Travel expense management

4 reasons why businesses should switch to a travel expense software

July 24, 2020
|
4
Min Read
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In this Article

Only people who have dealt with a travel expense report know business travel doesn’t always mean business class flights and fancy restaurants. 

Employees, managers, travel managers, and Finance teams juggle with multiple things to ensure business trip expenses are within the specified budget and comply with the travel and expense policy laid out by the company.

A travel expense software makes management of per diems, trip budgets, mileage, and trip expense reports easy for all the stakeholders involved. In this article, we list the top reasons why businesses should switch to a travel expense software to manage business travel expenses.

What is a travel expense software?

A travel expense software helps employees and managers streamline and automate all business travel-related expenses like cash advances, hotels, flight bookings, per diems, and employee travel reimbursements. 

A modern travel expense software also helps Finance teams gain real-time visibility and complete control over business expenses. Read on to understand how your business can benefit from a travel expense software.

Why should your business use a travel expense software?

Business travel is not all fun. It requires stakeholders to do a host of research and work even before the business trip. 

  • The travel managers or employees first need to find all the travel booking options that fall under the set guidelines for their category. 
  • If the employee selects the travel booking options, the employee would need to get it approved by their manager or travel manager. 
  • On approval, the employee is all set to go on the business trip. He/she would meet and dine with multiple people to close deals or to sustain and maintain business relationships. 
  • Employees would need to save all expense receipts during these visits to avail of employee expense reimbursements
  • If the employee either loses the expense receipts or forgets to report the expenses for the set deadline, the employee would stand to lose out on their money on business expenses. 

Additionally, there is a high chance of non-compliance or even deliberate expense report fraud in case:

  • Your expense policy does not lay out the framework of expense reporting properly
  • There are sudden changes in the business trip itinerary

This is where a travel expense software can help. 

SUGGESTED READ: How to detect and prevent expense report fraud

Features of an ideal travel expense software and how they help

Travel expense management is a complicated process for employees, managers, and finance teams alike. It involves hours of either manual entry and compilation of expense receipts and expense reports or manual verification and approval of submitted business expenses.

A travel expense software helps cut costs, save time, and provide valuable insight into expense data that can be used to further streamline your organization’s corporate travel management. Let’s dive deeper.

Feature: Pre-spend approvals

Problem: Travel expenses occur even before the trip does. Therefore, employees are issued cash advances for travel and accommodation bookings. 

Travel bookings are generally either done by the traveler (employee) or the travel manager. In either case, your employees, manager/approver, and travel manager must understand  your travel and expense policy, preferred vendors, and budget allocations. Additionally, the travel booking preferences and booking confirmation back-and-forths, all happen during billable hours.  

Solution: A travel expense software automates this process and allows the employee to directly raise trip requests and submit a list of preferred vendors to the travel manager. This can then be forwarded to travel vendors for booking. 

Once the details are in place, the vendor sends the trip request back to the approver/traveler for confirmation. Travel bookings can be confirmed immediately on approval. 

Fyle offers 360-degree trip reports that bring all business expenses incurred for a particular business trip/project under one single trip report. 

SUGGESTED READ: How to use Fyle as a travel approval software

Feature: Employee expense reporting

Problem: Traditionally, traveling employees save receipts for all business expenses so they can fyle for travel reimbursement post-trip. 

Safekeeping of receipts, ensuring expense policy compliance, and submitting the expense report on time is much unproductive work for your globe-trotting employees. This can be especially hard in case of sudden changes in the itinerary.

Solution: A travel expense software makes it easy for employees to track, scan, and save business expense receipts - from wherever and whenever. 

Once the trip is finished, your employees can submit their travel expense reports with just a click. The ease that an expense reporting software brings to traveling employees saves them a lot of frustration, time, and hours. 

Fyle allows employees to send business expenses to expense reports from within everyday apps like G-Suite, Outlook, WhatsApp, text message, slack, and many more. 

 SUGGESTED READ: Five ways to make expense reporting easier for employees

Feature: Expense policy compliance

Problem: One can not always be expected to remember the nuances of their company’s corporate travel and expense policy

Employees can sometimes forget what expenses qualify as business expenses or spending limits, and managers or Finance teams may sometimes miss fraudulent or out-of-policy expenses. This puts the organization and the traveler at risk with the tax authorities.

Solution: A travel expense software comes with a robust policy engine that detects and prevents any non-compliant expenses from even being claimed. 

In cases where the employee submits an expense despite automatic flagging, the expense is sent to a reviewer to validate the expense. This prevents any fraudulent expenses from being fyled.

Fyle’s policy engine automates and enforces policies on anything your organization might need. It also maintains a digital audit trail that helps track actions taken on every single expense.

