Travel and expense (T&E) management challenges for businesses

Challenges

In the traditional way of managing travel expenses, an employee would go on business travel using their funds and later file for reimbursements. Due to this, organizations struggle to gain real-time visibility into their travel expenses, leading to difficulty in monitoring and controlling costs.

Solution

Implementing an automated expense management system that provides real-time expense tracking and reporting can help businesses gain better visibility and control over their travel expenses.

Challenges

Managing paper receipts and manually reconciling expenses can be time-consuming, prone to errors, and lack accuracy. The accountant has to manually go through each receipt and match their details with the expense reports submitted by the employees to ensure that they are correct.



Solution

Adopting digital expense reporting tools that enable employees to capture images of the receipts instantly and organize them digitally simplifies the expense reporting process. It minimizes errors, enhances accuracy, and saves both the employees and the finance team a lot of time.

Challenges

Another major travel and expense management challenge is making sure that employees don’t spend on things that are prohibited from the company policy. Ensuring employees comply with travel expense policies can be challenging, resulting in excessive spending and non-compliance.

Solution

Implementing a centralized expense management system that enforces corporate travel policy compliance through automated rules and approvals helps organizations ensure adherence to travel expense policies.

An expense management system with corporate cards also often has a feature called ‘Merchant Category Blocking’ that essentially does not let transactions go through successfully of the specific merchant codes or category codes that your organization has blocked.



Challenges

Collecting, managing, and storing receipts can be cumbersome, leading to lost or misplaced documentation. Another issue is that the ink on receipts can often fade away quickly. This will render employees unable to report an expense and they will not be able to get reimbursed for it.



Solution

Leveraging digital receipt management solutions that allow employees to capture and store receipts digitally simplifies documentation, enhances accessibility, and reduces the risk of lost receipts.

Challenges

It is common for an employee to travel abroad and file reimbursements with receipts that are of a different currency than the one that their organization uses for all its transactions. Dealing with multiple currencies can complicate expense tracking and reimbursement processes, leading to potential errors and inefficiencies.



Solution

Utilizing expense management software that supports multiple currencies and automatically converts expenses into the organization's base currency streamlines the process and ensures accuracy.

Challenges

With manual processes, your finance team might gather all the expense information; but without a centralized platform, they will not be able to see the data in relation to each other. Without real-time analytics and spending insights, organizations struggle to make data-driven decisions and identify cost-saving opportunities.



Solution

Adopting expense management software that provides real-time analytics and reporting empowers businesses to gain valuable insights into their travel spending patterns and make informed decisions.

Challenges

Reimbursements are usually submitted at the end of each month. An employee has to collect and keep their receipts safe throughout the month to make sure they don’t get lost. And after this, they must submit it along with their expense report and wait some time till the next month to receive their reimbursements.

Lengthy reimbursement processes can negatively impact employee satisfaction and financial stability.

Solution

Implementing an automated expense management system with streamlined reimbursement workflows accelerates the reimbursement process, ensuring timely payments and enhancing employee satisfaction.

Dive into our article on employee reimbursement policy design to learn the best practices, compliance guidelines, and strategies to streamline the reimbursement process.



Challenges

Manual processes through disparate systems often mean that you’ll have to constantly shift from one software to another for performing different expense management functions. Inefficient integration and lack of automation between expense management systems and other business tools lead to manual data entry and duplicate work.



Solution

Choosing an expense management solution that integrates with other key business tools such as accounting software and ERP systems allows for seamless data flow, eliminates manual entry, and improves overall operational efficiency.

Challenges

Managing sensitive financial data and protecting it from potential security breaches is a significant concern for businesses. Many companies often do not invest in quality-grade IT security as it can be really expensive for them to safeguard and protect all their systems.



Solution

Partnering with a reputable expense management software provider that prioritizes data security, implements robust encryption measures, and adheres to industry standards can help mitigate security risks.

Challenges

A convoluted and time-consuming expense approval process can lead to delays and frustration among employees and managers. Since most of this is done manually through emails, it can be difficult to keep track of conversations and ensure that the messages are read by the responsible parties.

Solution

Implementing an expense management system with multi-level approval workflows and automated notifications streamlines the approval process, reducing bottlenecks and ensuring efficient expense management.

A specific channel only for expense management-related approvals and queries ensures that communication doesn’t get lost amidst a sea of other conversations.

Challenges

Businesses face the risk of fraudulent expense claims, resulting in financial losses and damage to their reputation. Intentional or unintentional, internal expense fraud is a common occurrence in the business world. False receipts, duplicate invoices, and fake vendor accounts are a few of the many examples of expense fraud that can take place.



Solution

Utilizing expense management software that incorporates fraud detection mechanisms, such as AI-based algorithms and receipt verification, helps identify and prevent fraudulent activities, safeguarding the organization's financial integrity.

Challenges

Introducing new expense management software and training employees on its usage can be challenging for organizations. People, especially senior management may find it difficult to learn the new system and adapt to the new technology.



Solution

Selecting a user-friendly expense management solution that offers comprehensive training resources such as tutorials, videos, and customer support, simplifies the onboarding process, and ensures successful adoption.

Looking for a best business travel expense management software for your business? Then, check out our article on best business travel & expense management software in Singapore and choose the right one for your business