6 Things to Avoid in Your Travel Expense Manager

For any company, effectively managing expenses is absolutely crucial to keeping that company running smoothly. As with many elements of running a business, however, that can be easier said than done. For businesses that employ fleets of mobile employees to travel frequently during their workdays to complete their job responsibilities, this adds yet another layer of complexity. Because of this added challenge, many of these businesses choose to utilize a travel expense manager to ensure effective expense management.

However as the world of business continues to evolve, modernize, and embrace the numerous benefits of digitization and automation, more and more tools have entered the market, all promising to help you better manage your business expenses. When the stakes are so high, how do you decide which of these tools is the best for your organization? 

While every organization is different—and thus, prioritizing different features—it might help to know what not to look for. To aid you in finding the solution that works best for you, here are a few red flags to look for and subsequently avoid as you search for the perfect travel expense manager. 

1. Overreliance On GPS-Based Tracking Systems

It may surprise you to hear you should avoid this feature in a travel expense manager. GPS tracking systems are popular because, in this day and age, they’re ubiquitous and relatively easy and intuitive to use. For expense management systems that do employ GPS tech, the idea is that employees can simply turn on the app and drive, and the system tracks wherever your employees go, ostensibly letting them track and record trip mileage without added effort. 

This sounds great on paper, but an issue with GPS tracking is that these systems have a tendency to work by tracking all mileage, even mileage that isn’t eligible for reimbursement, like personal errands and commuting. Separating the business-related travel from the non business-related travel gets tricky, not to mention time-consuming. 

A GPS-based travel expense app may make things simple by recording each trip and seamlessly submitting it for reimbursement, but it’s difficult to know if your company is really reimbursing for the correct amount. Employees can sneak detours and trips totally unrelated to their jobs right past you, and it may be difficult to notice without closer examination. 

2. Manual Logging and Approval Processes

So, GPS-based systems aren’t the most reliable means of tracking mileage for expense reimbursement, but what if employees just self-report instead? Then, at least you won’t need to worry about them forgetting to close the app when they’re not driving for work or submitting mixed-purpose mileage for reimbursement. 

While manually logging travel into a software application will at least make sure employees are reviewing mileage prior to submitting, this method doesn’t improve the accuracy of the mileage being reported any more than if that employee were using a spreadsheet or a trip log. Manual logging requires no accountability on the part of the employee—they can round up their numbers, estimate odometer readings, mistakenly report non-allowable travel, or completely fabricate what they’re reporting to their supervisors and managers. 

In the end, a single employee may not actually come away with much more in their reimbursement check than they would have otherwise, but if you have 300 employees each coming away with a few extra dollars due to inaccurate reporting, these costs add up quickly. 

Manual methods can seriously bog down approvals as well. If your travel expense manager doesn’t account for what happens after expense reports have been submitted, then it’s failing to address a significant and unavoidable part of the process. If you really want to streamline the management of expenses within your company, one of the most vital areas on which you should focus your attention is expense approval. This is where you can nip errors, errant spending and inaccurate reporting in the bud. When implemented correctly, automation can be a big help here.

3. Inadequate Policy Enforcement and Compliance

Rules don’t mean anything if they aren’t enforceable or there’s no way to encourage and monitor employee compliance. As noted above, expense fraud and inaccurate reporting can do financial damage to your organization. Those financial consequences could spiral exponentially if employees know that there are no real consequences for non-compliant activities, damaging your organization’s reputation and credibility as well in the process. 

For a company’s travel expense manager to actually have a positive impact, it must serve as both a framework for implementing company policies and a tool for enforcing procedures related to expense management and reimbursements. Some automated solutions for expense management facilitate this by letting management flag specific problematic behaviors, such as when employees submit duplicated reports or try to claim reimbursement for ineligible travel mileage. 

4. Lack of Integration with Accounting Systems

Why should the coverage provided by your expense management software stop at expense reports? And to that point, why should it even stop with expense approvals? The ideal solution for managing travel expenses should cover all parts of the process, including the reimbursement payment itself. If your travel expense manager doesn’t have a way to smoothly integrate with accounting and/or payroll to ensure fair and fast reimbursement to your mobile workforce, then it’s not properly doing its job.

Failure to properly integrate reimbursement processes with accounting and approval systems creates a bottleneck between reimbursement claim approval and the company’s accounting or payroll system distributing that payment. This point of congestion between approval and reimbursement could cause confusion, slowdown, and delays in the reimbursement process. Delays of this nature are exactly what solutions for travel expense management are supposed to avoid, but trading in your current reimbursement processes for a travel expense manager that neglects proper integrations could invite in new problems, instead of solving old ones. 

5. Insufficient Training and Support for Employees

Technology is great, but any system for expense management, no matter how intuitive or technologically advanced, is only effective if its target audience actually uses it, and knows how to do so properly. Ostensibly, your mobile workers’ primary objective is to use the time in their workday to perform their job-related duties to the best of their abilities. The last thing they should be doing—and probably the last thing your employees want to be doing—is using their precious time and energy to learn how to use confusing, outdated, overly complicated software. 

Instead, the travel expense management system your organization chooses should have an easy, user-friendly interface, and provide adequate training and onboarding procedures for new users. Additionally, employees should be encouraged to ask any questions or share any concerns they have with members of management or leadership. Ultimately, employees should also always have an accessible resource for travel expense procedures to reference, should they ever need a refresher. 

6. Unsecure Systems

Throughout the expense management process, sensitive information can exchange hands many times. Whether it’s personal information about your business, your clients or your employees, it’s vital that the travel expense manager you use comes equipped with the best security possible to keep that information safe. Unauthorized parties—both inside and outside of the organization—should not be able to access protected information. No matter how good a system is at managing your expenses, if it comes with security risks, it’s not worth it.

Any application that fails to comply with your industry’s regulations will also cause you serious problems. If your organization provides any kind of health services to your community, for instance, you must ensure that any software you take advantage of does not violate HIPAA regulations concerning your patients’ private information, which could include anything from their name to their home addresses to any other identifying information. 

Find What You’re Looking for in SureMileage

The right travel expense tracking tool can do wonders for your business. Let CompanyMileage be that tool for your organization! We’ve watched hundreds of satisfied clients save up to 30% on their travel expense reimbursement expenses by embracing our suite of software solutions dedicated to effectively tracking and managing employee mileage. 

To record work-related trip mileage with SureMileage, our reimbursement software, employees simply input their starting and ending locations for each trip, and our software will calculate the most expedient route for them, eschewing the need for manual mileage recording or unreliable GPS calculations. By utilizing our Quick Capture feature or our Quick Capture widget, workers can check in at each appointment location with just a single tap of their finger. At the end of the day, they need only spare a couple of minutes to submit trip reports to their managers for reimbursement.

Once reports are submitted, our system automates the approval process as well, with a customizable workflow so that organizations have the flexibility to configure this workflow in whatever way best meets the demands of its internal structure. SureMileage also integrates with all major accounting and payroll systems, streamlining reimbursement all the way from tracking to payment! 

Find exactly what you’re looking for in a travel expense manager in SureMileage by CompanyMileage. Request a demo to learn more about our mileage expense reimbursement solution and how it can elevate expense management for your business today!