Challenge
Austin Powder has been an innovator in the industrial explosives space for nearly two centuries, but when it came to expense management, they were operating in the dark ages. Its manual system consisted of printed Excel sheets with attached receipts. Lacking a convenient mobile solution, many field employees saved receipts for months, or even an entire year, before submitting them for reimbursement. Once an expense report was submitted, it could take up to a month to fully process.
In addition to being a poor user experience, Austin Powder’s expense management process was inefficient and high-risk, leaving ample opportunity for human error, duplicate submissions, and no way for AP to easily enforce policy or track approvals. Seeking to automate and simplify expense management, they implemented Emburse.
Emburse Solution
Austin Powder found that Emburse’s mobile experience was superior to competitors like Concur. With on-the-go receipt capture and submission features, travelers no longer have to save paper receipts or wait until they’re at a computer to submit an expense report—it can all be done from the convenience of a smartphone in a matter of minutes. Field employees found the mobile solution intuitive, resulting in frequent expense report submissions.
Built-in rules improved T&E policy adherence, eliminated the risk of duplicate and out-of-policy submissions, and expedited approvals, resulting in 75% faster reimbursements. Data from Emburse enables the AP team to track spending trends for more accurate budget forecasting, and integrations streamline data exchange between its Emburse expense solution, corporate credit card, ERP, and HR systems.
Expense report validation and data entry tasks that required hours of manual work prior to Emburse can now be completed in minutes; while expense reports that used to take up to a month to process are now typically reimbursed within just one week. Time saved is now directed to more impactful tasks, like powering communities and scaling the organization.
“"Emburse saves us time so we can focus on our mission of building and improving communities around the world.”
”
Shelton Palmer
Expense and Card Administrator, Austin Powder Company
Result
Download the case study to learn how Austin Powder improved inefficient processes and user experiences, and why they were selected as a 2023 Emburse Champion Awards Winner.
- 75% faster employee reimbursements
- Empowered more frequent expense submissions with an easy-to-use mobile app
- Increased efficiency and visibility by integrating expense, card, ERP, and HR systems
- Gave employees significant time back to focus on growing the business