Corporate Travel Expense Management – What you need to know?

Meals, mileage, and other costs are what employees incur as part of their jobs during corporate travel. But, the reimbursement process is not as simple as you may think. If you are in the process of redefining your expense practices, here is a comprehensive list of things you have to consider when defining new rules for reimbursement process.

Expense Policy Creation

Creating a simple and easy to understand expense policy is the key to avoiding employees from submitting out-of-policy claims. Make sure you communicate the policy effectively so employees can refer to it when needed. The policy should also define a clear set of processes on which expenses can be claimed back, when to submit receipts, what will be the reimbursement time frame, and so on. Corporate policy can help improve compliance rate, and expense report software can assure employees abide by the expense policy.

Technology Can Help you

Cloud-based expense report software solution simplifies the business expense report process when compared to spreadsheets or old-fashioned methods. Recent research revealed that having expense policies built into reporting software can improve compliance by 56%. The software will automate the process and make it easier for employees to file expenses and businesses to track expenses.

Integrating Expense Software With Other SaaS Apps

Integrating expense report software with other accounting systems such as QuickBooks, and Xero can help make the reimbursement process easy. Online expense report software, when combined with other SaaS apps that allow users to scan receipts easily, will make the process more versatile. Ultimately, integration would save you time while reducing the effort you put in expense management.

No Paper Checks

Relying on paper checks for expense reimbursement makes the process difficult. Using paper checks will leave space for employee fraud and make it difficult to trace. Data can be tampered easily, which increases labor costs to verify the receipts.

Effect of Accountable, Non-Accountable Plans on Reimbursements

Reimbursements, allowances, and advances are considered as an additional income to employees.
Reimbursements are payments made to employees for business-related expenses such as travel, office supplies, and other incentives. Employees are required to submit receipts to claim the amount.
Allowances are non-taxable income that covers routine expenses such as meals, and transportation. Advances are those that employees takes for specific events, for instance, when going on a business trip.

Managing Per Diem and Car Allowances

Per Diems are set dollar amounts that are normally made for business travel expenses. The federal government has a list of per diem rates that can be made applicable to corporate travelers through expense report software solution. Also, there are benchmarks for mileage rates. Employers should also provide fixed and variable rate allowances for payments. These predefined amounts can be easily enforced through the expense report software.

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