The Hidden Cost Of Travel. And How Travel Manager Can Reign It In

Despite the increasing popularity of online meetings, for most companies there’s still the need for staff to be hitting the road. For new business, stronger client and supplier relationships and staff professional development. It’s an investment that pays off, but what about the hidden cost of reconciling the travel spend?

The hidden cost

Whilst many companies use a great travel management company to get the best value out of their travel dollar with lowest fare search and hotel negotiations, their savings can be lost entirely if the process to reconcile that travel spend is out of control and manual.

Ask any traveller about the hassle of gathering their receipts and itineraries from their travel company, entering the expenses in a spreadsheet, printing it out and attaching the travel tax invoices and then routing it to their approver and finally onto accounts payable for payment.

And it doesn’t get any better if you have a travel trading account. Now that reconciliation is dumped on the already time-poor Accounts Payable staff. They have to check the monthly statement, chase up the tax invoices from the travellers, make sure each trip was approved, verify all the charges and then key the expense data into their accounting software.

At ProSpend we know first hand from our clients, that it’s not uncommon for accounting staff to spend days each month reconciling their travel statement.

Introducing – Travel Manager – it’s game changing

With our Travel Manager module, travel receipts and invoices go straight into ProSpend daily from their travel management provider. No more paper receipts, no photos or emailed tax invoices.

But it’s not just that we get the tax documentation electronically, it’s what we then do with it in our Travel Manager module that is truly innovative.

• For travellers using a credit card, we send the tax invoice straight into their receipt vault as soon as the booking is paid and match it to the credit card expense line. We even auto code it for them. It’s seamless and totally hands-free expenses.
• For companies on a travel account the reconciliation process is now completely automated. When they get the travel statement to pay, with Travel Manager every transaction will already be in ProSpend ready for them including a tax document. And it will have been approved, verified and updated with the right general ledger. They simply batch the transactions and export to their finance system (yes, that’s hands free too) to pay their travel supplier.

The bottom line

Prospend's Travel Manager module dramatically overhauls the travel reconciliation process for both travellers and finance teams. So get your key staff back to the jobs they do best…not chasing receipts and invoices.