Workflow Sample: Let the Expense Claim Go Online Completely!

In companies in Japan,

Employees: Tiresomeness to deliver paper receipts to Accounting in head office
Accounting staff: Tiresomeness to bind the collected receipts to the binder (to stick to notebook)

Suffering these 'Tiresomeness', binders are added every year. Then, those binders go to sleep for seven years in the bookshelf. Nobody in the company would see in the meanwhile.

However, fall in 2014, such absurdities finally became expecting to be improved. This means that the "Law" of Japan will be amended, and "Scan & Save" will be allowed. So, we would like to prepare for "Scan & Save" of receipt promptly. (Foreseeing October 2015?)

Above is the story I have posted in the last entry. -"Scan & Save" the Receipts (2014-01-19)

Well now, this 'Digitization paper receipts', its 'Business Process To-Be' differs depending on various conditions (namely companies) such as;

Scale of organizational member
Number of collected receipt
Shape and type of receipt
Number of branch office
Number of Scanner
Assumption of who operates scanning, and so on...

The following is a 'Expense Reimbursement Process' (Workflow) in which assumed that the claimer him/herself to scan the receipts. The whole thing is completed in digital and online, so the companies hiring many teleworkers are able to utilize it immediately.

[Expense Reimbursement Request]

[Expense Reimbursement Request:'1. Successive Entry/Request in Next Month' screen]

In the previous article, I figured out an auto-starting using 'Scan to Email feature' in Scanners, but I think automatization of such extent is not needed by most companies.

In this example, a Task of "Reimbursement by Ichiro SUZUKI 2015-01" will appear in [My Tasks] of all Users (e.g. Ichiro SUZUKI) at 9 o'clock on the first day of every month. (e.g. morning of January the 1st.) Mr. SUZUKI keeps it on appearing in his [My Tasks] nearly one month. And each time he makes payment on behalf of, he will input them into it. And when coming to the end of the month and he finishes inputting every expense that he paid on behalf of, attaches the scanned image of the receipts that captured all together to the Workflow. Then he will call it 'Processing completed', and he'll let it flow to his supervisor to be approved.

With this scheme... In a company which 'We are using Flatbed Scanners frequently in daily work', each employee can 'scan' successively in their free time. Regarding 'Data entry', the entire completion time will be shorter than someone takes over all of them.

However, on the other hand, all the employees must recognize those

Legal requirements such as 'resolution more than 200 dpi'
In-house regulation such as 'unify in PDF format', etc.

Moreover, it is also necessary for everyone to meet the deadline strictly. After all, it may be close to the 'Business Process To-Be' for a designing firm or an internet-related company, whereas it is not suitable for companies that most workers go out-of-office sale or workplaces that only few opportunity to handle PC.

It's only a 'Reimbursement Request Process', but surprisingly there are many points to be considered.

It's like a 'Multifunctional hard disc recorder'. Be careful that if too many "possible things", "people have good command" would decrease.

By the way, in this example, not only common Business Data Items like 'Date type' or 'Numeric type', but also 'Table type data' is utilized. For the reason that 'Date type inside Table type data' is not allowed in Questetra (v10.0), the date is entered as 'String type in Table type data' with specified formatting. In addition, upon binding aggregation for the requests by plurality of people (table type data), it is handled in the operation to paste the browser display data into spreadsheet software.

[Data Items List screen]