A travel management system helps a business track and analyze work-related travel. Usually this involves some means of inventorying trips, integrating travel policies and enabling employees to report their travel expenses for reimbursement. Oftentimes, businesses are resistant to implementing such systems under the belief that it will just create more administrative overhead and paperwork than it’s actually worth.
People have been traveling for work since the dawn of time, after all. If hunter-gatherers didn’t need a travel management system, why do you? Well, in an era when the number of mobile employees is quickly on the rise, efficiency and automation are paramount to streamlining the processes that manage their movement and expenses. Investing in a travel management system won’t just help you automate travel management, it will improve your business as a whole. Here’s how.
Easy, Accurate Mileage Tracking
Mileage reimbursement is a hot-button issue for many companies with employees who spend a significant amount of their days traveling to job sites. Per IRS guidelines, these miles are eligible for reimbursement, but they must be accurately tracked under an Accountable Plan.
Traditionally, this means that each employee needs to keep a mileage log in which they record their odometer readings throughout the day. This practice is full of issues, though. Is difficult to determine if the mileage reported is accurate and wholly work-related. A travel management system can better help you track this mileage and ensure no trips violate company travel policies.
You can even automate mileage tracking with SureMileage, which calculates trip mileage based on the starting and ending points rather than odometer readings. Then, you won’t have to worry about verifying mileage after the fact to ensure you’re reimbursing employees appropriately.
Integrated, Real-Time Address Books
Often, mobile employees travel to many of the same locations, whether they be satellite office locations, long-term clients or in-home patients. Juggling all of these addresses can become confusing as they add up, but by storing them in a travel management system, you’ll be able to keep them organized as employees refer to their Address Books over and over again. Sharing them via a travel management platform also means you only have to share them one time, with the knowledge that everyone will have access to this integrated Address Book.
Simplified Expense Reporting
Reporting procedures for employee travel are infamously confusing for employees. It’s not always clear how they need to go about transforming their travel logs into expense reports, and once they do, they need to know who to deliver it to, and that individual needs to know how to proceed, as well. It’s a manual process that requires clear direction and understanding by all parties, not always an easy ask.
One of the biggest tasks a travel management system automates is expense reporting. With such a platform, employees know exactly where they need to go to submit reports, and the system handles it from there. A process many employees found too complicated to be worthwhile can be done in a few minutes with the right technology.
Automated Reimbursement Process
Mileage reimbursement represents a significant cost for your company, and inefficient systems just add to that cost. Ensuring accuracy is important not only for expense control but for claiming your own tax deduction for mileage reimbursement as an employer. Accurate documentation comes from a rigorous process that builds in safeguards, encourages questions, and includes a monitoring system that uncovers abuse during review and approval.
If that sounds like a lot of work to do on your own, that’s because generally, it is. A travel management system will help to automate these processes, flag potential errors and provide an auditable paper trail showing your due diligence in verification.
Better Analytics
Data analytics is the pursuit of productivity and financial gains through inspecting, transforming and modeling data with the goal of discovering patterns and other useful information. With the help of a robust dataset, companies can make more informed decisions and draw more useful conclusions, but for any of that to be possible, you need a means of collecting data in the first place.
When you implement a travel management tool, you’ll not only streamline processes, you’re enabling easy data collection and analysis. With such information, you can assess employee time management, travel behaviors, optimal routes and more.
Employer Savings
At the end of the day, what a travel management system delivers is savings. Travel is one of the biggest expenses for most companies, and when it’s mismanaged, you’re likely losing even more money. SureMileage, from CompanyMileage, saves companies 20-30% on mileage reimbursement costs through a novel approach to mileage reimbursement that automates and streamlines the process.
Using the SureMobile app, employees easily report their starting points and destinations for each trip, and the system calculates the driving distance between them. So, rather than verifying the miles driven, SureMileage calculates the expenses to be reimbursed. Once travel data goes into SureMileage, supervisors can review and approve expenses and send them to Accounting for reimbursement. Since SureMileage integrates with most accounting and payroll systems, the entire process from start to finish is seamless.
Real-time reporting, integrated company Address Books and HIPAA compliant data encryption only enhance the benefits you receive when your business implements SureMileage. Our customers see an average return on investment equal to ten times the cost of the service. Some get even more. If you’re ready to see how your business will look with a travel management system, request a demo with CompanyMileage today.