SUGGESTED READ: Check expense report frauds with Fyle

Feature: Employee travel reimbursement

Problem: Finance teams are tasked with manually verifying receipts with expense claims, ensuring expense policy compliance, and processing travel reimbursements. 

In cases of non-compliant expenses, the report is sent back to the traveler for rectification or justification. Finance teams also have to check and weed out out-of-policy expenses, or fraudulent expense claims. This time-consuming task ultimately results in delayed travel reimbursement, which takes a hit on employee morale.

Solution: A travel expense software ensures real-time policy compliance by raising flags for any non-compliant expenses or expense reports at the source of expense creation itself. This allows travelers to rectify errors without the Finance team having to chase them. This saves a lot of time and effort for all the stakeholders involved in the process.

Also, when it comes to travel booking research or employee travel reimbursements a travel expense software automates the entire process of travel expense reporting while ensuring real-time expense policy compliance and audit readiness.

Further, a T&E software allows approvers to initiate multiple transactions to different employee bank accounts from the centralized expense management dashboard.

Fyle’s travel reimbursement features allow approvers and Finance teams to track the transaction status of any expense reimbursement right from the dashboard.  This allows for an overall view of all business expenses that can help Finance teams gain sight of the larger picture.

SUGGESTED READ: Balancing expense policy compliance and happy employees

Benefits of using Fyle as your travel expense software

Here’s a list of excellent reasons why you should consider Fyle as your travel and expense management software:

  • Direct integration with your existing ERP/HRMS/accounting software
  • Integration of corporate credit cards and automatic reconciliations
  • Effortless travel and hotel bookings for business trips 
  • Google Maps integration for accurate mileage tracking
  • Flagging of non-compliant expense receipts at the point of expense creation
  • Pre-compliance for trip requests to ensure continuous compliance
  • Real-time visibility into all trip statuses and trip expenses
  • Reduced turnaround time for employee travel reimbursements
  • A unified, searchable and unlimited business expense receipt storage
  • Industry-best practice security and privacy measures

Fyle’s innovative and employee-friendly expense reporting features make travel and expense management a breeze! In the words of the folks at IDC,

“Fyle is intelligent, employee-centric, scalable, and delivers significant value to growing businesses without any impact on user experience and quality of support.”

Ready to upgrade your T&E management? Schedule a demo with us today!



Travel expense management

4 Reasons Businesses Should Switch to a Travel Expense Software

July 24, 2020
|
4
Min Read

Only people who have dealt with a travel expense report know business travel doesn’t always mean business class flights and fancy restaurants. 

Employees, managers, travel managers, and Finance teams juggle with multiple things to ensure business trip expenses are within the specified budget and comply with the travel and expense policy laid out by the company.

A travel expense software makes management of per diems, trip budgets, mileage, and trip expense reports easy for all the stakeholders involved. In this article, we list the top reasons why businesses should switch to a travel expense software to manage business travel expenses.

What is a travel expense software?

A travel expense software helps employees and managers streamline and automate all business travel-related expenses like cash advances, hotels, flight bookings, per diems, and employee travel reimbursements. 

A modern travel expense software also helps Finance teams gain real-time visibility and complete control over business expenses. Read on to understand how your business can benefit from a travel expense software.

Why should your business use a travel expense software?

Business travel is not all fun. It requires stakeholders to do a host of research and work even before the business trip. 

  • The travel managers or employees first need to find all the travel booking options that fall under the set guidelines for their category. 
  • If the employee selects the travel booking options, the employee would need to get it approved by their manager or travel manager. 
  • On approval, the employee is all set to go on the business trip. He/she would meet and dine with multiple people to close deals or to sustain and maintain business relationships. 
  • Employees would need to save all expense receipts during these visits to avail of employee expense reimbursements
  • If the employee either loses the expense receipts or forgets to report the expenses for the set deadline, the employee would stand to lose out on their money on business expenses. 

Additionally, there is a high chance of non-compliance or even deliberate expense report fraud in case:

  • Your expense policy does not lay out the framework of expense reporting properly
  • There are sudden changes in the business trip itinerary

This is where a travel expense software can help. 

SUGGESTED READ: How to detect and prevent expense report fraud

Features of an ideal travel expense software and how they help

Travel expense management is a complicated process for employees, managers, and finance teams alike. It involves hours of either manual entry and compilation of expense receipts and expense reports or manual verification and approval of submitted business expenses.

A travel expense software helps cut costs, save time, and provide valuable insight into expense data that can be used to further streamline your organization’s corporate travel management. Let’s dive deeper.

Feature: Pre-spend approvals

Problem: Travel expenses occur even before the trip does. Therefore, employees are issued cash advances for travel and accommodation bookings. 

