How to Achieve Best-in-Class Expense Management

Managing business T&E is complicated and it requires the right knowledge and expertise. To establish best-in-class travel management program organizations require policies, procedures, capabilities, and solutions that satisfy not only the business needs but also their employees.

Visibility into spending is one of the major challenges every organization faces when it comes to expense management. With high visibility into aggregate spend they can know what to expect when making budget projections. It also helps understand the processing costs associated with managing the expense process all the way from spend capture to refund. By having complete control over the T&E spends organizations can improve visibility and attack the process costs.

Organizations should develop policies and approaches that define the expense management approach. They need to involve multiple stakeholders in the development of business T&E policies. It results in full exception strategy and a well-documented process for the submission of expense reports.

Commercial card systems which can be directly integrated into expense reporting systems offer most visibility of any of the source capture techniques. Employees don’t have to use their personal credit/debit cards for expenses. The system encourages card capture rather than cash and paper receipts. Integrated travel booking platform provides direct billing to the organization. It makes compliance much easier for employees, by finding preferred carriers/service providers when searching for travel options that reinforce the sourcing decisions made with the service provider. Mobile applications that enable your employees to report expenses on the go help improve the process efficiency.

Expense management software offers cutting edge features that enable your employees to engage and support the T&E management process. The system also improves visibility and compliance, and significantly reduces T&E spends.