After facing the pandemic situation the economic crisis is raging, it became clear for companies to reduce the budget related to employee's travel expenses - both for sanitary and budget reasons. However, one must be careful as this charge revision must not have negative consequences on the operational efficiency of the company. So, how can this be done? Jenji gives you a few pieces of advice:
But before speaking about this topic, first it is necessary to define what exactly are the travel expenses for companies.
Travel expenses: where does the spending go?
A business travel expense is a cost incurred when travelling for business purposes. This can include the cost of products or services necessary for the trip and are usually associated with travelling away from home for days or weeks. Employees can be reimbursed for these expenses for example :
- Airfares – domestic or international
- Rail travel
- Personal car or vehicle rental
- Taxi or minicab fares
- Meals or business food delivery
- Hotels, lodgings, serviced apartments
Of course, these expenses can vary depending on companies size and their travel & expense policy. So, let’s discover now what exactly is needed to be done by companies to control travel expenses better:
Set clear orders for travel expenses
One of the advantages of a clear travel & expense policy is that it states the maximum spend for every possible item, which can also be used by the finance team to forecast costs. Of course, for those costs to remain low and those forecasts to be accurate, the policy needs to be both clear and well implemented. Usually, companies can save costs by building partnerships and negotiating contracts with a focused list of hotels, preferred airlines and other travel agreements, so companies can get the best pricing. And rather than applying a standardised limit that lacks flexibility or consideration for particular clients or teams, self booking travel (called SBT) and expenses management software can allow you to define which business trips can be determined as high-spend and which trips should receive a more modest budget with following the travel policy.
Rework reservation rules
While creating a clear travel & expense policy, companies need to pay attention to reworking their reservation rules due to the world situation at the moment. Many companies started thinking about corporate social responsibility and due to this some of them changed their rules. For example: if a travel time is less than 2 hours, an employee should take the train instead of taking the plane. Also, this new context with COVID-19 has brought about changes on corporate expense policies by adding new expense policies and categories such as safety and well-being kits – like masks or COVID-19 tests – or covering the cost of ancillaries like the empty middle seat on a train. These small changes can not only help the environment but also save companies spendings.
Get Expense Report Fraud Tracking
As a matter of fact, employees may sometimes tend to increase their bills of expenses. Hence the most effective way of preventing it is to get a clear view of expense reports. Proof of expense is a key element in the process of managing and reimbursing business expenses. Paper reports are easy to falsify, so abolishing them would be a wise decision. Once that is complete, many flexible payment solutions can be evaluated.
Switch manual expense management to digital solution
As we are getting back to the new reality, where most of work is going to be digitized, there are already 70% of organizations that have a digital transformation strategy or are working on one. Today companies should be ready to function well remotely anytime, so it is important for them to digitize their processes to ensure paperless expense reimbursement. Only this way can travelers be reimbursed even if working remotely, and remote auditing of their receipts can take place - minimizing disruption for finance staff in the event of any future changes imposed by the government, such as work from home or border closures.
How can Jenji help you with it?
Based of listed advices, it becomes clear that the best way to save money on business travel is to use travel booking and expenses management automation software like Jenji, that can customise budgets for designated trips, minimise expense management by automatically limiting options based on the corporate travel policy in place, and easily scan and analyze all of employees bills.
Do you have any questions regarding expense management solution? Do not hesitate to contact our team at sales@jenji.io. We will be glad to assist you !
