There are huge savings to be made on expense management. A report from The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) shows that the cost for manual or automated expense management can differ with up to 70 percent. In a thousand travel expense reports, that amounts to half a million Swedish crowns per year.

These sought after savings are not based upon a single specific measure. It is the result of a highly thought out combination of three tools, where the purchasing process is taken step-by-step.

The first is to use an automated expense management system (EMS). Most companies have some type of system up and running – often consisting of an Excel sheet – for managing expenses. But the problem is that they often require some kind of manual effort. The closer you are to a truly automated system, the closer you are to a ballpark saving of 70 percent.

When an automated EMS system is up and running, step two is fully integrating data input from your payment solutions (in most cases a credit card) into the system. This serves several benefits. First and foremost that employees no loger need to report transaction data manually and that you will have automatic currency conversion. This makes it easier for managers to approve, since data quality is high from the get go. And there you have a real win-win situation.

Automated systems for reporting and integrated payment solutions that work in perfect harmony, cannot lead this travel expense story to a fairytale ending alone. But the third part of the payment puzzle can be a little trickier to realise. Because this part requires that you get all employees to use their corporate cards in a way that optimises the system.

This is achieved through an integrated policy with two primary goals. The first is to secure that the cardholders always use corporate cards for payments, thus contributing to consequent data into the system. The other is to secure that work related purchases are kept separate from personal purchases. This shortens the time spent sorting these transactions in the system. Having such a policy up and running will considerably increase your organisations chances to excel.

The amazing thing about this optimal payment triangle, is that it is mapped. We know exactly what you need to bring your expense management to the next level. Now you just need everyone to roll up their sleeves and start building the perfect process for it.

Source: The report Time is Money – based on a study conducted by The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.