template
Do you work for a company that requires you to travel or regularly entertain clients? Do you often have to pay for things out of your own pocket and later submit an expense report to get reimbursed? If so, you could probably benefit from an expense report template. If your company is like most, the system currently in place for submitting expense reports is probably very informal—collecting receipts and jotting down business-related expenses—but the problem with this type of arrangement is that it’s relatively sloppy and may cause you to miss out on certain reimbursement payments that are due to you. This can all be remedied, however, with a business expense report template. To illustrate what we mean, in this article we will discuss why an employee expense report template is such an invaluable business tool, and provide a detailed outline of what to look for when selecting a free expense report template from an online business site.
Expense Report Template: Why It’s Important
When traveling on company business, taking clients to lunches and dinners or performing any other business function involving payment, there will undoubtedly be instances in which you’ll have to spend your own money, but you are also entitled to have that money returned to you in the form of company reimbursement. This is where an employee expense report template can be very helpful.
To put it plainly, a business expense report template, including the travel expense report template for regular business travelers, is a formatted computer document that makes it easy to record and collate out-of-pocket expenses related to company business. Each of these templates is a great time-saving tool. Instead of having to manually write down each and every cost you incur, and attach receipts to prove that you paid for them, a free expense report template enables you to quickly enter the amount you’ve spent, and once you’ve done this, the program will automatically add this amount to the sum of your other expenses. This allows you to keep a running total of your business costs. But perhaps the best feature of the travel expense report template is the ease it affords you when you are ready to turn your report in to your company’s accountants. With these templates you will basically have two options for submittal. You could, of course, print the expense report template out and submit it as a hard copy, but most executives prefer to send the report as an attachment file in an email, which will save you the time and hassle-involved in making an extra trip to your company’s headquarters.
What Items Should You Include on an Expense Report Template?
When searching for a free expense report template—a program that is available for download on many business-document websites—there are numerous pieces of information the template should include. The same holds true, by the way, if you decide to create your own business expense report template using pre-installed Office software on your computer, such as Microsoft Word or Excel. Some of these important items include:
• Your Full Name. Naturally, the most important pieces of information on a travel expense report template are the identifying details of the person who is requesting reimbursement. This information should include your name, address and contact information, along with your title and employee identification number, if applicable.
• Business Purpose. When constructing or borrowing an employee expense report template, it is imperative that you include a field or a column of rows in which you can enter the business purpose of each cost you incur. Examples of this might include: “lunch date with client” or “hotel cost in Chicago, Illinois.
• Date. Always be sure to include the date of when each business expense was paid. This is necessary in the event your expense report is internally audited.
• Itemization Grid. In order for your free expense report template to be fully functional in terms of collating and adding your individual business expenses, you must include a grid with which you can itemize and categorize your expenditures. This can be broken down any way you see fit, but by separating your costs by individual categories, and creating formulas within the grid to summarize each of them; it will enable you to construct a professional-looking document that’s quick and easy to use, one that makes it possible for your accounting team to reimburse you more efficiently.
• Grand Total. The “grand total” section of your expense report template is rather self-explanatory. This is the total amount due to you from the company after all the expenses have been summarized. You may want to increase the font size for this field and present it in bold so it’s easier for your company’s accountants to see.
Depending on the purpose for your business expense report template, you can also include additional items, such as mileage, tips and entertainment, but however you choose to create your template, make sure you include an easy-to-read signature field at the bottom, as most companies will require you to sign the report prior to submittal.