Why SMBs are Combining Their Expense and Travel Processes

Expense and travel go hand in hand, yet, too often they’re handled separately. The travel manager knows when members of the team are going on a business trip because they’re often involved in booking the flights. But, the finance manager isn’t aware of the trip until the expenses claims land on their desk at the end of the month. As a result, it’s difficult to get visibility into expenses or budget reliably for them.

Read the report to learn how to overcome top expense and travel challenges. 

The solution is to see travel and expense as the integrated process it is. When you streamline your approach by moving away from paper and spreadsheets to an integrated cloud-based T&E platform, spend becomes more transparent. And, it isn’t just large companies that stand to benefit. Technology that automates can suit businesses of any size, and scale with them as they grow. 

So what are the advantages of using cloud technology to manage expense and travel?

You Streamline the Expense and Travel Process

Moving to the cloud immediately puts an end to the old system of paper-based receipts and expense claims. When an employee books a trip, whether inside or outside your booking tool, the costs and details can be automatically imported into an expense claim ready for sign off on their return. This efficiency makes everyone’s life easier, and encourages employee adoption.

You Reduce Manual Data Entry and Increase Accuracy

Because travel bookings are automatically posted to your expense system, there’s no more manual data entry in multiple places. And, because expense and travel apps work on a mobile phone, your employees can take photos of receipts that are then added to expense claims, saving time and removing the need to keep hold of dog-eared bits of paper. This all leads to time savings and increased accuracy, as there’s no risk of mistyping. It also becomes more diffucult to pass off fraudulent expenses.  

You Save Time and Money When Booking

You want your employees to get the best deal on their travel, but you don’t want to lose sight of where they are booking. Even if they book outside the system, solutions like TripLink mean that all travel and passenger information can still be captured.

Travelers get a handy app with itineraries for all of their trips in one place, while the company can see where and when travel is taking place. That means you can forecast and budget for travel spend, negotiate discounts with regular suppliers, and, perhaps most importantly, you'll know where your travelers are going to be so you can fulfill your duty-of-care obligations.

You Embed Your Policies in the Process

You might have an expense and/or travel policy, but how can you make sure it’s followed? Cloud-based expense and travel solutions have policy rules embedded, and can flag to employees when they are booking trips or claiming expenses that are out-of-policy so you catch non-compliant spend before it happens.

Above All, You Get Better Visibility Into Your Spend

Expense and travel go hand-in-hand as travel is often one of the largest areas of business expenses. When you combine and automate the two, it’s much easier to keep an eye on costs and budgets. You’re also better placed to uncover inefficiencies and make sizable savings.

Learn more about how your business can drive growth and innovation by embracing the full power of expense and travel solutions. Download the report.