Managing business travel expenses can feel like juggling too many tasks at once. If your current process relies on outdated systems, you likely leave room for costly errors.
According to a survey, 29% of respondents said human error is the most common challenge they face in spend management. Time wasted on reconciliation and ineffective software, follow at 28%.
But what if there was a smarter way? Have you ever wondered how much smoother your operations could run with a solution tailored to your needs?.
One way to automate travel expense process is by using business travel expense software. It can streamline your expense process, save valuable time, and even boost employee satisfaction. It automates repetitive tasks, simplifies tracking, and ensures accuracy.
In this article, you’ll find 20 essential features to look for when choosing travel expense software. Each one is designed to solve common pain points and help you take control of your travel expenses effortlessly.
Features of Business Travel Expense Software
- Digital Receipt Capture
- Multi-device usage
- Interactive UI
- Credit Card Integration
- Automated Reminders
- Multi-currency Functionality
- Mobile App
- Intuitive Dashboard
- Approval Process Workflow
- Mileage Tracker
- Real-time Reporting and Analytics
- Business Tool Integration
- Granular Policies
- Fraud Detection and Audit
- ACH Payments
- On-demand Scalability
- Data Security
- Tax Compliance
- Easy Setup
- Technical Support
For Employees:
1. Digital Receipt Capture
For a spreadsheet-based expense system, employees have to collect physical copies of receipts as proof of expense. This becomes an added task aside from achieving the company’s goals while on a business trip. As a result, it is an inconvenience and can causes employee dissatisfaction.
In such situations, it is helpful to have business travel management software that manages expenses too. Such apps come with a digital receipt scanning feature. This feature allows your employees to capture their receipts whenever they purchase something. This saves the employee time as it is much more convenient. Moreover, a digital copy is much more secure and not prone to being lost.
2. Multi-device usage
Your employees should be able to file their expenses whenever they want, even if they don’t have access to their office laptops or mobile.
Choose a SaaS-based travel expense software that your employees can access from any device of their preference as long as they have their login credentials and a web browser.
3. Interactive UI
Entering each expense into a spreadsheet is a tedious and time-consuming task for employees. Therefore, offer employees a convenient expense filing experience. You should look for a business travel expense solution that offers an interactive user interface to employees.
Additionally, your employees should get real-time notifications. These can be for filing out-of-policy or duplicate expenses to avoid accidental expense fraud. It can help them recognize their errors more easily.
4. Credit Card Integration
Business travelers prefer quick and cashless methods of transactions. Hence, they use company-provided credit cards for all the expenses during their business trips.
While investing in business travel expense software, ensure it supports credit card integration. Integrating corporate credit cards makes payments easier for employees. It also helps detect any bottlenecks or chances of fraud. This is done by reconciling card statements with expense report entries.
5. Automated Reminders
Your employees have multiple tasks to complete, deadlines to honor, and objectives to achieve throughout the month. Hence, there is a fair chance they might forget to file their expenses on time, which can delay reimbursements.
Therefore, look for a business travel expense software that sends automated, timely reminders to your employees whenever the due date of filing is near.
6. Multi-currency Functionality
When traveling internationally, keeping a tab of expenses in various currencies can be tedious. To avoid this problem, look for expense software that supports multi-currency functionality. This feature allows various currencies to be compiled into a single expense report.
The software converts foreign currency into local currency automatically. This is much more convenient for business travelers short on time.
7. Mobile App
Look for a business travel management solution available on both Android and iOS platforms. This way, your employees can carry the software in their pocket and file the expenses in real time without hassle.
They can also get notifications about the status of their expense report and can respond to any expense-related objections or queries.
For Company:
8. Intuitive Dashboard
With a manual expense management system, your finance team must look through a pile of receipts and juggle multiple spreadsheets for travel expense data while conducting travel expense audits. This practice often takes up much of their time and leaves a broad scope for errors.
Look for a business travel expense software solution that offers a customizable dashboard. It helps your finance teams to access employee-wise and department-wise spending all in one place. Therefore, they don’t have to spend much time sifting through heaps of receipts or shuffling multiple spreadsheets.
9. Approval Process Workflow
One of the fundamental reasons behind delayed employee expense reimbursements is the ambiguous approval process workflow. The expense claims have to go through multiple checkpoints before getting approved. In cases where the nature of an expense is unclear, there might also be a dispute regarding the approver.
Therefore, you should opt for a business travel management solution that implements a multi-level, well-structured approval process workflow. The software can define workflow according to the department, employee level, nature of the expense, etc.
10. Mileage Tracker
Mileage tracking refers to documenting the distance used for mileage reimbursement. In other words, the cost of fuel used for traveling to work gets returned to the employee. It is later deducted as a business expense from taxes.
Look for travel expense software that offers a mileage-tracking facility. A built-in mileage tracker is integrated with Google Maps. This allows it to detect the miles traveled by employees. It also calculates the compensation automatically, enhancing convenience.
11. Real-time Reporting and Analytics
Optimizing your travel process involves reducing travel costs, ensuring policy compliance, and preventing fraud. However, reaching these goals requires you to have insights into the spending habits of your employees.
