Fitch & Mather (F & M) employees needed an online tool for reporting expenses. Their existing process of tracking the paper trail of expense reports and reimbursements required too much effort. Enforcement of company policies regarding employees' expenditures became inconsistent. For example, per-diem spending limits had to be checked on a form by a manager. In fact, nearly every part of the process from submission to approval needed validation by a person looking at various forms and receipts. Because the rules governing expense reimbursement varied from department to department, and because managers enforced those rules by visual inspection only, costly mistakes resulted. F & M management and their accountants all realized they had a broken process on their hands.
The only computer application involved in the entire expense reporting system was Microsoft® Excel. Employees opened an Excel template, filled in the form, printed it, attached receipts, and turned it in to their managers. Managers then sent approved reports to accounting, where a check was cut for the employee. Forms with questionable expenses were returned to the employee with a request for explanation. It is easy to see how this system was unsatisfactory and filled with potential for error.
F & M hired Vertigo Software, a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider, to develop a flexible Web-based expense reporting system that fulfilled the requirements of three groups: the F & M Information Technology (IT) Group, F & M management, and F & M employees. The result was an n-tier application that followed Windows DNA architecture principles and migrated every step of the process, with the exception of receipt handling, to the company's intranet.
The following topics briefly tell the story of the F & M Expense Reporting Tool: