Travel & Expense Management Simplified

Transcription

1 Travel & Expense Management Simplified How travel & expenses can be entered, submitted, approved, audited and tracked for better compliance, higher productivity, improved budget control and happier employees Automate. Simplify. Track.

2 THERE IS A BETTER WAY. 2 Ways to improve T&E management + Simplify expense entry, approval and audit + Ensure spending is understood and controlled + Drive compliance to policy Average cost to process a paper expense report: $26.60 If you ve ever wasted hours, an afternoon, or even an entire day filling out spreadsheet or paper-based travel and expense reports gathering reports from multiple travel booking sites, copying paperwork, taping receipts, sealing envelopes for overnight or interoffice mail you ve wished there could be a better way. You re not alone. Financial managers and auditors who ensure you stayed within your company s spending policies also loathe such manual systems. And so do executives trying to assess budget and spending trends from hundreds of paper expense reports. The truth is that paper-based travel and expense reporting systems have long been a huge drain on employee productivity. Worse yet, they are next-to-useless when it comes to providing actionable data to corporate managers rendering travel spending opaque to both managers and company owners. With paper-based systems, it s almost impossible to quickly detect unwise spending that falls outside of the bounds of company s policy, as well as abuse and fraud. Management has few options to ensure that employees use preferred vendors or save money via negotiated rates. And anything close to an accurate analysis of which vendors provide cost-efficient services is nearly impossible. Happily, there is a better way to manage travel and expenses that leads to higher productivity, improved budget control, better compliance and even happier employees.

3 Automation Brings Productivity, Visibility Gains to T&E Automation lets you view spending more quickly. + Faster reporting + Faster approval + Simpler auditing + Automatic entry to AP or ERP What companies need is automation that simultaneously eliminates wasted effort while delivering command visibility for compliance and auditing. In nearly all cases, companies that shift from paper-based T&E processes to state-of-the-art T&E software systems learn they can travel just as much, and achieve the same sales performance while spending less money. In best-case scenarios, companies using best-in-class T&E programs quickly learn how to achieve proportionately greater revenue and bottom-line growth by increasing their travel and expense budgets by relatively small amounts. Still, not just any automated travel and expense management system will yield the dramatic improvements in employee behavior, visibility and cost control that companies want. It s critical when exploring the market for solutions that you ask the right questions and demand the right capabilities. That includes full integration with the travel booking engine of your choice, to eliminate redundancy and provide yet another level of visibility. In the following pages, we ll examine how moving to a fully integrated travel and expense management system can produce big savings and significant revenue and profit gains for your company. We ll also talk about the qualities such a system should have in order to deliver the full benefits of automated T&E. Improve Your Management Visibility Few things in business can be as maddening or as useless as an important report based on stale data, especially when it s a report on corporate travel spending or corporate purchasing. Had you, as a company leader, realized how close your organization was to exceeding your budget, you might not have approved three recent, costly trips by your staff members. Or you could have demanded that those staff members cover the cost of those trips by bringing back new business or else. 38% of companies use entirely manual processes for travel and expense management 3

4 That used to be a common problem for all managers. And for those who still face such problems, there are some really good arguments for investing in a fully automated travel and expense management system that integrates travel booking. Discover Real-time Budget Control On the accounting side, such systems deliver significantly improved, real-time budget control. When travel booking is integrated in your T&E solution, data from a flight, hotel or car rental reservation flows directly into your accounting system, where it can be used as part of the approval and reconciliation process. Rather than having two, non-integrated systems one that enforces travel policy and another that enforces expense policy you now bring both capabilities into one solution. Knowing in real time how much money is being spent on which trips, dinners or events improves managers ability to know, exactly, where the money is going, and why. And that helps reduce or eliminate surprises. Managers typically don t like over-spending the budget. But they like being surprised even less. Not knowing until it s too late takes the reins out of managers hands. With the right solution, you regain control. Automation brings realtime budget and quality control + Finance systems are upto-date + Managers can drive spending against budget + Audit easily can target likely violations Improve Auditing When your T&E system is integrated with the travel management company of your choice, it s like your auditors suddenly gain the power of X-ray vision over expenses. You can set the system to send pre-trip authorizations to managers for approval, for example. The system also can automatically search for and flag potential duplicates on a single expense or across an employee s travel history, or to randomly audit a certain percentage of expense reports over a certain dollar amount. For travel managers, the increased visibility is useful for keeping track of who s traveling, who they re traveling with and ensuring they remain within cost and vendor parameters your company has set up. 40% of organizations expect a major benefit of travel and expense automation will be improved visibility over spend 4

5 Enforce Use of Preferred Vendors Automation drives travel program compliance + At booking + At approval + With realtime reporting + Via better audits Greater real-time visibility of corporate travel and entertainment spending also allows managers to make sure their organization reaps the benefit of negotiated rates with preferred providers. Whether it s making sure most/ all company travelers book their flights on the company s preferred airline and their overnights at the company s preferred hotels, or buying most/all of their office supplies from the company s preferred store, advanced T&E tracking and reporting systems give managers exponentially greater control over how employees spend the company s money. Increase Value from Travel Partnerships Most preferred provider and corporate card deals also are structured to provide greater benefits typically in the form of quarterly or annual cash rebates to companies meeting previously agreed spending levels. If many employees purchase services, goods or travel outside preferred providers, companies risk losing sizable rebates or other valuable, volume-based incentives offered by their preferred providers. Today s best corporate T&E systems allow real-time tracking of companies performance against preferred providers contracts. They can also be set to block employee travel service purchases that work against the company achieving critical milestones in its preferred provider contracts. Reduce Processing Costs and Boost Productivity Unlike the promised cost savings that some technologies too often fail to deliver, fully integrated travel and expense management indeed provides measurable savings in a number of areas while also boosting employee productivity. First, there are savings from the actual physical costs related to processing employees expense reports in the old manual process. Eliminating the need to file reports on paper and photocopy everything can save large amounts of paper. Similarly, filing and record storage costs are decreased when those records are reduced from boxes and drawers of paper to easily stored computer files. Average cost to process a fully automated travel and expense report is 74% less than the processing cost for a manual report 5

