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Xprest Requirements Document Goals and requirements for a Web-based expense reporting systemGoalThe business objective is to reduce processing time for employee expense management, control costs, and to increase visibility into expense related costs. The presumed solution will entail creating a new Web-based system for creating and processing employee expense reports and to integrate this new system with existing accounting systems for payment processing. BackgroundHere at Pasithea we have been processing employee expense reports using a spreadsheet template created in Excel that is completed by the employee, emailed to her manager, approved (or not) by the manager, and then emailed to Accounts Payable who processes it for payment. As Pasithea grows we are finding this system untenable for a variety of reasons: - Employees use out of date expense templates.
- Manual processes make for slow (and getting slower) turnaround.
- No enterprise visibility into where expenses are being incurred and thus the ability to control costs:
- How much did we spend on airfare last year?
- How much was expensed by sales?
- How many conferences were attended in 2007?
- Re-keying data from the expense spreadsheets into the accounting system is laborious and error prone.
- Managers need "institutional knowledge" in order to accurately process and route an expense.
- Obvious errors (such as entering dollar amounts in the mileage field) are caught late or not at all.
Given this slew of problems and there impact on Pasithea's bottom line and employee satisfaction, it has been determined that a new Web-based expense reporting system should be built. Funding for six months of development work has been set aside, a team of subject matter experts has been assembled, and a liaison selected to work with IT. In turn, IT has assembled a small development team and selected a project manager. Work is to commence immediately. Business GoalsThe reason for building an automated expense reporting system is to meet the following business objectives: - Control costs (for instance, by negotiating better hotel rates)
- Reduce processing costs
- Reduce errors
- Promote employee satisfaction
- Increase visibility
- Maintain compliance with company policies (for instance, by limiting meal expenses to $75 / diem)
System GoalsPasithea plans to build in-house an automated expense reporting system that meets the following goals. - The system should be accessible from local and remote offices without installing software to the desktop (Web-based)
- The system should be accessible to employees only (not contractors and not exposed beyond the firewall)
- The system should allow users to track expenses incurred while performing work for Pasithea.
- The system should support expense related workflow:
- Creation
- Submission
- Managerial review
- Approval or rejection
- Resubmission on rejection
- Payment (via AP integration)
- Closure
- The system should provide basic error correction
- The system should allow for basic reporting
- Support a 5,000 person employee base
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For demonstration purposes, I think it would be nice to include an integration with some other system, not only end user-facing functionality.