Five Major Challenges Business Organizations Face When It Comes To Travel Expense Management

When it comes to the process of managing the expenses, small and medium business organizations are at a huge loss when compared to the larger enterprise. The employees would not just seem to be frustrated because of not being reimbursed quickly, but also the management would lack in visibility when it comes to the nature of spending. Keeping this in mind given below are the five major challenges business organizations would face when it comes to travel expense management.

High costs of processing: Most of the business organizations are unaware of the costs when it comes to processing expenses. Studies have shown that four out of five say about 80% of the individuals are involved in the pay stream study not actively tracking this. According to this study report the cost of manually reporting down the expenses was 23$ on an average in 2014 increasing it with over 26$ in 2015. In contrast only 7$ per expense management report among the business are using a fully automated travel and expense management report.

Paying too much amount of money in terms of travel: How much you widely pay for a travel varies widely depending on how much and when you book hotels and airfare. And according to a research study being conducted in 2014 the average distance in cost of the number of tickets bought at the worst time vs the best time $312. In general according to the research study the best time to book a flat is 54 days ahead of time, and this is something that varies widely. You could here be assured of getting one of the best prices being proactive in making frequent searches for the best fare as well as negotiating rates and preferred vendors.

The Data Entry Errors: Most of the business organizations continue to utilize the spreadsheets that require the manual data entry of expenses. This is something that is time consuming and is something that could lead you with potentially costly mistakes. One solution being embraced by most of the business organizations is generally the use of integrated travel expense management and travel booking platforms. In a research study conducted by the business travel news found that nearly half of the business respondents has turned into an automated system avoiding errors, identifying the discrepancies between booking and spending amounts accessing the data quickly and easily.

Reports arriving month late: Just imagine how surprised your manager would be when an employee sends the expense management reports that he or she was supposed to submit 6 months back. Imagine the entire headache he would have while generating the entire travel expense management accounting report. And to make things worse the organization at times charges back its clients for all these expenses, and the customer in turn not appreciating an invoice for the work that has been completed months ago with others finding it hard to justify for such a delay. Having an easy to use expense management system could help you come out of this problem. The employees here would be less inclined to procrastinate when it comes to the entire process of filing and submitting the expense management report.

Lost receipts being a waste of time: Lost receipts are generally considered to be a massive pain for the CFOs and for the employees alike. On the other hand the employees would here continue to spend a huge amount of time looking out for them. At the end of the day he would here have to write a silly justification or worst giving up on the expense management report. On the other hand the CFO would here question the accuracy of the report which would again here require additional explanations. In short it’s just a waste of time for you and your organization. Ask your employees to use their mobile phones taking a picture of the receipts shortly and once they get them could resolve the issues saving their time and money.

To conclude investing in a good travel expense management software system does not just simplify the expense reporting of your employees but would also help you analyse how you could spend the entire budget. So what are the other challenges that your business organization faces in terms of travel expense management. Do leave your thoughts and comments below.

 

Author Bio:

Shivli Ratul is a freelancer and has experience of over 5 years in expense and travel management softwares.She has in-depth knowledge about managing travel and different type of expenses incurred in business.she writes about expense tracking software for corporate as a freelancer