How can you improve cost control during travel?

Authorization systems have traditionally focused on pre-trip expenses, but not on those incurred during the trip. These are the costs that are generated in the course of the trip, those related to meals, cabs, parking and others, which are sometimes not given due attention.

First of all, we must refer to the current situation to know where we are starting from. According to Statista, travel and commuting spending is expected to increase by 4.9% this year.

In general, companies have alow rate of automation for processing expenses incurred during travel, so the administrative staff costs of processing expense sheets tend to be high. In addition, in many of the expense categories, VAT is not recovered.

Thus, when a company considers improving the management of these costs, it has to act on these three fronts, in addition to trying to control and quantify the amounts per expense category. For this, there are multi-tool solutions, from online booking tools to payment methods, which are a valuable source of information for tracking these types of expenses.

One of the most effective actions that can be taken is the digitization of receipts with integration into the expense management tool. This also avoids problems arising from the loss or deterioration of payment receipts. Another procedure that gives good results is the creation of monthly flat files by the suppliers to integrate in ERPs. For VAT recovery, it is quite effective to resort to specialized external services.