Why SMBs are combining their travel and expense processes

Travel and expense go hand in hand – 90% of business expenses are incurred on business trips. Yet all-too-often they’re handled separately. The office 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 around expenses or budget reliably for them.

The solution is to see travel and expenses as one integrated process, which it is. And then to streamline the end-to-end process by moving away from paper receipts and spreadsheets to cloud-based combined T&E solutions that work in the office and on the road.

It isn’t just bigger companies who are recognising the benefits of combining these often separate processes. Technology that automates the entire process can suit every size of business. For instance, a recent company we spoke to with just 16 people was able to harness such technology to its advantage. The Office Manager said of her first conversation with Concur: “I was quickly reassured that we would not be the smallest company Concur worked with and that you’re never too small for automation.”

So what are the advantages of using cloud technology in your travel and expenses processes?

You streamline the travel and expense 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, no matter where, the costs and details can be automatically imported into an expense claim ready for sign off on their return. It makes everyone’s life easier.

You reduce data entry and increase accuracy

Because travel bookings are automatically posted to your expenses system, there’s no more manual data entry in multiple systems. And because travel and expense apps work on a mobile phone, your employees can take photos of receipts which are then added to expense claims, saving time and removing the need to keep hold of dog-eared bits of paper.

All these things save time and increase accuracy because there’s no risk of mistyping. It also gives you greater transparency come audit time.

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.

Travellers get a handy travel app with itineraries for 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 – but perhaps most importantly, always know where your travellers are going to be.

You embed your T&E policies in the process

You might have a travel and expenses policy, but how can you make sure it’s followed? Cloud-based travel and expenses 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.

But above all, you get better visibility on your spend

Travel and expense go hand-in-hand to create the second largest controllable area of business spending. When you combine them and automate them, it’s much easier to keep an eye on costs and budgets. You’re also better placed to uncover inefficiencies and make sizeable savings.

In fact, our research shows that by using technology to uncover inefficiencies, you can save up to 10% of a business budget. To find out more, download our report on six ways to uncover T&E savings.