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Pro Tips on How to Choose a Travel Expense Tracker

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What are you using as your business travel expense tracker? Are you still using pen and paper?

Perhaps many of you are having a hard time moving away from your paper-based system. After all, it has worked for years. But don’t you think it could be way better?

Let’s face it. Paper-based systems are riddled with inefficiencies. They are prone to human error, not to mention fraud. The exhaustive paper trail is also tedious, not to mention frustrating. There is a need for human intervention every step of the way, and this takes your employees’ time away from the work that they really should be doing.

So why should you change? Let’s break down the benefits you can get from a streamlined business travel expense tracker.

Benefits of an Automated Travel Expense Tracker

  • Close Compliance with Travel Policies

Take a huge burden off your finance team by empowering your employees to adhere to compliance policies on the ground. Having an automated travel expense tracker allows you to also reduce expense frauds and other compliance issues that can cost you in the long run.

  • Increased Visibility into Your Finances

Automated expense trackers allows you to know, even in real time, just where your money goes. This allows you to have a better picture of your cash flow within a given period, or even see if you’re going over-budget on a particular project.

  • Tax Deductions and Audits

It’s important that you handle your expenses properly so that they can be marked as a legitimate expense and are therefore qualified for tax deductions. Having a tight handle on your expenses also allows you to have clear records and audit trails to reflect how well you also manage your finances.

  • Happier, More Productive Organization

Making it easier for everyone in your organization to create their travel expense reports and making the flow much smoother is a win-win for everyone. Automating, simplifying, and streamlining your processes speeds up expense reporting and reimbursements.

This said, what then should you look for when it comes to a travel expense tracker?

What to look for in travel expense trackers

There are many automated travel expense apps available today. And it’s easy to be drawn to the loudest one, with the most bells and whistles. It can also be easy to be confused as to what you need or what you want.

The secret to find the travel expense tracker that’s right for you requires that you consider these factors:

  • It should be user-friendly
  • It should support multiple users and with multiple permissions
  • It should accommodate your approval workflows
  • It should help enforce your business travel compliance policies
  • It should be able to scale with you as you grow your business
  • It should help you cut down your costs
  • It should help you streamline your processes
  • It should help you become more productive
  • It should provide visibility
  • It should provide insightful reports depending on how you want your data to be analyzed and displayed

At Gorilla Expense, we’re taking expense tracking to the next level by allowing you to have cloud-based and on-premise options. We also tailor fit a solution that best supports your company’s needs. You may check out our demo for more information, or better yet, get in touch with us today!

 

 

Valuable Tips on How to Reduce Expense Fraud

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As a company, if you’re not worried about expense fraud–then you should be. In fact, according to a study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, expense reimbursement fraud makes up 15 percent of business fraud. Because of this, businesses suffer an average loss of $26,000 every year.

 

To make things worse, it takes around 24 months for any of the fraud to be detected. Therefore, before the problem and perpetrator are pinpointed, much of the company’s money has been used up for fraudulent purposes already.

Employees who commit expense fraud often say that they add additional expenses in their reports as a way to “even out” their previous reports. They may have forgotten to input some expenses previously and are making up for them now. It becomes a guessing game of inaccuracies and unaccounted adjustments. In the long run, this can unnecessarily cost the company a lot.

So how do you remedy this?

Remedy Expense Report Fraud by Taking These Steps

Let’s take a look at how companies can reduce expense fraud.

  1. Track expenses much easier by requiring your employees to create one expense report per trip. Require them also to submit it as soon as they get back.
  2. Make the most of every transaction and even get perks by getting your frequent travelers corporate credit cards. These can also allow you to more transparency for every transaction and get immediate credit for canceled ones.
  3. Charge future-dated travel to a corporate charge card.
  4. Establish a policy that requires most senior employees at a meal to pay the check. This helps avoid fraud, redundancy, and duplicate transactions.
  5. Employees who submit hard-copy receipts and manually filled spreadsheets are more likely to commit fraud. Avoid this by creating steps to automate the expense reporting process.
  6. Centralize travel expense processes for better management and visibility.
  7. Validate expenses against corporate policy. This helps deter and prevent employees from entering a non-compliant expense. At the least, it creates a system that allows them to explain the charge for quick review and approval
  8. Implement a solution that can automatically identify and flag different kinds of expense fraud.

Don’t Rely on Band-Aid Solutions for Expense Fraud

Remedying expense fraud doesn’t have to be tedious and time-consuming. Worrying about compliance should not give finance such a hard time that inefficiencies happen. Trying to police each and every expense item should not be done at the expense of company productivity. That’s why many automated solutions should be in place.

Gorilla Expense provides a comprehensive expense reporting solution that allows you to automate expense reports.

Gorilla Expense, for example, will identify any duplicate transaction the user may have entered by searching for similar transactions across the system. With our Receipt Scan solution, we also flag transactions on which the amount does not match the amount shown on the receipt automatically. The screenshot below shows how the system flags duplicates and transactions where receipt amount does not match the amount entered by the user.

 

Expense Report Violation

In addition, our “Expense Policy Violation Reports” section will show you the top expense policy violaters in the company and also detail each violation.

With Gorilla Expense in place, you can be on top of all your expenses with better visibility, better compliance, significantly less fraudulent expenses, and much more peace of mind. At the same time, employees can find it easier to comply and submit expense reports. This helps get all the pain and hassle out of the way.

