Importance of Automating Travel and Expense Management

Before the world shutdown to the Covid pandemic, an estimated 1.3 trillion USD was spent on corporate travel worldwide (GBTA, 2018). Now, the new world order is returning to normalcy post pandemic, and corporate travel is gaining momentum again. Consequently, the importance of travel and expense management automation, is gaining importance. While, expense management tools are on a surge, nevertheless organizations are actively trying to gain control of their travel and expense budgets, through these solutions.

Let us explore more about travel and expense management solutions.

What is travel and expense management software?

Planning, approvals, bookings, submitting, controlling, and analyzing business travel expenses is a time-consuming and tedious task for employees as well as concerned departments. You can completely automate these tasks using travel expense management software and save your organization several man hours, with expedited operations from anywhere.

The main purpose of travel and expense management software is to save money and time and streamline corporate travel processes. They act as channels through which you can manage current and recurring budgets, and virtually upload and organize receipts, all on the go!

The effectiveness of automating your travel and expense management software is closely associated with your company’s requirement and the travel expense reimbursement solution you choose. Effectively, automation of expense tracking results in a huge decrease in costs and an enhanced return on investment (ROI).

Travel and expense management

Need for travel and expense management automation

Automating your travel expense management system can work wonders for your organization. While it can optimize travel and expense management, it will also have a significant impact on your organization’s costs and processes. Turning to an automated business travel solution speeds up both approval and reimbursement, while the mileage tracker watches over the employees on field. Here are a few reasons why an organization should require an automated travel and expense management solution.

Makes Approval and Reimbursement Faster

With an automated system to handle the approval process, once an approver has approved the report, the task automatically goes to the next approver in line, who is notified to complete their part of the process. Once the approvals are collected, the finance manager can review and reimburse the expense with ease. These speeds up the approval and reimbursement process, without the employee having to move around for approvals.

Protects Against Expense Fraud

Using customized workflows, you can streamline efforts and increase overall transparency. You can set up a double review process, so that there is a second review before the reimbursements are processed, ensuring that all travel expense reimbursements are valid and accurate.

Increased Spend Visibility

Most expense management systems provide an extensive library of report options from expenses, trips, to policy violations, reimbursements, and more.

Improves Policy Compliance Rates

You can customize the entire travel process, to ensure travel policy compliance. The system will automatically notify approvers of employee expenses that violate the travel policy. This allows your team to check for compliance and approve or reject expense claims in real-time.

Eliminate manual processes and cumbersome paperwork

Keeping track of travel expenses can be challenging. With paper receipts, email receipts and not being handed any receipt at times, it’s important to always keep track.

Benefits of automating the expense management system

Automating expense management

The travel expense tracker software is a strategic tool that gives your company a competitive edge You can control overall spending, ensure policy compliance, initiate quicker reimbursements, reduce processing costs, and increase employee productivity. A good expense management solution helps you streamline your entire expense tracking system and ensures employees submit policy complaint expense reports.

Here is what travel and expense management software offers:

  • A single, customizable platform for Administrators, Travelers, Approvers, Travel Desk
  • Easy access via web, email or mobile device for travelers and approvers on the go
  • Customize workflow reflecting organizational travel policy and approval process needs
  • Global booking solutions from multiple distribution systems
  • Mileage tracker to log accurate business miles
  • Dashboard reporting gives valuable insight into the travel costs as per trip, project, team, etc
  • Reports to guide informed decisions and gain insight into travel spending.
  • Pre-travel approvals, planning and approvals to keep everyone compliant
  • Easy logging of expenses, approvals & quick reimbursements increasing employee satisfaction and decreasing employee attrition
  • Integration with Accounting/ERP/HR/CRM systems

Conclusion

To successfully automate your expense management system, however, it is important to choose the right travel and expense management tool and implement it correctly. TESS360 is a cloud-based travel and expense management solution that can help you reimburse your traveling employees in real time. It provides visibility into corporate travel expense spend allowing live monitoring of employee’s travel expenditure on a unified platform.

Trust TESS360 to reduce the time spent by travelers, approvers, and accounting/finance departments, on expenses and to maximize your return on investment. Connect with our team for an integrated travel and expense management solution offering simple and robust features.

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