Among a company’s greatest expenditures, travel and related expenses top the list. So, with little to no oversight, T&E costs can spiral out of control. When that happens, the knee-jerk reaction is to curtail travel, when the smart thing to do is curtail spending. A great business travel agency uses many tools to analyze business travel expenses, and chief among them is reporting. Make sure you ask these five questions to find the best fit for your company:
1. Is the reporting instantly accessible? Your employees should have access to their business travel plans as soon as they’re confirmed. So should account managers, who will be able to spot out-of-policy bookings right away, which means issues can be addressed before travel, when it’s easier to makes changes. The top business travel agencies have implemented on-demand mobile travel reporting to complement online booking and tracking tools.
2. Will my reports be tailored to me? Absolutely. Who wants to wade through data that isn’t specific or relevant? Reports and delivery methods can be automated by departments or users for highly personalized accounting. Automated reports can be customized to provide easy-to-digest snapshots of spending across the company or within specified areas.
3. Can you help us determine travel ROI? A top-tier reporting system allows managers and employees to analyze travel spend and remove unnecessary waste, streamlining travel costs. Consolidating all company travel expenses into one corporate account makes it easy to analyze spend while detailing corporate travel spending patterns and identifying individuals who require additional ROI justification. This AmTrav case study shows how it helped one company cut travel spend 50% by controlling leakage, mitigating risk and managing duty of care: https://www.amtrav.com/about-us/case-studies.
4. Can I access this data only online or with my phone? The hallmark of any great travel management company is personalized 24-hour service. If you need to check on a specific travel policy relating to flights, car rentals, accommodations, dinners, or gifts for heads of state, your account manager is one call away to fill you in before you do something that will fall outside your company’s guidelines. Call your agent for real-time reports when you have no access or bars – and when your business travel agency owns its systems and programs, no need to worry about third-party access or issues.
5. Can I stop collecting dozens of tiny slips of paper for my expense reports? A pile of crumpled receipts = the bane of any business traveler’s existence. With robust expense reporting tools, you’ll be able to manage those papers in a new way. The best business travel agencies will partner with expense management providers to offer seamless integration between business travel data and expense reporting to get the receipts accounted for in real-time reports and out of your wallet.
AmTrav has been providing business travel solutions for more than 20 years. Speak with an AmTrav Client Services Manager at 800-795-8371 to learn more.
By: Kristen S.