The Importance of Automating Travel & Expense Management

Human resource management is pivotal to the growth of any business. Happier employees are more productive and efficient. Organizations do whatever it takes to make processes simpler for their employees. Travel & expense management is one such process that can make or break the motivation of employees. Especially in an organization where employees spend most of their time on the road, expense management becomes critical.

Those who need to travel quite often for work find it distracting to work manually on maintaining receipts and cumbersome spreadsheets.

As per the Wakefield research, over 40 percent of employees would prefer spending an extra hour in commutation but avoid filing manual expense reports.

This indicates a strong need to automate your current expense management process. Automating the expense reporting process is important to help your road champs concentrate on core tasks at hand. At the same time, expenses software can be useful for HR and payroll teams to make the reimbursement cycle faster and efficient.

Benefits of Travel & Expense Management Software:

Let’s delve deep into the benefits of travel & expense management software.

• Increased Convenience in Expense Management

A good travel & expense management system make processes simpler for both employees and HR. While employees can fill the expense reimbursement form quickly, HR can process their claims in real-time. Thus, leading to an increased level of accuracy and efficiency at all ends. There isn’t any need to create manual data entry. Every expense can be processed as per a company’s travel & expense policy to avoid any confusion. Moreover, the payroll team can view the trail of expenses for individual employees and extract the required documents to avoid any chance of error.

• Easy Enforcement of Travel & Expense Policies

Whether it’s per diems or business mileage, all types of reimbursement claims should fall within the parameters of an organization’s policy. With the help of a travel & expense management software, HR professionals can set policies and specify limits on costs. And, employees need to justify expenses that cross beyond the permissible limit.

For instance, if your employees are frequently jumping into a plane to meet a client who is otherwise comfortable connecting through tech tools, it will qualify as an unnecessary cost.

In this case, it’s better to invest in video conferencing solutions like TeamViewer, AnyDesk, and Skype, and ensure speedy and interactive meetings in a cost-effective manner.

If your employees are familiar with policies related to non-claimant expense claims, they can be more alert and avoid exceeding the permissible limit.

Further, travel & expense management software can help organizations enforce reimbursement policies firmly. With robust expense policies defined communicated properly among your organization, you can discourage employees from committing expense fraud.

A travel & expense management system enhances visibility and streamlines validation to keep tabs on incidences where employees fudge the mileage figures or claim personal meals.

• Mobile Optimization for Modern Employees

Most of the travel & expense management software comes with the mobile version, allowing employees to upload pictures of their paper bills even when they are on the move.

Mobile apps for expense management are not just useful for claimants but also make the work of approvers easier. They can manage expense claims on the go by capturing data automatically. Even claims can be quickly approved on mobile apps, giving claimants a little extra delight!

Not to forget expense reports along with the breakdown of spend and supporting documents. You can extract every detail easily by using mobile-optimized expense tracking solutions.

• Making Payroll Process Efficient

All information collected through the travel & expense management software can be analyzed and converted into detailed reports. And, those who are performing payroll activities can refer to these reports to have a complete view of the expense pattern of employees. Accordingly, steps can be taken to avoid non-claimant expenses.

Further, this solution can help payroll professionals figure out those unavoidable expenses that can be a part of employee salary structure. It’s good to include fixed expenses in the salary structure of employees and help them save on taxes.

Let’s assume an employee (Sam) has a total CTC of Rs 15 lakh annually. Sam can save up to Rs 80,000-90,000 in taxes by availing around three-fourths of the benefits included in the Income-tax Act.

Wrapping Up

The contentment of your employees depends largely on how you manage their expense claims. So, choose a travel and expense management software wisely!