When designing processes for reimbursing employees for work-related travel and other expenses, there are a lot of decisions to make: how to submit reports, how to reimburse, and how exactly to distribute those reimbursement payments. Many organizations and reimbursement software solutions, including CompanyMileage, utilize the method of reimbursing employees for their incurred travel and entertainment expenses through their payroll systems. But why? It doesn’t make that big of a difference, right? 

Or maybe it could make a huge difference! Here’s five reasons why reimbursing T&E expenses through payroll could benefit your organization.

1. Convenience

Look, your company has a lot of moving parts – and yes, that includes the employees. Don’t you want to make reimbursement as efficient and uncomplicated as you possibly can? By reimbursing employees for their work-related travel and other expenses through payroll, you can effectively consolidate employee mileage, expense reimbursements, and payroll into one direct deposit. Centralizing these elements into the same workflow will be hugely convenient both to the overall organization, and to your employees, managers, and supervisors, as well.  

2. Consistency

Accuracy and consistency are everything, especially when tax season comes around – or if your organization ever has the need to prove an audit trail of expenses. Distributing reimbursement payments through your company’s payroll system provides consistent, structured beginning and end dates for employee pay periods. Plus, by consolidating reimbursement into payroll, employees are never left wondering when, exactly, the deadline for expense submission is, leading to more consistent payments and submissions.

3. Risk Reduction

There’s a lot of risk already running rampant in the business world, and you should look for ways to minimize it whenever you can. Using payroll to reimburse travel and expenses to mobile employees creates better internal controls and oversight for reimbursement requests and payments. In doing so, it also decreases the risk of false vendors and embezzlement, much more than simply using accounts payable systems to reimburse employees. Additionally, greater oversight over reimbursement payments could help management flag potentially risky employee behaviors, such as duplicating reports or seeking payments for non reimbursable travel. 

4. Efficiency

Streamlining the reimbursement process is about more than just a convenience; it’s about eliminating bottlenecks that often delay submission, approval, and payment processing. By integrating T&E reimbursement with payroll, CompanyMileage significantly reduces these bottlenecks. This seamless process means that expense reports can be reviewed and approved more rapidly, and subsequently, payments reach employees sooner through payroll. This not only saves valuable time for all parties involved, it also enhances employee satisfaction by ensuring timely reimbursements.

5. Easy Integration

CompanyMileage stands out for its robust integration capabilities. With compatibility extending to over 70 major payroll and accounting systems, including industry giants like ADP, Ceridian, and Oracle, it offers unmatched flexibility. What truly sets CompanyMileage apart is its commitment to client-specific needs: if an integration isn’t currently available, they will develop it at no extra cost. This level of personalized service ensures that no matter your existing system, you can seamlessly integrate CompanyMileage for efficient T&E management.

Reimbursement Reimagined with CompanyMileage

With the continuous advancement of software and tracking technology, it’s never been easier to log, submit reports, and reimburse employees for their work-related travel and other expenses – without having to make them do complicated calculations, or push paper reports around. At CompanyMileage, we take pride in automating every step of the mileage reimbursement, so that your employees can focus on actually doing their jobs without having to worry about being compensated fairly. 

Using our suite of software solutions, mobile employees simply enter their starting and ending points of their work-related trips right from their smartphones. Our system calculates the distance between those two points, determining from there the amount to be reimbursed. At the end of the day, employees just have to take a couple of minutes to organize their trips and any relevant receipts for submission. From there expense reports move through an automated and highly customizable approval workflow, and because of our accounting and payroll integration, employees can trust that they’ll receive reimbursement payments that are accurate and timely. 

See for yourself how CompanyMileage can optimize your reimbursement processes by contacting us for a demo today!