Businesses understand the necessity of traveling to different locations to strike new partnerships and expand into new markets. Most business owners rely on business trips to further their growth. However, it comes at a significant cost.
It is commonly said that T&E expenses are second only to the salary costs for companies. However, a little extra cost gets appended to travel expenses due to the mistakes and errors that occur in manual expense management.
As per research by AIMultiple, processing one expense report manually can cost a company about $52, due to the mistakes and delays involved. In addition to that, there are fraud and compliance challenges that are associated with manual processes. This is the reason why most organizations are adopting travel expense management software to introduce operational efficiency and financial discipline.
In this blog post, we will discuss the factors that you must consider when utilizing travel expense management software, and also the best practices when integrating the platform within your existing workflows.
Travel Expense Management Software – What is the need?
Travel expense management software is a digital solution that automates end-to-end expense management processes eliminating manual tasks like data entry, expense report submission, claims validation, approvals, and payment processing. It essentially creates a centralized dashboard allowing you to manage all the expense management activities, starting from making bookings to processing reimbursements. The digital solution eliminates data entry errors and human biases by removing the dependency on paper-based receipts and spreadsheets.
Additionally, travel expense management software gives finance leaders and C-suite complete visibility into travel expenses along with access to real-time analytics and reporting. This data can be used to identify spending patterns, optimize costs, and make informed decisions about business travel. By removing human bias and streamlining processes, the software reduces instances of fraud and ensures compliance.
If you’ve decided to modernize your T&E expense management with a digital solution, you must be pick the one that aligns with your business processes.
Integrating travel and expense management software
No two expense management platforms are built the same. Each one of them presents unique capabilities and suits a particular business type or industry. Therefore, the onus is on you to select a solution that works for your approach. Below we listed the factors that you must consider when selecting travel expense management software.
Align features with your business needs
When you are making the first list of potential platforms, evaluate the features that they offer and see how they address your requirements. With this, you will understand how you can leverage the available functionalities and if you will have any customizations.
Ensure the platform suits your budget
Once you have the list of potential tools, you can decide on the budget. Setting your budget after an initial evaluation of the tools will give you a realistic idea of how much you might have to spend on travel expense management software. Additionally, you will be in a better position to consider the features that are a must for your expense management processes, and also the ones that you can discount.
Understand the need for customization
Any travel expense management software is built for general usage. However, some providers may offer customizations. Since the platform must cater to your specific business processes, you must assess the kind of tailoring the tool will need. It must be flexible enough to incorporate your policies without any disruptions.
Assess the ease of use
You must understand that the end user who will submit reports or finance teams who will use this tool regularly must be comfortable with the platform. Many enterprise travel expense management solutions are bulky and complex. For easy adoption of the solution, you must pick a tool that is intuitive and easy to use, enabling easy navigation between modules.
Evaluate the provider’s customer support
When dealing with an automation platform, you might need support in understanding the features of the solution. Especially since end-users will be traveling, and if they need any kind of support concerning the platform, the vendor must be available promptly. For this, you must ensure that you are selecting a provider that offers 24/7 support across different accessible channels.
Ensure seamless integration with other systems
Data that goes into T&E expense management is spread across different departments and platforms. This makes it essential that the travel expense management software you selected integrates seamlessly with your existing ecosystem across HRMS, CRM, and ERP. The platform must form a centralized hub for all the information regarding travel expenses regardless of who owns the data silos.
Zaggle EMS – Your ideal travel expense management software
Zaggle designed a travel expense management software after understanding the challenges that most organizations are facing with T&E expenses.
Zaggle EMS is an all-in-one expense management system that is highly flexible and feature-rich. It empowers you to digitalize employee expenses and reimbursements in its entirety. All you need to do is upload expense reports and approve expenses, while Zaggle EMS does validation, automated approval workflows, and payment processing.
Learn more about Zaggle EMS here.
