Business Travel Expense Management Challenges and Ways to tackle them

Business travel expense management is getting more and more complicated, as business traveling is increasing day by day. As per the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), it was estimated that global business travel spending to grow up to 8.6% in the previous year.

The contributors to the increase are slowly improving business confidence and ongoing economic globalization. And, another major contributor is the increase in mobile working.

It’s a serious problem for finance teams. As per PayStream Advisors research report on the state of travel and expenses management, co-sponsored by Fraedom, it was seen that 38% of companies spend $500000 or more in business travel expenses, and 18% spend above $5 million.

Dealing with a rise in spending on this area is a major management challenge for 43% of the huge corporations which took part in the study.

In such a complicated situation, it’s more problematic and important for finance professionals to have an accurate, simple, and influential way to control and monitor their business travel expenses.

However, you will read below that this study found that innumerable companies still bank on old and traditional manual methods or outdated IT system to manage business travel expenses.

All was okay in the past, but the time is different and more challenging due to the competitive corporate environment, it gives birth to problems that will negatively affect business operations and profitability.

So, let’s move further to know more about business travel expense management issues and their solutions.

Business travel expense management challenges and ways to tackle them:

1.The Dearth of Visibility

Even in these days, many companies use manual systems or old technology-powered computer systems to record, monitor and estimate business travel expenses. And, it gives birth to inaccurate data which the management banks on for business travel expenses management.

The above research also shows that around 35% of SMEs have accepted that they have problems in having an idea of their employee travel expenses.

Naturally, this dearth of visibility can result in the mismanagement of business travel expenses, thus hampering company growth.

To cope with this issue, it’s wise to bank modern advanced business travel expense management software solutions to get all done systematically, accurately and quickly.

2. Unbearable Processing Costs

Most companies don’t know about the costs of processing expenses. 80% of companies took part in the PayStream study accepted that they are not tracking this actively.

But, as per the report, manual processing costs of expense report was $23 on average in 2014 that increased to $26 in 2015.

On the other hand, It costs only $7 to process per expense report for a business with an advanced expense management software system.

3. Delay in the Submission of Traveling Expenses Reports

Business travel expense management becomes much harder to deal with when the submission of traveling expenses reports come to the management late.

Travel expense management becomes easier if the report is received on time, and it keeps the overall travel and expense process smoother.

You must be aware of the fact that improper report submissions are of loss of receipts, errors, and those mistakes which consume too much of the management for approval.

It’s wise to have an expense management software solution that deals with such problems automatically, thus saving your time, effort, and money to be utilized somewhere else for the well-being of your business.

4. More time consumption in reimbursement

It is often found that many employees leave their jobs out of anger due to the delay in reimbursements. Delay in reimbursements keeps their pockets empty for a long time, leaving them with no other option.

It happens because approval takes a much longer time, and sometimes, missed or lost receipts by employees become reasons for that.

Have a custom billing software system with features like reminders and notifications to inform your clients all this automatically. Doing so, you will keep your employees more alert, and your approval process will take a shorter time.

5. Innumerable mistakes in data entry

Business travel expense management also faces issues due to spreadsheets that are in many organizations and need extensive manual data entry, which gives birth to unaffordable mistakes.

An automatic tool like Invoicera with online expense management system will help you find out the problematic discrepancies and get rid of mistakes between spending and booking amounts. And, access to data will become much easier.  

6. Confusion in Travel Expense Policies

One of the key issues in business travel expense management is the confusion in travel expense policies. It’s not easy to understand travel expense policies, especially if you don’t have much experience in the travel industry.

If an employee doesn’t have an idea of what falls under an acceptable payment, then they will definitely have problems.

Common travel expenses like hotel and food must be clearly written to ward off confusion. In case, your business has a partnership with particular chains or a preferred list of organizations, then you must offer a convenient reference sheet to save time and lessen the complexity.

Most employees are in quest of the hotels charging low to save money, but in the end, they have to pay more than they would in the partner organization.

An online expense management software system with this information will be very beneficial for your business and more for your employees traveling for business purposes.

Your employees should be allowed to easily and quickly pull up related policies and information for their convenience. Mostly, such business travel employees don’t have the necessary data to help them make a suitable decision. Such travel and expenses management can easily be done with a travel expense management software system.

Related blog: Top 5 Tips For Business Travel and Expense Policy

Conclusion

In this blog, we told you about business travel expense management challenges and ways to cope with them. And, the points are the dearth of visibility, confusion in travel expense policies, too much time in reimbursement, and the like.

To cope with such problems, you’d better use business travel expense management software system like Invoicera, an online billing software, with the features like staff management, project management, task management, and 30+ payment gateways and the like to help you take your business to its peak by managing it wisely and automatically.