Are you concerned about your business travel and expense management?
You definitely need it. Because according to the GBTA (Global Business Travel Association), the company’s annual travel costs will reach 1.4 trillion US dollars by 2024.
If you’re struggling with travel and expense management because of manual reconciliations, it’s time to take a step toward the digital era. Because if you leave your spend management issues unresolved, it can seriously hamper the growth and size of your business in the long run.
This article will showcase some of the top Travel and expense management challenges that a business faces and how companies can use expense management software to make cost management less frustrating.
Key Challenges For Travel And Cost Management Business And Their Solutions
Challenge #1: Track and manage receipts
In order to maintain compliance, companies should always ensure that employees submit their expense reports with appropriate supporting documents. In this case, the burden of comparing, verifying, and documenting these receipts or reports is entirely borne by the finance team.
While some companies believe that using an expense report template can solve the problem, the truth may be different. The template requires employees to manually enter expense details and attach a photocopy of the receipt as proof of expense. It can generate receipts anywhere and in different formats.
To add to the confusion, this template expense report might contain incorrect, and redundant entries. In these cases, the finance team must manually identify everything.
How Can Travel And Expense Management Software Help With Receipt Management?
● The Business Travel & Expense management software comes with unlimited cloud storage which can keep all your travel reports and receipts in one place.
● You and your finance team can access travel reports for review or reference from anywhere, on any device, at any time.
● Spend management software eliminates the frustration behind paper receipts by eliminating the need for employees to save them later. It will automatically retrieve all the important information in the trip report form and store it in the system.
● Before your employees submit their travel reports and expense receipts, the software can also perform automated checks to avoid errors or potential fraud.
Challenge #2: It Takes Time To Efficiently Review and Approve The Expense Reports
The task of reviewing the spend management can be frustrating for both employees and the finance team. For example, employees need to track their travel expenses and correctly enter all information in an expense report template to retrieve them on time.
After employees submit their T&E reports, the finance team must compare all of the manager’s travel reports and manually identify claims that are not supported by the travel policies and expenses. Then, in the event of a rule violation, the finance team must return all or part of the employee’s travel report for any necessary changes or clarifications.
This can be an expensive and time-consuming process. Sometimes they even miss claims that may be fraudulent. This behavior over the long term can be detrimental to the financial health of your business.
How Can Travel And Expense Management Software Help Review And Approve Expense Reports?
Modern expense software is equipped with the latest technology that scans receipts, retrieves important data and automatically generates digital expense reports with just a few clicks. This reduces manual data entry for employees on the move and also eliminates errors in order to ensure they don’t miss any policy violations. When the software detects an out-of-policy charge, it flags an error and immediately notifies employees to make corrections. It can also provide a detailed digital audit trail that documents all activities related to expense reporting. This is highly helpful for quick reviews, maintaining records, approvals, and audits.
Looking to the Future: The Evolution of Expense Management
Automation finds its way into everyday life. There are self-driving cars to shout about! Hence, there’s no way expense management will be left behind.
The future is all about more automation, more AI, and most importantly, more mobility.
Companies are becoming more global and automated, and their employees are also more mobile and flexible. Employees must be able to submit reports and expenses, and managers must approve all claims from their smartphones or laptop, wherever they are.
An efficient spend management software is absolutely necessary. And this applies to all financial processes of the company.
