Before starting ProSpend, I owned a corporate travel agency and saw firsthand how challenging it was for companies to manage their travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses. When I built ProSpend, solving this issue became one of my top priorities.
For mid-sized companies in Australia, T&E spend can easily amount to millions of dollars each year and is often the second-largest controllable cost—but only if it’s managed effectively. Unfortunately, many companies still handle this manually, making it difficult to track and control. Most are reacting to the spend rather than proactively managing it.
Typically, companies use one of two methods:
Both of these approaches have their problems. In the first case, it puts an unfair burden on employees to cover company expenses upfront. In both cases, employees are stuck filling out spreadsheets or forms, turning in paper receipts, and waiting for approvals. This not only wastes valuable staff time but is also prone to errors and delays.
Many companies even find themselves paying corporate card bills before the expense reports are submitted and reconciled, just to avoid late payment fees.
The bottom line? Millions of dollars are being spent with little control and late visibility into this significant, yet controllable, area of spend.
That’s why I created Travel Manager — because there had to be a better way.
In today’s digital world, ProSpend simplifies the process by automating it. Here’s how we do it:
PS: I’ve always been a huge advocate for virtual cards! Check out my blog on eliminating the “use your own money” policy for corporate spend.
Or, use one virtual card for all your company’s travel payments—no more card sharing.
The same process applies for daily expense data. Since the virtual cards are linked directly to your platform, the data is available instantly to create the claims.
But where our solution get’s even smarter is with daily trip receipts. We receive these from your travel management company (TMC) including the amount, trip details like booking number, itinerary and match this to the credit card or virtual card claims.
Voila! An expense claim is created automatically, matched with the trip receipt. No manual input needed. For other expenses like taxis or meals, your employees can snap a receipt with our mobile app, and we’ll match that too!
Approvals are now simple. We know who needs to approve the claims, and they can do it directly from the mobile app.
And here’s the best part: your AP team no longer needs to chase claims, check coding, or manually enter data into your finance system. Everything is fully coded, compliant, approved, and ready to be exported.
In just three simple, hands-free steps, your employees’ travel expense claims are completed, approved, and sent to your finance ledgers.
Okay, I hear you ask, what if we have a travel account with TMC. No problem. That’s easy for us too. From the daily trip data we create travel claims for your employees automatically and they submit those for approval and onto your AP team.
Your AP team can then verify and approve the claims against the TMC statement, batch them, and confidently process the payment—again, hands-free!
When our first client went live with this, they reduced their reconciliation process from 2 days down to 2 hours!
The bottom line:
- Let your key staff focus on what they do best—not creating claims or managing paper receipts.
- Get real-time, hands-free card data and travel receipts.
- Eliminate the hassle of chasing travel claims.
- Say goodbye to re-keying data for your AP team.
- Reduce your reconciliation process from days to hours.
- Gain real-time visibility into your T&E spend.
- Close your books faster.
One last thing: ProSpend integrates seamlessly with all major ERP systems and travel management companies.
And here’s a success story from one of our customers, Autism Spectrum:
“ProSpend Travel Manager has been a game changer... It’s automation at its best. Our travelers don’t have to take a photo of a receipt, email a tax invoice, or create a claim. It’s all done for them—they just submit for approval.”
In today's digital world, tedious reconciliations are a thing of the past. Make the switch to ProSpend and let us handle the hard part. Experience a smarter, simpler way to manage your travel expenses and focus on what really matters!