One of the big things we’ve learned over the past couple of months is that business travel isn’t going to have a V-shaped recovery. Although we’re taking steps in the right direction, they look more like Bambi’s tentative first steps, instead of confident strides forward.
As a result of this caution, it’s likely that travel in personal vehicles will be the first to come back, and may even exceed pre-COVID levels for some time. Instead of taking a train or even a short commuter flight to a business appointment, individuals may opt to swap convenience for personal safety. While driving may certainly take longer and not allow them to work en route, there is a lower infection risk than using public transport.
Because of this, I’m really excited to announce a new partnership with TripLog. This solution delivers a robust, flexible, and user-friendly way for Emburse customers to securely track, submit, and reimburse automobile mileage.
Emburse customers can either provide their drivers with a TripLog mileage tracking device that they would place in their car, or can opt to track mileage directly through the TripLog app on their personal or work-provided phone. After each business trip, the driver confirms that the journey should be expensed, and then mileage and route data will automatically be sent from TripLog into their expense wallet, to create a data-rich expense line item.
This makes life easy for the travelers, by eliminating any need for any manual data entry when calculating miles driven. No need to enter addresses, or recalculate miles based on a traffic diversion. By the time you reach your front door, the mileage will automatically be in your expense wallet, ready to submit for reimbursement.
This new partnership also gives peace of mind to expense approvers and finance teams. According to 2019 research by Chrome River, adding mileage was the most common form of expense fraud, and 39% of those who said that they have submitted fraudulent expenses have inflated mileage reimbursement claims.
With trips automatically captured by TripLog and that data exported directly into the expense wallet, there isn’t an opportunity for individuals to pad their mileage claims. This adds peace of mind for organizations, and also eliminates the need for mileage claims to be audited manually, saving approvers’ and administrators’ time and resources.
This new integration will first be available for Chrome River customers in the coming weeks, and we will roll it out across Emburse’s solutions after that.
As we continue on our quest to humanize work, these types of integrations will remain a major feature of our approach, enabling us to simplify the expense submission and approval process.