Analytical Expense Management System

Zeki Bozku
Kadir Has University
Department of Computer Engineering
[email protected]

Christophe Bisson
Kadir Has University
The Program of Information Technology
[email protected]

Taner Arsan
Kadir Has University
Department of Computer Engineering
[email protected]

Abstract applications are available, reachable online all the

time everywhere. It permits the empowerment of
Although the development of communication their employees. Thus, all the actions are done much
technologies (e.g: UMTS, ADSL) allowed the faster by a more efficient way. “Web applications are
elaboration of multiple users’ web applications (e.g. so widely accepted and employed that they have
information storage), there are still many become crucial to the success of many businesses
improvements on many applications to be done and [2].”
uncovered areas. Expense management systems on Companies can get a competitive advantage by being
web application area are still in their infancy. web applications innovators, adopting them early
Expense management software is widely spread in and/or by using them by a better way.
companies and most of time supported by their If web applications were applied to many systems,
intranet. These solutions are quite simple as they there are still many uncovered areas. A particular
mainly collect the information related to the subject which is an interesting application concerns
expenses and may propose a simple aggregation of expenses. In the 2009 economic crisis context,
these figures. The result is close to what an excel expenses must be managed scientifically in order to
sheet provides. be minimized. Some expense software exist mainly
Intranet based but the new ones are web based. A
1. Introduction web application procures several benefits to all type
of users, organizations. Nevertheless, more or less of
During the last years, the rhythm of innovation the existing expense management solutions are just
concerning Information and Communications allowing the employees to make reports.
Technologies (ICTs) has increased tremendously. This paper deals with an expense management tool
We gradually move from physical interactions to which is a complete solution to send, receive,
digital interactions at the pace of the improvements, request, process on the Internet from every type of
developments of ICTs. Thus, Internet access and Internet device (PC, handheld, mobile phone) all
mobile access technologies increased their information related to expenses. The 3G technology
capabilities allowing various web applications allows our application to be ubiquitous. Our target is
especially thanks to the appearance of ADSL and to both empower and satisfy decision makers and
UMTS. In such conditions, the geographical borders employees. This intuitive, user friendly solution will
are abolished and all business activities go much help to decrease the expenses by providing new ways
faster. “The Internet and the web have had a to visualize these costs and full decision support,
profound impact on the business world [1].” while employees will receive in a fast manner their
Companies web applications adoption change their money back.
way of working. They become more flexible as these

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From a scientific perspective, expense management Our solution differentiates itself from the rest of
systems are still in their infancy. expense management programs by providing a
strong spending analyzer. Spend analyzer will
In this paper we examine the elaboration of a new
categorize and classified employee spending. Our
Analytical Expense Management System. The
tool will instantaneously slice, dice, and analyze
reasons which explain why expense management
employee spending to identify greater savings
programs are vital for companies will be the first
opportunities with multi-dimensional analysis.
part. The Benchmark of existing expense
management solution constitutes the second part. The second part enhances the innovation of our
The model of the expense management solution is expense management solution.
presented in the third part. The fourth part deals with
the LAMP choice. Finally the layouts and software 3. Solution providers
architecture will be detailed.
Globalization created a dynamic mobile work force.
2. Why companies need expense Many employees have to take business trip to
management programs? respond to customers’ needs which may be
worldwide located. This has increased the need for
One of the oldest methods for the filling expenses cumbersome process of filling an expense report.
is to fill out papers manually and to try to catch The urgent need for the automated expense reporting
managers to get an approval for the trip you have process created young companies specialized in
done a month ago. This was causing a lot of waste of expense management solutions. We made a
time by chasing paper around the office. In addition, benchmark of these companies (see Table 1). The
these manual, paper-based processes provide little or market is less and less volatile and gradually
no ability for expenditure policy enforcement. consolidates among a few big ones just like any
Manual expense control processes can result in other young industries historical faiths. Most of them
operational expense problems as well. shifted from a traditional license business strategy to
a service with software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
Companies are turning to automated expense control For SaaS [3] they provide a Web application of their
software to create a nearly paperless approval routing technology; via a login and password, any company
and expense management system. These expense can access to the online service. These web
automation systems provide: online invoice applications are moving from a fix device (desktop)
approvals and workflow, process company to mobile devices (laptop, PDA, smart phones,
purchases, track approvals and manage travel and Blackberry) [4]. They are flexible and any type of
entertainment expense reports. company can afford such a solution.

