Best travel and expense management software

A travel and expense management software helps you track and manage all your business travels spending. From travel plannings, approvals, to booking travel, managing traveling employees, or creating expense reports, a travel and expense management software is a must for businesses sending employees on corporate travel.

Corporate travel and expense management solutions benefit each category of business. It helps managing corporate travels and their expenditure, in compliance with the organization’s travel policy, while streamlining the invoice process and speeding up the expense reimbursements.

Features to look for in the best travel and expense management software

When deciding on travel and expense management solutions, it is important to know what features you should be looking out for. Whether it is travel booking, mileage tracking, approvals, reimbursements, non-travel expense approvals, or any other corporate travel need, a travel management solution can simplify your corporate travel.

You should consider the following factors, for your organization’s unique travel needs.

Simple to use travel management platform

You need to ensure that the travel and expense management solution is user friendly, and all employees can use the platform. The user interface should be easy to navigate, and integrated.

Enables multiple user profiles for seamless travel management

Your travel and expense solution must be able to create multiple user profiles as required in the organsiation. Not all roles require the same access to your travel management solution. Such a feature enables you to set grade wise travel budgets and allowances. It ensures that the travelling employee is allowed to make travel arrangements within the approved limits. The approvals and expense submissions also take place according to set roles.

Travel policy integration and compliance

Each organization has a set of rules and policies which is expected to be followed by the employees. Your travel policy outlines the rules relating to travel spending, and ensures your employees stay within your travel budget. The expense software you choose should work in compliance with your travel policy. That way, you can keep track of travel expenditure and ensure your employees remain in-budget on their travels.

Efficient reimbursement process

Immediate reimbursements of the travelling employees should be a priority, especially when they are cash strapped. It affects employee satisfaction. A travel and expense management solution with expense tracking and receipt scanning capabilities helps manage expenses and reimbursements efficiently.

Automate approval workflow and reporting

Getting approval on proposed trips or online expense submissions, a good travel and expense management solution streamlines your travel booking and reporting.

Seamless integrations with third party tools

Most travel and expense management systems offer a variety of third-party integrations. Integrations are essential for ensuring a seamless travel management process.

Real-time data analytics

Real-time analytics is a common feature amongst top expense management software that gather all the information related to your company spend in real-time. The feature allows you to view spends based on categories such as department, projects, employee level, and more.

Cloud based travel and expense management solutions

Automation of travel process through the cloud, saves time and improves accuracy by foregoing forms passing from hands to tables causing delays in the expense reimbursements. Cloud based travel and expense automation makes the process instantaneous.

• Faster and accurate employee requests with OCR
• Easier for reconciliations
• Reduction in human error
• Faster reimbursement
• Software integration removes friction between HR systems
• Ability to process requests from anywhere
• Real time data driven insights
• Duplicate detection
• Simple approval workflows

Available online in the form of mobile apps and web applications, these software tools make it easy to upload receipts and claims on the road, while enabling integrated travel booking and powerful analytics. Expense management software can speed up the expenses process and reduce manual workload for employees and finance teams.

Conclusion

Businesses are increasingly attempting to automate travel management to save time and improve efficiency. An automated expense management system reduces the manual workload associated with reporting, approving and reimbursing expenses. Simultaneously the risk of errors is also minimized. Finally, record-keeping and expenditure trend analysis is also made easy with the right expense management tool.

The author of this article is Mrs Aliana. She is a technology blog writer. She writes articles related to IT business services.