Why Integrating T&E Matters

In many organizations, corporate travel management and expenses are considered two different functions and are handled separately. Expenses are processed by the accounts department while travel management is responsible for buying travel and oversee the travel program. Finally, both may go to finance, but running these two processes are worlds apart.

Most businesses don’t link their corporate travel and employee expenses. Around 90% of expenses are incurred on business trips. Right from booking travel to undertaking a trip, all the processes are interlinked. To get better control and visibility over employee spend and patterns, it is required to see travel and expenses as a truly end-to-end process.

However, it is difficult for the finance department to align processes and data if your company is still managing expenses using spreadsheets or paper processes. Also, gaining visibility is not possible if the travel program is managed by a separate department. Due to this, most companies have started aligning processes through solutions that help businesses manage both functions in a better way. From travel search to spend analysis, they are seeking ways to eliminate the labor-intensive processes while reducing resource costs.

Combining automation and integration

Automating current expense processes is the first thing you should do to aggregate the spend data. Expense management software can help businesses centralize spend data, thus making it easy to visualize patterns. The second thing is to introduce pre-trip approval process in the workflow. This will help the finance department anticipate future spend. This works best for growing SMEs as it makes it possible to track budget accurately. Integration with travel programs can give you the granular details of expenses. Cloud-based expense software makes this work easy by cross integrating data.