Travel Is Back. So Are Expense Reports 🙁
Business travel has changed a lot since Covid. One thing that hasn’t changed for many? The expense report. Fortunately, Center has a better option.
Most business travelers are excited to get back on the road. A recent survey by the Global Business Travel Association found that 77% of business travelers were “willing” or “very willing” to travel for business.
A lot has changed since the world shut down for the pandemic. Fortunately, some things have improved: gone are the days of airline change fees, and most hotels have followed suit. Plus many airlines and hotels extended status perks to next year.
The TSA is testing new conveniences, such as scheduling your TSA screening time slot. I tried it last week, and I strolled right through screening, despite the general security line wrapping around the concourse . And for the first time since 2006, the TSA allows a liquid larger than 3.4oz through security: up to a 12oz bottle of hand sanitizer.
But there’s one aspect of business travel that probably hasn’t changed for your organization: the monthly expense report.
Feels like Groundhog Day
You’ve already given up a lot to travel for your company. Travel is stressful. You sacrifice time away from your normal life, family, and friends. Employees generally work more hours while traveling than at home.
The last thing you need is the recurring hassle of filing expense reports when you get home. Every month.
Here’s the text I got from a good friend, a road warrior who resumed business travel last month:
It sounds like agony: What company still forces employees to use Scotch tape to attach receipts to paper? It’s like the same old thing all over again, like Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow day after day, continuously six more weeks of winter.
Say Goodbye to Ned Ryerson
Filling out expense reports is as annoying to travelers as running into life insurance salesman Ned Ryerson day after day after day was for Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in Groundhog Day. Fortunately, there’s now a better way to process employee T&E expenses. Center has reimagined the expense process and eliminated the expense report altogether. Employees use their phones to snap a picture of the receipt and submit expenses immediately at the point of purchase. No more expense reports. No more Scotch tape.
How much time are your employees spending on expense reports each month? 30 minutes? An hour? More? And how many employees will begin traveling soon and resume filing expense reports? The numbers add up.
It’s not just travelers who benefit from Center’s real-time expensing. Budget owners and the accounting team get immediate visibility into spend. No more waiting weeks after the month for expense reports to know what’s been spent. The result is better visibility and control of spend, as it happens, so you can hit your budget. Organizations that switch to Center speed up month-end close by 1-2 days, so the accounting team can spend less time on busywork and more time on strategic work.
Center takes days to deploy, not weeks or months, and we do most of the work for you. You can legitimately get a new and improved system up and running before business travel really picks up. Say goodbye–for good–to “Needlenose Ned.”
We’re here to help. Break free from the endless Groundhog Day experience. See how easy it is to submit expenses in this short video, and then sign up for an individual demo to see how easy it is to switch to Center.