Keeping an Eye to your Travel and Expense Management

Key to success and survival at the time of recession has always been cost cutting and control. Apart from controlling other expenses managing travel expenses is one of the important aspect of cost control. If company is able to reduce its travel cost they can improve their profitability.

Many business people do not care for managing expense in a systematic way. A lot has changed since earlier days when the only way to reach customers was to visit them personally. Tremendous evolution in technology has led to the boom of mass advertising through TV, Newspapers, and Radio. Web conferencing technology is being used to reach customer at low cost.

Controlling cost is critical for companies but the main question arises what return does company get in return on its expense on travel. A low cost trip that provides very little or no return is not beneficial for the company as well as for the shareholders. Management should spend reasonably on travel expenses depending upon the value in return. But it is difficult to assess the exact value of return.

Travel cannot be avoided completely by companies as it is essential for the company as well. Therefore it becomes necessary for the companies to reduce cost of travel. An efficient way to cost control is to implement Travel Expense Management System. The leading-edge companies have implemented automated travel management systems.

Automated travel systems allow the company to monitor and control their traveling expenses. Employees are required to use web-based systems to make their travel arrangements, and complete necessary documentation process. An Automated Expense Management automatically fills out employee's travel voucher using the travel authorization data and employee's credit card.

System allows the employee to enter his or her travel details on to the system which in real time can be viewed by the authority to authorize it. Finance department gets all the information in real time which makes the sanction of reimbursements easy and fast. These systems have become essential requirement for the companies to grow profitably and survive at the time of the downturn.

What Can Expense Management Software Can do in your Business

When it comes to business there are so many areas inside your firm that need an attention all the time somehow one of the main thing that need to put on an eye is the reporting section. Imagine if all your employee doing manual reports what could be the hassle it can take. Noticing today most of the businesses are using the technology as a plus to any businesses that they have. Yup you got it technology is the answer with all the reporting problems that you have in your firm.

Expense Management Software is a program will enable you to automate the entire expense reporting process from report creation through to producing management reports on expense spending. Report creators electronically create expense reports. Aids, such as data feeds from credit cards and mobile applications to submit expense items while on the road, speed the expense report creation process. As reports are created, submitters can see right away if expensed items are in policy. Once completed, reports are electronically sent to approvers. Approvers are notified by email that there are reports awaiting their review. They can see right away if expense items are in policy or not, and how the spending will impact monthly and yearly budgets. They can approve or reject items line by line, sending approved items to the next approver or to the finance team for reimbursement, and rejected items back to the submitter to rework.

The accounting team can review, recode, accept or reject items on expense reports before sending them for reimbursement. Expense data is automatically integrated with corporate accounting systems, removing the need to rekey information. Expense report auditing is streamlined as everything is accessible online.

As expense data is captured, comprehensive reports can be developed to show how company money is being spent. For example, you can see which vendors you spend the most money with, which may help you negotiate better rates and set up policy to use these specific vendors. Or, you might want to see which of your employees spend the most when traveling on business. This kind of reporting can help you control and reduce spending company wide.