6 Further, an automated process requires fewer people to physically handle, review and approve those reports and to enter the data into the computer system assuming that data entry currently occurs at all. On top of being able to reduce the number of people devoted to handling T&E tracking and reporting today, automated reporting systems give companies considerable flexibility to scale their companies without always needing to add more finance clerks and audit staff just to keep up. Meanwhile, all your other employees become more productive, and not only in the reimbursement process. They also save time in booking travel because the whole process is integrated into one. In transit, they can easily log in and retrieve an itinerary. While on the road, they can snap a photo of receipts and easily attach them to the expense report. Their time saved can be used to do their jobs better and/or faster, and to take on new responsibilities and opportunities. Less Paper + Quicker Payment = Happier Employees T&E automation offers many employee benefits + Less data entry + Simpler record keeping + Improved morale + Higher productivity As a happy side benefit of your company s switch to a fully automated travel and expense tracking and reporting system, all of your employees will be relieved of the loathsome dare we say spirit-breaking drudgery of keeping paper records of every expense, filling out paper forms, making multiple photocopies, and so on. And for those employees paid on commission, that found time and energy can turn into more selling time. And that s not the only way that workers lives can be enhanced. Can Expense Reports Be Easy and Fun? Social scientists have shown repeatedly that workers vastly prefer being engaged in interesting, meaningful and mentally challenging work over repetitive, simple, manual processes like mind-numbing paperwork. (Interesting and challenging are actually more important than pay, it turns out.) Eliminating work that employees view so negatively generates an immediate improvement in morale. In turn, that typically leads to improved performance on other, more important work tasks. 39% of Organizations expect improved employee satisfaction from automating travel and expense management. 6

7 Fewer Keystrokes. Less Effort. More Time For Work. More advantages of T&E automation + Manage and enter expenses anywhere + Scan receipts immediately + Faster entry and reimbursement + More accurate Modern T&E systems also make workers lives easier by electronically capturing data from purchases made on company credit cards. Receipts for cash expenditures also can be scanned, copied, ed or texted to the T&E system from a smart phone. And data from travel and lodging bookings can be automatically integrated. It all adds up to fewer keystrokes for the employee and an easier process. Increased Flexibility Today, people can do almost anything that once required a computer from the smart phone or tablet that they already carry. That adds convenience and flexibility. Travel and expense management should be no different. Employees should be able to take care of their (much reduced) expense reporting chores from their car, their seat on an airplane, or their hotel room. No more wasting an entire day upon returning to the office just to fill out, review and submit an expense report. Faster Reimbursement With Fewer Errors When filing is faster and easier, reimbursements are also faster. Banking gets simpler, too, when your corporate cards are fully integrated into T&E reporting. Such systems are set up to talk with banks computer systems, further eliminating duplication of data entry and management tasks and speeding up the transfer of money between accounts. On top of making life better for employees, the right T&E system will please bosses, too. The spending and travel authorization/approval process can be set up so that the boss gets the request for authorization or approval the moment the employee hits the send button. It doesn t matter whether the boss is sitting in her office next door, on an airplane, on the couch at home, or in a meeting half way around the world. About 60% of Organizations use Corporate credit cards for employee spending. 7

8 Gain Compliance and Policy Enforcement Today s fully integrated and automated travel and expense management solutions offer a comprehensive suite of management tools that go way beyond the basic reporting, accounting and reimbursement functions. Solutions like Apptricity Travel & Expense integrate the capabilities of powerful, sophisticated travel booking engines to provide convenience and efficiency for employees while helping companies enforce corporate travel policies. If a worker tries to book a first-class flight when the policy requires coach travel, the system can be set to block such a purchase. Attempts to use hotels not on the company s list of preferred providers can be nipped in the bud. When the system automatically says no to the employee, the boss doesn t have to. Average cost to process an expense report: + manual: $ automated: $6.85 The same thing happens when employees try to claim expenses that are outside company policies. Systems automatically recognize such violations and either deny repayment automatically, or bring it to the immediate attention of the boss for approval or rejection. Managers also can get system-generated caution lights and red flags, alerting them to individual violations of company travel and spending policies, intended or not. That allows for the tracking of behavior and spending patterns that could indicate either purposeful spending abuse or a hole in the company s spending policy. Those same capabilities simplify and reduce the costs of auditing. The net result: a simple and easy way to gain the level of command visibility you need when every dollar counts. And when you re managing travel and expenses, doesn t every dollar count? About Apptricity Apptricity Corporation is a leading global provider of Internet of Things (IoT) M2M mobile enterprise solutions for supply chain management (SCM) and spend management. Apptricity solutions are valued by commercial and government organizations worldwide providing bottom line results. Apptricity solutions mobilize any enterprise with unprecedented levels of real-time information and business intelligence so management has visibility into every action and transaction within the enterprise and among its partners, customers and suppliers. Powered by Apptricity s JetStream platform, our solutions enhance legacy enterprise applications and extend the value of information technology investments. Our platform enables us to address the universal objectives of business, government and the military with accelerated business processes and command visibility. For more information: Data source: 2015 Travel and Expense Management Report, PayStream Advisors by Apptricity Corporation. All rights reserved. Apptricity is a registered trademark of Apptricity Corporation. All other trademarks, registered trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.