Business travel reconciliation can feel like detective work: you can see that Gary in Sales spent A$7,094 on his trip to Oregon for a prospective client meeting, but you will have to spend a lot of time piecing together receipts and asking questions if you want the complete picture.
The problem for many businesses is that expense context comes in the form of payment data, which most organisations are only partially on top of. One audience survey during the latest GBTA conference found that 39% of expense managers are not using payment data effectively — and 18% don’t know how their organisation leverages it.
As a result, finance teams lack visibility into employee spending behavior and struggle to control spending, prevent fraud, and optimise travel policies. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
4 ways payment data unlocks value for finance
1. Visibility into spending patterns
Every business transaction that employees make while traveling generates a valuable data set. Organisations that can collect and analyse this data can gain valuable insights into their employees' spending patterns. By cross-referencing payment data with reservation data and other information, finance teams can better understand how employees are spending while travelling.
2. Update travel policies
Insights gleaned from payment data can provide valuable guidance for updating travel policies and vendor contracts based on employee travel preferences.
3. Negotiate vendor contracts
Payment data can also provide extra leverage during negotiations with vendors. Quantifying your company's business volume to a preferred hotel chain can help you secure a larger discount or more favourable benefits from vendors that want reliable revenue.
4. Risk and compliance
Detailed spending data also enables greater scrutiny of spending activity. With such a level of detail, finance teams can perform due diligence more thoroughly and discover compliance violations or fraud more easily. For example, finance can audit whether vendors are delivering on their contracts and providing employees the rates and benefits agreed upon, such as free wifi or parking.
Is your current payment data up to scratch?
Not all payment data is equal. There’s a big difference between having access to basic information — such as the transaction date, the amount spent, and the vendor — and deeper insights, such as the airfare type purchased, hotel room rate, or a breakdown of ancillary services.
While most organisations have at least the basics, specific steps are required to unlock more granular data. Most corporate credit cards — such as MasterCard, Visa, and American Express — carry over 200 data fields that can be populated and used for reporting. However, companies lose insight into the whole picture if multiple payment methods are used or expenses are submitted manually.
The question then becomes, how do you manage your travel expenses to unlock the power of payment data?
What is possible with payment data
One speaker at GBTA shared that after their organisation was penalised for not paying a credit card bill on time, they began to manage every step of their business travel program more rigorously.
During this project, they completely overhauled their travel policies and how they used their payment data. They pulled in data about everything from reasons for employee travel to individual transactions with Airlines and rideshare companies — breaking these data points down to a more granular level so they could see which part of the business most travel expenses originated from and why.
Spend data can help you with several goals:
- Facilitating reconciliation
- Monitoring spend
- Auditing expenses
- Amending travel policies
- Negotiating vendor contracts
Payment data can also uncover unexpected efficiencies. Many companies assume providing employees with rental cars is too expensive. But if you analyse your employees’ ridesharing receipts, you may find that rental cars may actually cost less than rideshares and taxis.
Unlock the Power of Payment Data
Business travel expenses are one of the biggest expenditures for many companies. However, most of these companies fail to utilise the insights and knowledge that can be derived from their data. By using expense management software, finance teams can not only simplify and streamline their travel and expense processes but also save time and costs by exploring the hidden potential of their payment data.
Learn how Mid-South Transplant Foundation simplified its travel processes and is now able to leverage data to make more informed decisions.