Why you Should Automate your T&E VAT\GST Recovery Process

August 13, 2019

You have a mountain of receipts from your employees’ business travel expenses, as well as cross-border purchases, and every single one needs to be read, checked, understood and entered into a form. Where do you draw the line on which ones are worth processing for VAT\GST or not?

When you think about the amount of man-hours it takes to complete this process correctly, you understand why as much as £15.3 billion of refundable VAT\GST is left on the table each year, by businesses that lack the capacity or energy to process that many receipts and invoices.

At least, that’s the VAT\GST refund process when you don’t automate your VAT\GST return. It’s time to consider what it would be like if you switched to automated VAT\GST reclaim for business.

Automated VAT\GST Reclaim for Business is Faster and More Efficient

When you add automation to your VAT\GST refund process, you get a much quicker and more accurate system. Completing a VAT\GST return correctly means deciphering hundreds, if not thousands, of VAT\GST receipts. If your employees travel overseas, many receipts are in foreign currencies, written in a foreign language, and laid out in unfamiliar formats, making it difficult for your HR team to find a rhythm to their work.

What’s more, both domestic and foreign VAT\GST receipts are liable to be torn, stained, crumpled, and generally in a poor condition, adding to the challenge of identifying the amount of VAT\GST, verifying that it was entered correctly, and checking for discounts or refunds that could invalidate the final VAT\GST payment.

But none of this intimidates a VAT\GST bot. When it comes to interpreting VAT\GST receipts, bots out-perform even the most efficient HR employee. They don’t get tired, they don’t slow down, and they don’t get confused by hard-to-read documents.

Automated VAT\GST Bots Never Skip Small Receipts

Many VAT\GST receipts for business travel expenses are for small amounts. A cup of coffee in the airport, a taxi ride to a meeting, emergency photocopying before a conference. The VAT\GST refund that your company will receive for each of these receipts is miniscule.

It’s understandable that a hard-working employee, with hundreds of VAT\GST receipts to process, might decide to skip some receipts for such small amounts. After all, sometimes the refundable VAT\GST from these receipts is less than the cost of paying your employees to process them.

However, when you skip several VAT\GST receipts for tiny amounts, you end up with a VAT\GST refund that’s a few hundred pounds poorer. This is a problem that won’t affect you when you automate VAT\GST reclaim for business. A VAT\GST bot won’t get tired of processing receipts for tiny amounts. And because you don’t pay your bot a salary, you’ll never have to decide if your VAT\GST refund costs more than it’s worth.

Automated VAT\GST Reclaim for Business Cuts Down on Mistakes

Your business’s VAT\GST reclaim needs to be 100% accurate. There’s no room for mistakes; if your VAT\GST return has any errors, it is likely to be refused, at best. If you’re unlucky, mistakes in your VAT\GST return could cause you to be suspected of deliberate VAT\GST fraud. You may have to face an expensive VAT\GST audit that takes up even more business hours than the original VAT\GST return.

That’s why automation can be a business life-saver. Your VAT\GST return bots don’t make mistakes. They don’t have messy handwriting that writes a six that looks like a five. They don’t accidentally enter a number into the wrong box. They don’t read the wrong line on a VAT\GST receipt and end up entering the total paid instead of the total VAT\GST. Automation can seriously cut down the risk of having your VAT\GST refund refused.

VAT\GST Automation Frees Up Employee Work Hours

As you already know, requesting VAT\GST refund is time-consuming and tiresome. Chances are good that there are several tasks that your employees need to be doing instead of your VAT\GST return. By introducing automation to your VAT\GST reclaim, you can free your employees to dedicate their working hours to creative brainstorming, strategic thinking, and other tasks that you can’t delegate to an automated system.

WAY2VAT Automated VAT\GST Reclaim Improves your Business VAT\GST Refund Process

Enlisting WAY2VAT’s automated VAT\GST reclaim for business solution means harnessing the power of deep learning and artificial intelligence to harvest vital VAT\GST information even from receipts that are in poor condition, without the spelling mistakes that frequently plague OCR text retrieval. WAY2VAT saves time for employees, reduces mistakes, and increases the amount of VAT\GST you can claim by processing VAT\GST receipts for small amounts.