Find out how you can get Gorilla Expense for your company by contacting us today.

 

 

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Top 5 Reasons to Stop Paper-Based Expense Reporting

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It’s a fact–every business or organization will have to deal with expenses. And these expenses have to be recorded, reported, and processed. These have to be verified as well.

However, despite the times and technologies we have today, there are companies that still rely heavily on paper-based and manual expense reporting. Many employees may not complain as they are used to the way they have always done things. However, what they don’t know is that they may be missing out on so many things. Read more

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Expense Management Best Practices For Employees

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In today’s constantly changing corporate landscape, you may be required to travel by your company, whether locally or abroad. This could be due to a variety of reasons, such as meetings, courtesy calls, business development, or project execution, to name a few.

 

Whatever it is, for every employee who travels for the company, the company incurs costs that could easily add up if you look at the bigger picture. This is why these companies have travel guidelines and protocols in place, especially when employee reimbursements are involved.

Get to Know Your Company’s Travel Expense Policies

Companies of all sizes have expense policies that guide their employees in their travel and expenses for the business. There may be times that you  yourself may have been told off regarding a reimbursement, that it is not claimable. You may even have disputed some claims along the way.

The thing is, there’s actually quite a number of guesswork, confusion, and frustration when it comes to misunderstanding these expense policies. This could be due to the system itself, a conflict with the policies, or you may have provided insufficient data to back your claims.

While every company has expense management systems in place, having a dated  one can also affect the turnaround time for reimbursements. In the long run, the delays could cost the company.

Follow These Do’s and Don’ts

Whatever system you have in your organization, as an employee, it’s important to know what your privileges and limitations are.

To help you out, here are some Dos and Don’ts for employees when it comes to business travel and expense claims.

DOs:

  • Familiarize yourself with your company’s expense policies
  • Save your expense receipts and keep them organized in one place
  • Keep a copy of your expenses or receipts at all times, whether as a photocopy or on your phone, if in case you lose your actual paper receipts
  • Submit your expense report as soon as you incur your expense

DON’Ts:

  • Don’t ask for reimbursements for personal services or expenses that you may have incurred during your business travel
  • Avoid overspending for things or situations that don’t warrant it while you’re on your business trip. If you’re not being conscious of your company’s funds or budget, this will be found out sooner or later
  • Don’t hold your expense reports and reimbursement claims for a long time and submit them weeks or months later

Go Digital and Paperless!

These days, there are many expense management solutions that leverage on the latest technology to give you and your company the best features. Just like Gorilla Expense!

With Gorilla Expense, your expense management system will be seamlessly upgraded to address your organization’s needs. Using the latest technology, it makes it easier for company employees like you to keep track of expenses, store receipts, submit claims, and track approvals–all within one app. Whether cloud-based or in-premise, you can be sure that Gorilla Expense takes the hassle off expense reporting to ensure you get your reimbursements–minus all the frustration.

You can even use Gorilla Expense while on-the-go, without having to look for a PC or lugging around your laptop with you. Right within your smartphones, you can use the app to help you be on the move while ensuring that your expenses are tracked.

So, if you feel that your company could use the ease and speed of having an automated, paperless, and intuitive expense management solution such as Gorilla Expense, get in touch with us.

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How to Cultivate Compliance and Prevent Expense Fraud

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How much is it to travel from your main headquarters to your satellite office in another state? When you go around and ask your colleagues, odds are, they would have different answers.

This simple experiment shows just how easy and common it is for employees to make honest mistakes on their expense reports.  The question is, however, are these really mistakes or deliberate misrepresentations?  Read more

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Pack Like a Pro on Your Next Business Trip

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The holiday season can be stressful. When it comes to holiday-season business travel, not many has survived it without a hitch.

The thing is, packing and preparing for a business trip during the holidays is intensely nerve-wracking. You have to make sure you don’t forget anything. Over the many business travels that you’ve done, you may have gathered a few tips and tricks to get you by. However, as experience would tell you, something almost always happens to get you off-track.  Read more

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4 Crucial Questions to Ask When Choosing an Expense Management Solution

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If you’re in the market for an expense management solution for your company, then you probably have an idea just how many solutions, technologies, vendors, features, and price points to choose from. All these can be overwhelming, not to add the available deployment options and the total business value each solution can potentially bring.

So, how do you choose the right expense management tool for you? Read more

Corporate Cards for T&E Expenses – See How Your Peers Use Them

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The GBTA did a survey of more than 200 travel managers in the US on which expense types they mandate the usage of corporate card

No surprises that Airfare was the top at 67%. This is mainly to better manage the spend related to airfare and utilize programs and partnership with air travel vendors. Plus, in some cases, if tickets are canceled or modified, corporate cards have discounted change-fees for being part of the air travel vendor program. Closely following the Airfare expense type are Lodging and Rentals both of which maintain a similar philosophy.

Charging meals to the corporate card provides greater visibility from a compliance perspective. This is especially true if meals are related to Entertainment type expenses. Companies are also increasingly asking employees to charge misc. business expenses like internet, phone calls, faxes etc. to the corporate card to prevent potential frauds. For sales people on the road all the time, the corporate card is a big convenience for mileage and gas related expenses as well.

So, how do your company stack up compared to this? Which expense types do you mandate your users to use the corporate card for? Let us know in the comments below.

Reference: GBTA April 2014 survey. Chart provided by Travel Procurement, part of BTN Newsletter