Travel bookings are generally either done by the traveler (employee) or the travel manager. In either case, your employees, manager/approver, and travel manager must understand  your travel and expense policy, preferred vendors, and budget allocations. Additionally, the travel booking preferences and booking confirmation back-and-forths, all happen during billable hours.  

Solution: A travel expense software automates this process and allows the employee to directly raise trip requests and submit a list of preferred vendors to the travel manager. This can then be forwarded to travel vendors for booking. 

Once the details are in place, the vendor sends the trip request back to the approver/traveler for confirmation. Travel bookings can be confirmed immediately on approval. 

Fyle offers 360-degree trip reports that bring all business expenses incurred for a particular business trip/project under one single trip report. 

SUGGESTED READ: How to use Fyle as a travel approval software

Feature: Employee expense reporting

Problem: Traditionally, traveling employees save receipts for all business expenses so they can fyle for travel reimbursement post-trip. 

Safekeeping of receipts, ensuring expense policy compliance, and submitting the expense report on time is much unproductive work for your globe-trotting employees. This can be especially hard in case of sudden changes in the itinerary.

Solution: A travel expense software makes it easy for employees to track, scan, and save business expense receipts - from wherever and whenever. 

Once the trip is finished, your employees can submit their travel expense reports with just a click. The ease that an expense reporting software brings to traveling employees saves them a lot of frustration, time, and hours. 

Fyle allows employees to send business expenses to expense reports from within everyday apps like G-Suite, Outlook, WhatsApp, text message, slack, and many more. 

 SUGGESTED READ: Five ways to make expense reporting easier for employees

Feature: Expense policy compliance

Problem: One can not always be expected to remember the nuances of their company’s corporate travel and expense policy

Employees can sometimes forget what expenses qualify as business expenses or spending limits, and managers or Finance teams may sometimes miss fraudulent or out-of-policy expenses. This puts the organization and the traveler at risk with the tax authorities.

Solution: A travel expense software comes with a robust policy engine that detects and prevents any non-compliant expenses from even being claimed. 

In cases where the employee submits an expense despite automatic flagging, the expense is sent to a reviewer to validate the expense. This prevents any fraudulent expenses from being fyled.

Fyle’s policy engine automates and enforces policies on anything your organization might need. It also maintains a digital audit trail that helps track actions taken on every single expense.

SUGGESTED READ: Check expense report frauds with Fyle

Feature: Employee travel reimbursement

Problem: Finance teams are tasked with manually verifying receipts with expense claims, ensuring expense policy compliance, and processing travel reimbursements. 

In cases of non-compliant expenses, the report is sent back to the traveler for rectification or justification. Finance teams also have to check and weed out out-of-policy expenses, or fraudulent expense claims. This time-consuming task ultimately results in delayed travel reimbursement, which takes a hit on employee morale.

Solution: A travel expense software ensures real-time policy compliance by raising flags for any non-compliant expenses or expense reports at the source of expense creation itself. This allows travelers to rectify errors without the Finance team having to chase them. This saves a lot of time and effort for all the stakeholders involved in the process.

Also, when it comes to travel booking research or employee travel reimbursements a travel expense software automates the entire process of travel expense reporting while ensuring real-time expense policy compliance and audit readiness.

Further, a T&E software allows approvers to initiate multiple transactions to different employee bank accounts from the centralized expense management dashboard.

Fyle’s travel reimbursement features allow approvers and Finance teams to track the transaction status of any expense reimbursement right from the dashboard.  This allows for an overall view of all business expenses that can help Finance teams gain sight of the larger picture.

SUGGESTED READ: Balancing expense policy compliance and happy employees

Benefits of using Fyle as your travel expense software

Here’s a list of excellent reasons why you should consider Fyle as your travel and expense management software:

  • Direct integration with your existing ERP/HRMS/accounting software
  • Integration of corporate credit cards and automatic reconciliations
  • Effortless travel and hotel bookings for business trips 
  • Google Maps integration for accurate mileage tracking
  • Flagging of non-compliant expense receipts at the point of expense creation
  • Pre-compliance for trip requests to ensure continuous compliance
  • Real-time visibility into all trip statuses and trip expenses
  • Reduced turnaround time for employee travel reimbursements
  • A unified, searchable and unlimited business expense receipt storage
  • Industry-best practice security and privacy measures

Fyle’s innovative and employee-friendly expense reporting features make travel and expense management a breeze! In the words of the folks at IDC,

“Fyle is intelligent, employee-centric, scalable, and delivers significant value to growing businesses without any impact on user experience and quality of support.”

Ready to upgrade your T&E management? Schedule a demo with us today!



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