T&E management processes are important because they are at the heart of your business. Managing travel and expenses can help your business control costs and avoid overspending, ensure compliance with both internal and external policies, improve employee satisfaction by making reimbursements and recovery quick and easy. It can also help gain visibility into travel spend to help your company make better decisions in the short and long term.
Travel and expense management involves planning and booking business travel, which can include flights, hotels, or transportation, tracking expenses during trips and regular office expenses, submitting expense reports for reimbursement, approving and auditing reports and integrating everything into your system for budgeting and compliance purposes.
We’ll look at the importance of streamlining T&E for cost control, operational efficiency and employee satisfaction because even with the best intentions, hiccups can happen (and someone still has to take care of the manual data entry, handle non-compliance and delayed reimbursements).
What are the common ways to streamline Travel and Expense processes
Here are some of the most common ways to streamline T&E processes:
1. Automate expense reporting
Automating expense reporting is one of the easiest ways to streamline T&E processes. You can do this through T&E management platforms like GetGoing. With GetGoing you can automate your expense reporting and speed up approvals, reducing manual errors. You can also integrate with accounting systems to make all of these processes less manual.
GetGoing allows you to flag non-compliant company expenses instantly, track expenses in real-time to get insight into your company spend, set custom rules and limits and integrate all of this expense data into integrated flows. This means no more manual reconciliations and fragmented workflows.
2. Implement clear travel policies
Having a well-defined and accessible travel policy lies at the foundation of efficient T&E management by setting clear expectations for employees and as a company, helping to protect your budget. Make sure you set spending limits, highlight preferred vendors and have clear booking procedures laid out. This can be easily managed with a T&E platform that allows you to automate your travel policy. This way you can automatically flag non-compliant expenses and make approval processes as smooth as possible.
Don’t have a travel and expense policy yet? Get our helpful guide.
3. Use corporate cards with real-time tracking
Another great way to streamline T&E is through corporate cards or lodge cards, which allow for easier reconciliation and better control. Real-time tracking helps monitor spend and flag anomalies.These can also be easily integrated into your expense platforms as a payment method for easier control and seamless reporting.
4. Centralize travel booking
Use a single platform or travel management company (TMC) to ensure better compliance, better rates and consolidate travel bookings all in one place. Through centralization you can improve visibility and reporting, and make sure it’s easy to keep track of travel plans, and that your company has control over the providers and rates that are being used to book. Centralization is better for travelers, finance teams and those managing travel.
5. Analyze and optimize with data insights
Data is without a doubt one of the most powerful tools in T&E management. By leveraging data analytics, you can identify trends, anomalies, and savings opportunities. It’s not just about collecting data, but about using it too. Regularly review all your reports and data to make sure you’re staying on budget and that your travel policy properly adapts to your T&E goals, refining it regularly to align with your business goals.
It’s also a good idea to encourage feedback between finance and employees to get valuable insights on pain points in the booking process or areas of the travel policy that are unclear. This will help refine your approach so that T&E can become both more manageable and also more strategic.
The 5 secrets to simplified T&E management
We’ve looked at the five strategies to more simplified T&E management: Automate expense reporting, implement clear travel policies, use corporate cards, centralize bookings and optimize with data insights. Together, these steps can help reduce administrative burden, improve compliance and create a smoother and simpler experience for employees and finance teams alike.
Audit your current T&E setup and explore solutions like an all-in-one travel and expense management solution like GetGoing to help bring everything under one platform, saving time, money and helping business travel to work better for everyone. By following these steps to simplify T&E management you can unlock cost savings, happier employees and better compliance. So, what are you waiting for?