Measure the ROI of your expense management process
Use this calculator to estimate annual savings, ROI, and payback period from automating your manual finance and expense workflows with Mobilexpense. Adjust the inputs to match your current process.
Your current process
Start with your current volume, effort, and cost assumptions.
Estimated impact
Get your full ROI report
Enter your details to access your full ROI breakdown and see where your team could save time and reduce unnecessary spend.
How to calculate the ROI of expense management software
Calculating the return on investment for expense management software helps determine whether the annual savings outweigh the cost of the solution.
Typical savings can come from:
- Reduced labour time
- Fewer manual corrections
- Lower spend leakage
- Stronger control over policy compliance
A common way to calculate ROI is:
(Net savings ÷ software cost) × 100
If the result is positive, the investment is generating financial value.
What is the average cost of manual expense reporting?
The cost of manual expense reporting is often higher than companies expect because the effort is spread across multiple people and steps.
Typical cost drivers include:
- Time spent by employees creating and submitting reports
- Manager time spent reviewing and approving claims
- Finance time spent checking receipts, correcting errors, and processing reimbursements
- Delays caused by back-and-forth communication and incomplete submissions
When multiplied across monthly report volume, these hidden process costs can become substantial.
Where do expense management savings come from?
You’ll typically see savings in four key areas when switching to automated expense processing:
- Less time spent on manual tasks (e.g. checking receipts, uploading documents)
- Removing errors in processing the reimbursement
- Money saved from having better visibility into spend
- Money saved from stronger compliance with policies set by the company
In summary, automated workflows reduce repetitive work, limit the need for manual intervention, and help identify non-compliant claims earlier.
When paired, these improvements reduce operational costs, mistakes and unnecessary business spend.
How much can your finance team save with automation?
The time and money saved with automation depend on report volume, time spent per claim, average employee cost, and current process inefficiencies.
Companies with high volumes of expense claims and heavily manual review processes often see the biggest gains.
Even making small improvements can translate into substantial annual savings when applied across the whole organisation.
Frequently asked questions
The return on investment for expense management software can be calculated to see if the annual savings outweigh the cost of the software.
Savings can come in many shapes and forms, including labour time, fewer manual corrections, and lower spend leakage.
A standard formula is:
(Net Savings ÷ Software Cost) × 100.
If the percentage is positive, that indicates the investment is financially worthwhile.
This specific calculator uses:
- Monthly report volume
- Time spent per report
- Hourly employee cost
- Expected time reduction from automation
It also estimates spend-control savings by applying a leakage reduction percentage to monthly expense volume.
Net savings are calculated after subtracting software cost, and ROI and payback are then derived from those final values.
The average time to process an expense report manually varies based on how manual the process is.
Based on internal Mobilexpense research and customer testimonies, many organisations spend between 15 and 30 minutes per report when submission, review, corrections, and approvals are included.
In more complex environments, the time can be even higher.
The exact savings depend on process maturity, report volume, labour cost, and spend leakage.
Businesses with higher report volume and more manual workflows generally see the largest financial impact from automation.
You can use calculators such as this one to determine if the investment is worth it. ROI calculators are not an exact science, but they can give a guideline of where you could save time and money.
The biggest factors affecting whether your investment is worth it are:
- Number of expense reports processed
- Time spent per report
- Hourly cost of the people involved
- Amount of expense volume under management
- Level of leakage or non-compliant spend that can be reduced
Higher report volumes and more inefficient manual processes = stronger ROI potential.
The default benchmark for minutes per report is based on industry research about reimbursement delays and manual expense handling, including the reference used from HROne.
The hourly cost benchmark is based on a blended EU hourly estimate across the roles typically involved in processing an expense report: the employee submitting it, the manager approving it, and finance reviewing it.
These defaults are intended as realistic starting assumptions and can be adjusted to reflect your own organization.