Create Expense Reports With Ease

You're back from your business trip, and you have a briefcase full of receipts--business lunches, cab fares, your hotel bill, late-night karaoke.... The last thing you want to do now is organize all those little strips of paper and create an expense report. But on the other hand, you do want to be reimbursed by your company.

Expense Reports Pro, a $39 program from Zoom Systems, makes it easy to turn those receipts into a neatly organized report. The program gives you a host of well-designed data entry screens and options, plus support for automated features such as tax computation and currency conversion. And it includes a handy Expense Wizard.

Time-Saving Shortcuts

You can create reports based on one of the provided templates, or you can customize your own templates. Then enter trip data--airfare, car rental, meals, and so on--in a spreadsheet-like table--or let the Expense Wizard walk you through the process. Either way you'll find the program easy to use.

Unlike On The Go Software's Quicken ExpensAble, the Expense Wizard doesn't ask you about often-overlooked expenses, such as baggage handling tips. So you'll have to be diligent or customize the template to include those considerations.

But Expense Reports Pro does include time-saving shortcuts. For example, you can enter car mileage, and the program will calculate gas expenses based on the default rate you've set. Set sales tax and value-added tax rates, and the program will automatically calculate taxes paid. And if you enter budgeted figures for your trip by category, you can view reports that show where you're over and under budget.

Expense Reports Pro also includes a currency converter to put your foreign expenses in dollar terms, although I find it much easier--and more accurate--to use the conversion amount given on my credit card statement.

When you're finished creating a report, you have several options for getting it to the accounting department. You can export it to Excel format to create a spreadsheet file for printing, turn it into an HTML file, or e-mail your report directly from the program. You can scan in and attach a receipt for each expense item, so when you print your report, the receipt copies are printed as well.