I work for a small company i.e. (under $10 million in revenue) and we are looking for ways to save on our travel expenses i.e. (airfare, rental car & hotel). Our travel is mainly in California, however on occasion some to the Midwest too.
Best programs for small companies to save on their travel expenses
Answers
Hi Anon
Any T&E program is a tool that can help
The program cannot automagically control expenses. Management need to accept that-sometimes they don't realize it:)
You control expenses through policy and process.
What are your issues regarding travel?
e.g. too many trips taken?
5 star hotels?
last minute travel vs planned travel?
There are some very useful T&E tools out there that provide a smartphone app and really easy ways to capture a receipt image and submit the expenses as they are incurred; the credit card reconciliation is also facilitated by integration with your card provider so that it becomes a lot less painful for the traveler and the
For example, look at www.nexonia.com. A number of our clients use it.
Hope that helps.
Len
You can also consider working with some of your local travel companies. They can often provide you a proposal for booking airfare and hotels etc at a lower rate than you can get on your own. It also helps control costs. In addition, make sure youngster clear policies around T&E spend
A few things we have found to save our customers on T&E:
- Set policies/limits for types of expenses.
- Set policies that make sense for each employee group instead of one set of rules for the entire company (i.e. salespeople have higher allowances on cell phone usage, executives have higher allowances on travel).
- Make it clear, easy, and real-time accessible for employees - this can actually reduce the "plugs" they user for expenses they think they have forgotten (i.e. tips and tolls). Old expense submissions tend to result in more "creativity" by employees to make sure they are not leaving money on the table and less control for Finance.
- Get easy access to expense data so you can see spending habits to set better policies and react to problem areas.
- Just automating to an online solution should save Finance at least half the time they spend on expense reports (although with your size/volume, that will more likely allow you to get to other projects than save you on department costs).
Hope that helps.
Filed Under:
FP&A