Another question is to answer whether the software Most of them are giving the benefit of paperless
solution will be web based or not? To answer this expense reporting and payment process capabilities.
question, we can look at the modern work team at These automated expense management systems are
multinational companies. We will see that distributed designed to keep you on budget and make expense
work teams are increasingly being implemented to report processing run efficiently throughout your
enhance organizational flexibility and company. Everything is managed electronically,
competitiveness in today's complex and rapidly from expense report creation through reimbursement,
changing work environment. “Web based are reducing or eliminating the need for paper. Company
frequently multi-functional systems. The multi- policy is automatically applied and compliance
functionality of many systems forces organizations ensured.
to transcend traditional functional boundaries [1].”
An increasing number of employees work Few solutions allow the clients to send alerts to
cooperatively with individuals in a variety of employees regarding the respect of policies,
different locations and types of virtual work spending and time limits. By the same way, most of
environments. Sometimes employee may not live in the solutions on the market do not propose any
the same city with his or her managers and may be customization option.
even not the the same country with recent
outsourcing activities. This forced us to provide our The main difference between them and our project is
solution to be web based. In addition, we know that that we do not only provide expense management
companies do not like software installation, software software to help to streamline employee expense
upgrade and maintains processes because of cost. reporting just like others. But we also use the
Web can provide software-as-a-service (SaaS) expenditure analyzer on these data with sophisticated
technology. With on-demand, small and midsized statistical packaging to derive intelligent business
companies are quickly seeing how an automated decisions. We enriched our system with early alert
operating expense control system can provide system which catches any mistake or early fraud
visibility and control, and are adopting it at a rapid detection. Our goal is to help employees, managers
pace. and companies so that our project will not just be

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 another tool but a solution for the employees applications. “Customization and personalization are
spending which becomes the big item on the considered as new fields and many authors have
business cost. provided various definitions of these concepts [6].”
The following section will explain the process of our
expense management solution.

Concur
Expensable Infor GetMyExpense. Expens Web2Expen
CyberShift Expens
Enterprise FMS com e watch se
e
Internet
Intranet
Smart phone,
Mobile devices Blackberry
PDA
All size of
organizations
Alert users of
spending limits,
time limits or
policies...
Corporate Card
Pre-Population
Customization
Receipt Image
Attachment
Web-based -
Software-as-a-
Service (SAAS)
Traditional license
Multicurrency

Table 1.Benchmark of companies proposing expense

management solutions.
We will concentrate on customization to increase the
satisfaction of all users by allowing them for
example to change the colors of the site, keep in
4. Modelization of the expense memory the most important topics. Our solution will
management evolve according to the requests received from users
and will be able to be personalized. “Both
4.1. Collection of the expense data customization and personalization refer to content
A login and password will be given to each delivery, layout and services tailored to users needs
employee of a company. The data collected concern and preferences. However, the two notions differ in
employees’ travel and entertainment expenditures. A several aspects. Customization stands for controlling
web interface has a menu allowing the employee to interface attributes directly by the user.
choose the expense topic i.e. food, transport, Personalization, on the other hand, refers to
communication, etc. The scrolling menu will provide processing and presenting web content desired by
many possibilities streamlining all travel and individual users based on certain interpolations by
entertainment expenditures. web site providers [7].”
We will focus on the “three aspects of a web site All the data collected from employees will be sent
affect its utility in providing the intended service to and stocked in a database, allowing decision,
its users: The content provided on the web site, the statistics, etc. “Web applications are becoming
layout of the individual pages, and the structure of increasingly database-centric. Many new web
the entire web site [5].” applications require that a user be able to
interactively explore these databases over the
In addition, customization and personalization are
Internet or an external network [8].”
increasingly becoming important issues for web

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As soon as some expense data will be sent, an e mail by a request from the company). For example an
will arrive to the decision maker for the employee can pay the high speed Internet
reimbursement. This task is tedious and should be subscription in the case of an employee who works at
automated to increase the productivity. house. If the company’s policy about it is that such
fees are not over 50 EUR, then it will alert the
The database constituted for one company will be the
employee to reenter the data before alerting the
expense memory. Some analysis can be submitted
managers.
on-demand or automatically and will be part of the
expense management workflow.
The second step of the workflow is to route the
4.2 The expense management workflow expense to the manager of the employee by email
notifications with embedded links to the actual report
The expense management software should automate to ensure timely approvals. Manager can approve or
the process of planning travel and then submitting, disapprove the expenses. If the expenses are
routing, processing and reimbursing expense reports. disapproved, it will inform the employee by email to
Our 100% Web-based software can either reside on reenter or review the rejection reason put by the
the organization's computers or on a 3rd-party's manager. If the manager has approved the expense,
computers in a secure, hosted on-demand the expense will flow to the next step. There is also
environment. Figure 1 is showing this workflow. the auto approval option which is based on the
Employee enters his or her expenses on the Web. company’s existing policy. This option may be used
During this process, our software will guide for the small amount expenses to save the valuable
employee thanks to its user-friendly interface. It will manager time.
help the employee to categorize expenses with a pull Step 3 will be the reimbursement of the expenses by
down menu. For example, employee used his or her the company’s accounting department. The
car for airport transformation the tool will help to employee will get the money to his or her bank
calculate the cost. It will ask to name the expenses, account by wire transfer done by the accounting of
date the expenses and ask for the cost center to bill the company or payroll system through an automatic
and more. interface. Our system will post these expenses to
keep updated our database which will be queried by
the managers and accounting at any time, anywhere
in the world. This database will also be used by our
Online employee
spend analyzer to drive better business decisions.
expense entry Step 4 will provide results viewing and reporting
environment coupled with a statistical module which
STEP 1
Auto-review against will be developed: request by person or department
company expense policy according to the year, means, variances, pie chart,
histogram, curve, etc. This step helps managers to
STEP 2
Expense routing and visualize the expenses.
management approval

