Four Steps to Launching a Streamlined Expense Management System at Your School

See if this sounds familiar: The English department at your school has an event and orders bagels and coffee from your dining services. The paper invoice arrives at your business office. The business office sends it to the English department’s assistant to get approval from the Department Chair, where it sits for a week before the Chair can get to it. The paper invoice is then routed back to the business office to be categorized and paid.

Managing your school’s expenses shouldn’t take weeks, reams of paper, and countless reminders. Incorporating a cloud-based expense management process provides a holistic view of spending across the school with a complete audit trail, while also systematically enforcing internal controls and simplifying reconciliation.

With a little planning, you can streamline your school’s expense management so your business office can focus on more strategic initiatives. These four steps will help you launch a process that will save your team time and headache when managing expenses.

1. Preparation

Once you decide to establish an expense management system, spend time thinking through your preferred process—not just a digital duplication of your paper-based process.

Who will enter the payment requests? You may want to open it up so all employees can enter their expenses into the system, or you may want to have them funnel through a department assistant or your Accounts Payable department.

How do you want the approval process to flow? You might want teacher requests to be approved by their department chair and Accounts Payable. You may also want certain dollar amounts to also be approved by the Director of Finance. Identifying these rules early will save you time when you set up your system.

What is your budget structure for creating expenses categories? Identify which roles have access to each of the expense categories, so when the Chair of the Math Department enters an expense, they won’t have to sift through categories that only pertain to facilities management.

How (and where) will you document these processes? As you consider your preferred process, make sure to document the decisions in a policies and procedures guide that you can share with applicable stakeholders.

2. Configuration

This is where you put that planning into action. Set up the system to mirror your preferred process.

Create approval rules: This includes the different rules based on dollar amount or title. A faculty member may need to have an expense approved by their department chair as well as Accounts Payable while a department chair’s expense might go directly to Accounts Payable.

Establish the expense categories: This is a good time to set up generic general ledger categories for each department that encompasses the most common expenses, such as supplies.

Assign expense categories and general ledger accounts to users: Start by making the available categories for each user as streamlined as possible. You can always add in more options as the different users need them.

Set up user defaults: Create the approval rules in the system as well as any notifications your team might want to have, such as when you have new approval requests. Look for the option to automatically route your approval requests to someone else while you are out of the office.

Build your business roles: Decide if you want to include unapproved invoices when checking available budgets. You can also require attachments for payment requests.

3. Faculty Roll-Out

Identify a small group of faculty and staff who will test the system and provide constructive feedback on the process.

Select a department or two to test your rules and categories: Do the testing during a slow time, such as over the summer break. Create an open feedback channel to identify friction and address questions as your faculty and staff try out the new process.

Do a formal roll-out to the entire campus at once: Getting everyone on the new system at one time will create the most benefit from the streamlined workflow.

Share your policies and procedures guide with stakeholders: Make sure your documentation is easily accessible to those who will be working in the system so they can easily refer to the guide as needed.

4. Refinement

Create easy ways for your finance team to update roles and make changes as needed.

When Staff Changes: If the Department Chair retires and another teacher is promoted, you can quickly adjust the approval rule so new expenses are routed appropriately.

When a User’s Role Changes: If a faculty member takes on a new role, such as the assistant track coach or the sponsor of a new student club, you can easily give them access to the appropriate expense categories.

Focus on Strategy (Not Managing Paper)

An expense management system that’s integrated into your financial management software streamlines the accounts payable process. With less effort spent on chasing down invoices, your team can spend more time on more impactful projects.