Control Travel Expenses Before They Take Over Your Budgets

Travel and related expenses can be a significant part of your corporate budget, while also the least controlled.  Though you may have a corporate travel policy in place, it may not be followed as well as you may think.  Offer your traveling employees the tools they need to streamline their business trips, while also controlling spending, so that you can protect corporate budgets.

Many businesses have a corporate travel policy in place, but may not have the guidelines or the ability to enforce the policy.  Paper-based expense reporting is often so delayed that managers don’t have insight into travel expenses until well after they are spent.  If you are waiting to see an expense report come across your desk, you can’t make changes to employee itineraries or other travel-related expenses before they are incurred.  You don’t need to make changes to your corporate travel policy, you just need a stronger technology that can provide greater insight with spending – before spending takes place.

Offer your road warriors a simple, yet powerful app that they can add to their smartphones or tablets.  They can make travel accommodations using Concur TripLink and provide managers with pre-trip planning information and the chance to enforce corporate policies.  If preferred vendors, such as chosen hotel chains or transportation options, aren’t available in an area, the employee can work with another vendor that may be within spending guidelines.  Employees can also use their smartphones to manage spending while away from the office with Concur Expense.  They can take a photo of a receipt right after it is incurred and connect that information to a mobile expense report that can also be shared with managers at the office.  Managers can monitor travel spending, in real-time, to protect project or corporate budgets.  With such prompt data, managers can work with employees to control spending while they are in the field instead of doing damage-control with paper-based expense reports when they are submitted after the employee gets back to the office.

Replace paper-based processes with the technology can get you ahead of spending.  Contact Concur Technologies, Inc. for more information about TripLink and other innovative technologies that can help employees follow corporate travel polices and managers control spending before spending takes over your budgets.

By Concur Technologies, Inc., a Travel & Expense Solution Provider out of Washington