Automate your travel and expense management process
One of the most complex business processes is travel and expense process management. An extreme amount of time, money, and effort is wasted by those businesses which do not understand the importance and complexity of this process. The manual expense management system is still being used by various companies even in today’s technologically advanced time.
The reason behind this lag is the invisibility of the exact losses the company is facing, in turn, this lack of precision is due to the absence of a corporate travel management system. The manual expense management process may seem simple but you are unaware of the fact that it consumes a colossal amount of productive hours and simultaneously shoots up the expenses. Does a cost-effective method to expense management exist?
Automated vs traditional business travel expense management process
Hours spent in expense reporting
There are so many businesses that just blatantly waste productive working hours by spending more than required time on manually managing their expenses, going over more than one dashboard, shuffling through hoards of receipts and documents, supervising policy violations, and so much more.
Manual work, from a small thing like verification of a spend to huge tasks like data entry, is undoubtedly daunting. Tons of patience, hours of huddling around, manpower, and effort are required. The finance teams and admins have to deal with many tasks on a regular basis. These tasks include having several back and forths in the situation of policy violations, checking multiple expense submissions, and comparing and authenticating expenses.
The traditional method of expense management consumes a lot of productive work hours. The automated expense management system assists the employees in uploading pictures of receipts directly. The expense management software then automatically extracts the required details from the receipts. Also, it offers the advantage of generating an expense report within minutes after the submission of all the receipts. Generation of an expense report usually takes a long time if done manually.
The time spent in compiling and submitting the receipts is now eliminated with the automated expense management system. Both the managers and the employees are notified in case of any policy violation or inconsistency recorded. Employers need not send bulks of emails for these explanations. They are easily accessible in the form of documents.
Employee satisfaction and morale
A crucial factor to consider when you are thinking about expanding your business and improving the operations is employee satisfaction. A happy employee always adds to the efficiency and productivity of businesses. It is common that an employee may spend his personal wealth on a business trip for business purposes. Well, timely reimbursement to the employee is a very crucial step. An automated travel and expense management system reduce the working hours of your employees. It shows that the employees' effort and time matter to your company.
Processing cost
Businesses roughly utilize $20.19 to generate an expense report. Multiply this with the total reports filed per month and your company's number of traveling employees. The total spent amount may seriously astonish you. The fund which could have been utilized on significant projects is unnecessarily spent.
However, automated expense management software businesses utilize less than half the fortune to process and generate expense reports. An automated software report validates and documents on behalf of you. That, too, is half of the money spent on manual processes. Doesn't it seem a convenient route to take? Also, it saves a lot of hours and manpower.
Compliance and accountability
Businesses with manual expense management systems usually always have little to no perception of the expenses demanded. As the term suggests, automation automates all these functions for you without the virtual intervention of humans, and all the automation functions can easily be performed using a trip expense manager app.
5 step process of travel & expense management
Travel request
Initially, contemplate a platform that gives your employees the space to generate an appeal for businesses trips. The platform can be one where the basic details of the employees are already filled, like name and reporting admin. After this, the only thing the employees will have to do is fill in the details of the upcoming planned trip.
Expense approval
For this step there are particular members from the team designated to approve the expense. Many platforms offer the option to automate certain expense categories. For instance, a claim for $10 is made and the expense category is refreshment, you can automate the expense category and the claim would be automatically approved.
Travel approval
The employees' submitted appeals are forwarded to be put in the approval workflow. This is where a detailed corporate travel management system policy reaps its benefits. It allows you to approve travel requests automatically based on some criteria. Auto-approval is also an option that is dependent on certain factors. Well, a one-day local business trip doesn't require going through the hectic approval process.
Submitting expenses
In this step the employees just have to take a picture of the expense receipts and upload it into the system. This eliminates the hectic process when they return back. The only thing to careful about here is that the expenses tey are incurring should be eliglble and valid under the business travel policy of the company. Also, finance management tools exist. These tools can be used to retract the essential details from the softcopy of the receipt and work on the expenses according to that.
Reimbursing the employee
Once approved by the finance team, you can begin an automated travel reimbursement process. Through this process, money directly gets credited to employees' bank accounts.
Managing your business travel expenses effectively
How ineffective travel management process impacts business?
An ineffective travel management process adversely affects the growth of a business. To tell you how using the traditional method for T&E management could prove destructive for your business, we have enlisted the top witnessed drawbacks of using an ineffective T&E management system.
Increased vulnerability to human errors and bias
The possibilities of human bias and human error are high while authenticating or inputting data. Further, it results in businesses losing large amounts of their fortune over a duration of time.
Time consuming process
The traditional method of t&e management uses manual verification and manual data entry for claimed expenses. This demands productive working hours from the employees and the finance team. An ineffective system consumes a lot of time.
Greater chances of unauthorized and fraudulent claims
Employees look for ways to make a quick money. Whether it be out of greed or missing receipts, they never miss a chance to claim more than the exact. They attempt fraud with duplicate bills or false claims.
A decrease in productivity and efficiency
Your admins and finance team end up wasting time and manpower on activities that can be easily automated. An inefficient T&E expense management demands extra effort. Too much time spent by the finance teams on reporting, claiming, and authenticating expenses decreases efficiency and productivity.
No transparency into spending patterns
The admins or employers are often misguided when they don't possess sufficient knowledge regarding what the receipt is trying to convey. It results in admins or finance teams making ineffective decisions. If the employer is aware of the spending trends, he can make effective expense policies and merge with vendors for discounts and more.
Loss in productivity and efficiency
The traditional method of T&E management is a tiresome process for both admins and finance teams. Employees are asked to store and compile their expense receipts manually. These manual sheets are then transferred to admins or managers for the purpose of approval. This process consumes a lot of productive working hours, which in turn directly impacts the productivity and coherence of the business processing in the long run.
Encourage fraudulent behavior
Some of the most basic ways employees perform fraudulent activities include:
- Submission of duplicate receipts
- Committing manual errors while filing an expense claim intentionally
- Submission of exaggerated/overinflated expense reports
- Submission of non-existent and forged receipts.
Loss of money over-claimed expenses
Deadlines absorb the best of us. Some employees work only to meet the deadlines on time. They often end up losing their company's valuable fortune. Although it only applies to less than half of a company's employees. To meet deadlines, employees often commit errors during entering spend claims manually. An inefficient T&E management system is prone to errors. Another basic consequence is that the employees find it as an opportunity to earn more money.
How can compliance be improved with travel and expense management software?
Business travel management process flow is not all fun and enjoyable. It involves a lot of work, research, and accounting behind it. A travel and expense management solution automates most of the tasks related to business travel. It can automate the whole spend approval workflow, which allows the employees to request funds directly and easily submit all the receipts from the travel vendors. Along with this, it is also backed with a robust technology that detects any fraud and prevents any unauthorized spending from being approved.
Real-time policy compliance gives alerts or red flags on the expense reporting system for any problems. This allows the team to rectify errors without much chaos. Overall, a significant amount of time and effort is saved. It is a smart move to adopt a travel and expense management system, and if you are looking for the best one, here we are. Volopay is the ultimate solution for all your problems.
- Direct integration with accounting software like Netsuite, Quickbooks, Xero, Deskera, MYOB, Zoho, and Tally.
- Physical and Virtual corporate card integration and automatic reconciliations.
- Real-Time visibility on all trip-related statuses and expenses.
- Decreased turnaround time for travel reimbursements.
- Endless business expense receipt storage.
- Flagging non-compliant expense receipts.
- Best security and privacy measures.
Trusted by finance teams at startups to enterprises.