>This email-based expense system hinged on specific keywords would be great for a small business, but if you're a multinational with lots of legal oversight
Its still not necessarily bad, such a system could be easily expanded to be an quick input method to a system that makes the beancounters and legal happy too. Say I snap a picture of a till receipt with my cellphone and send it off to the expense account. The backend could also hook into our timesheet webapp. I already have to choose the account I'm billing my hours to and some accounts require I put in a note. My expense could show up right in the list of hours I've clocked, then when I enter my hours at the end of the day I double check all the expenses are there, are for the right amount, choose the account to charge and pop in a description.
Its still not necessarily bad, such a system could be easily expanded to be an quick input method to a system that makes the beancounters and legal happy too. Say I snap a picture of a till receipt with my cellphone and send it off to the expense account. The backend could also hook into our timesheet webapp. I already have to choose the account I'm billing my hours to and some accounts require I put in a note. My expense could show up right in the list of hours I've clocked, then when I enter my hours at the end of the day I double check all the expenses are there, are for the right amount, choose the account to charge and pop in a description.