Step 5 will perform our spending analyzer solution

Reimbursement and
STEP 3 on employee’s expense data to identify greater
saving spending data
savings opportunities with multi-dimensional
Analytics result viewing & analysis.
STEP 4
Reporting

STEP 5 Spend analyzer 5. The LAMP choice

End “A web application is a large and complex software

system comprising of many components, which are
written in different programming languages and
distributed over the network. A large number of
Figure 1 shows the work flow of our expense applications utilize a Database Management System
management solution. and one or more databases. … . A program in a web
application normally interacts with database through
When an employee is filling the online data entry, statements which execute the SQL data manipulation
our tool as a first step performs auto-review against language [9].”
company expense policy (the tool can be configured

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We are implementing our projects on open source
software platform known as the LAMP architecture
[10]. The LAMP architecture has become very
popular as a way of deploying inexpensive, scalable,
secure web applications [11]. The LAMP
architecture uses Linux for operating system, Apache
for web server, MySQL for databases and PHP for
dynamic web programming.

The choice of web programming language between

PHP [12] and ASP.NET [13] based on their
functions is a difficult task. Albeit the Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) for ASP.NET
provides a fast and powerful programming, we
selected PHP. Indeed, PHP is also a powerful
programming language and works well with MySQL
and a large number of relational database
management systems. In addition it runs on the most Figure 2 shows the architecture of our
popular web servers, and is available for many analytical expense management system.
different operating systems.

We chose MySQL as a relational database end module which gets expenses from employees,
management system (RDBMS). The open source summit the system and route to the correct managers
database system MySQL is robust, flexible and and get paperless approval from managers. We have
scalable enough [14]. The main reason for MySQL another module which summits the expenses to the
choice is the cost comparison with the commercial expense database engine which will be used by every
counterparts. other module in the system. Database will maintain a
complete audit trail for the transactions related to
There are two parts in LAMP architecture which will reimbursement.
be easy to change by design in our project. Linux can The Web based query processing module allows
be replaced by Microsoft Window and Apache web
reviewing back to time employee spending per
server can be replaced Microsoft Internet
employee or per expense based to help the managers
Information Servicesw (IIS) if a need arises.
to reduce cost and help for better planning for the
future expense planning. Yet, our goal here is to get
The programs developed will make the modules of query user-friendly not to bore managers to learn
our software and constitute its architecture. complex query languages. The Web based result
viewing environment can allow managers to
visualize employee expenses costs per employee
6. Software architecture base, per department base or per spending base. Our
statistical tool can reduce huge amount of data to
Our architecture of expense management system more compact and understandable format by using
consists of many sub modules just like any other charts, and histograms.
complex system. The Figure 2 shows our modular
We completed our expense management system by
and layered architecture. The main advantage of the
providing a spend analyzer solution. The spend
modular approach is the simplicity of the
analyzer provides multi-dimensional analysis for
construction and debugging. Each sub system can be
users to quickly and dynamically analyze their
tested separately. Each system can communicate
spend data to drive better business decisions. The
with each other by using well defined application
spend analyzer will classifie and categorize the
programming interface (API). By this way each
expenses and compare present and past expenses to
module can hide implementation details by having
identify abnormalities and micro-analyze many
well defined interfaces. The modules communicate
savings opportunities simultaneously . User can ask
with each other only with an interface. This approach
system questions to identify new savings
simplifies debugging and system verification.
opportunities.
Our goal is to provide a 100% Web-based software
which can either reside on the organization's
computers or on a third-party's computers in a
secure, hosted on-demand environment. So all the
7. Conclusions
communications done with the software are through
the web interface. The users (employees and The young and emergent expense management
managers) can both give information to and get technology will be rapidly deployed by many
information from the web pages. We have a front- organizations. Our expense management solution

531
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