Here's why expense reports are disappearing for corporate travelers in the U.S. and Europe

When it comes to traditional expensing, we all know the drill: save and label every receipt, organize the pile of paper, fill out a spreadsheet, then wait for reimbursement (and hope it comes quickly if you used a personal card).

Travelers aren't the only ones who suffer. Finance teams then have to decipher scribbled notes and blurred receipts, match them to the appropriate expense, manually flag any out-of-policy spend, and set aside days for reconciliation. Adding multiple currencies into the mix only complicates matters.

Somehow, this time-consuming process has become time-honored. But it's become a dinosaur in a world of reaching efficiency goals and retaining employees. Fortunately, a revolution in travel and expense management solutions spares travelers endless headaches and allows companies to better utilize their finance teams.

The challenge with traditional travel and expense systems

Part of the logjam in expense management is that corporations have been trying to modernize their legacy systems by bolting on new tools - and hoping they all sync together.

This practice hasn't broken the process, per se; everything still gets done. But it involves lots of manual labor, which is inherently more prone to errors, and it means that businesses have to wait, sometimes for weeks, to know what their ledger really looks like.

For companies searching for efficiencies, expense management is not only a logical place to start - it's a gold mine of time savings.

And due to the pandemic headwinds, companies are indeed in search of speed. Almost 80% of global CEOs are looking to drive growth through operational efficiencies, according to a PwC survey. And the vast majority of them - in Germany, a full 91% of surveyed CEOs - are planning to make it happen by investing in digital transformation.

What transformation can do

Efficiency-hunting executives can start at the top of the process, with the spend itself. One time-consuming activity for finance teams is tracking down out-of-policy spend, then working with employees and managers to resolve the issue.

But what if out-of-policy spending never happened in the first place?

With an integrated, all-in-one travel, corporate card and expense management solution, finance managers can determine what's in policy before anyone even books a flight.

There's no after-the-fact questioning because the out-of-policy charges won't even go through. And this proactive policy control can be as granular as necessary - right down to the individual employee.

When the expense is in-policy, a modern system recognizes, records, and reconciles it immediately and automatically - no expense report needed. This can reduce the time finance teams spend on monthly reconciliation by as much as 95%.

Finance teams also get real-time visibility into the current spend of a team, department, or the overall company. Then, through easy-to-read dashboards, teams can slice and dice the numbers to provide even more insight to make smarter financial decisions.

In other words, digital transformation offers a cascading effect: The efficiency gains allow finance teams to shift their focus from manual tasks to big-picture ideas that can help define the future of the company.

How to get there

Those big-picture ideas begin by rethinking the entire expense management process. And that's exactly what TripActions Liquid has done.

This modern, all-in-one travel, corporate card and expense management solution - available globally - offers the kind of efficiencies companies are looking for now.

The revolutionary system has eliminated the traditional expense report, along with the corresponding headaches for travelers and much of the associated downstream work. In fact, employees don't even have to keep track of who they had lunch with.

If the appointment is in their calendar, TripActions Liquid automatically attaches the guest's name to the expense.

And because this is truly an all-in-one solution that's built natively from the ground up, everything works together seamlessly. That's not only optimal for efficiency, but it effectively future-proofs the solution, allowing for development without the worry of multiple vendors and tools that don't align.

With efficiency on everyone's agenda, resolve to make 2022 the year your company drives that agenda forward - starting by eliminating expense reports and taking full advantage of the revolution in expense management.