Hence, opt for business travel expense software that offers real-time reporting and analytics. The system should:
- Classify expenses and reports by expense type
- Analyze employee spending behavior
- Keep track of expense policy violations
- Get department-wise spending insights
- Reconcile expense reports with corporate credit card statements
- Visualize key expense data
Understanding the ins and outs of your travel data can help you make strategic decisions regarding travel expenses and avoid unnecessary expenditures.
12. Business Tool Integration
Specific functions need to work in tandem with your corporate travel expense software for automatic data sync. For example, you need to integrate your expense management software with ERP to manage cashflows better. Additionally, the software must integrate with HRMS to fetch employee details.
Hence, choose travel management software that enables easy integration with multiple third-party applications to ensure smooth data flow and avoid data silos.
You can also take travel cost optimization to the next level by investing in an advanced solution that offers a virtual travel consultant like itilite Mastermind. With Mastermind, you can get suggestions about the steps you can take to identify and mend leakages in your travel process to save costs.
13. Granular Policies
Expense policy compliance is one of the major issues for companies. Usually, expense policies are violated because employees don’t understand them completely.
Additionally, most expense management software offers relatively generalized policy terms, confusing employees. There is no one-size-fits-all type of expense policy. However, the more detailed it is, the better the chances of compliance.
With a new-age business travel expense software like itilite, you can define your expense policies to the most granular level. You can also create customized policies for various departments, teams, employee bands, etc.
Create Your Business Expense Policy With the Template Below.
14. Fraud Detection and Audit
According to a study, 30% of total workplace fraud is expense-related. Although travel expense fraud can cause significant financial losses to a company, controlling expense fraud manually is difficult. This is because discrepancies like duplicate receipts or inflated amounts are hard to detect manually.
Hence, before investing in any business travel expense tracker tool, ensure it offers fraud detection and audit features. This feature automatically detects duplicate, out-of-policy expenses and expenses filed in the wrong category while validating expense reports.
15. ACH Payments
Finishing off expense reimbursement for the entire company can be a repetitive and cumbersome task for your finance team. Hence, they need business travel expense software that supports ACH payments.
ACH is a financial network popularly used in the US for electronic payments. With ACH, you can transfer money to a bank account, paper cheques, cash, or wire transfer.
With itilite, you can reimburse employees with the click of a button. Therefore, reducing dependence on ERP/accounting software.
16. On-demand Scalability
As your company grows, the number of employees filing expenses also increases. Hence, your travel expense software should be scalable according to your organization’s needs.
You should go for a cloud-based software solution that gives you the advantage of adding an unlimited number of users and at-par data storage for every additional user.
17. Data Security
While dealing with finances, you have to safeguard sensitive data. It could be payment information, invoices, and employees’ PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Therefore, your company needs to handle the data with utmost care.
Invest in a business travel expense software that has a robust data security infrastructure. It should have clearly laid-out policies, access controls, and best-in-class technology. Look for certifications like ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, etc. This will help you ensure they are following industry standard.
18. Tax Compliance
Staying compliant with the taxation policy in terms of business travel expenses is highly crucial for your company.
Therefore, you should opt for travel expense software that provides easily accessible e-copies of expense reports and receipts with expenses properly categorized as travel, mileage, etc. Moreover, the software should also be able to calculate if some expenses are not tax-deductible.
19. Easy Setup
If your business travel expense software takes time to install, your IT team can have a hard time setting it up and getting it ready to use.
Hence, find an expense management software solution that is easy to set up and seamlessly integrates with other software systems. Also, check if the vendor provides additional assistance in training employees whenever required.
20. Technical Support
Strong technical support is critical when picking out a new software solution. It becomes even more important in matters of expenditure and reimbursement because a glitch can cause a big problem. For instance, if your employee files a receipt that doesn’t get captured, you would need tech support.
Therefore, your vendor should offer 24/7 support. It is great to have support across multiple channels like calls, emails, and chats. Additionally, look for vendors that offer trained professionals. You would want this for quicker and quality resolutions.
Choose a Reliable Business Travel Expense Software
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” — Michael E. Porter
Managing business travel expenses doesn’t have to be a never-ending headache. With the right tools in place, reduce errors, and give your employees the hassle-free experience they deserve. No more lost receipts or delayed reimbursements—it’s all taken care of for you.
That’s exactly what itilite offers. Our all-in-one business travel and expense management solution is built to make your life easier. From real-time receipt capture to reminders, and more, itilite manages every detail with ease. Plus, with features like credit card integration, your employees can stay on top of their expenses no matter where they are.
Ready to ditch the spreadsheets and transform your expense management?
Book a free demo with us!
Frequently Asked Questions
Companies manage travel expenses through established policies, travel expense software, and corporate credit cards. These tools streamline booking, tracking, and reimbursement processes, ensuring compliance and cost control.
When choosing travel expense software, consider user-friendliness, integration capabilities with existing systems, customization options, and scalability to meet your company’s needs as it grows. Look for features like receipt scanning, real-time reporting, mobile accessibility, and policy enforcement to streamline expense management processes effectively.
Business travel expenses typically include transportation, accommodations, meals, incidental expenses, ground transportation, conference or event registration fees, and other miscellaneous expenses related to the business trip.
To estimate business travel expenses, consider the trip duration, destination, mode of transportation, accommodation preferences, and any planned activities or events. Travel expense software makes it easy to do this.
