How an automated T&E solution delivers time and cost savings

Manual data entry is both costly and prone to errors, yet 49% of businesses continue to use manual processes for managing expenses as indicated in an Emburse report. Each manual report could cost your organisation as much as $58, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Additionally, nearly 20% of these manual reports contain errors or missing information, and it costs an extra $52 to correct each erroneous report.

Given these substantial processing costs, manual expense reporting is unsustainable in the long run. For instance, a company that manually processes 200 reports per month could spend nearly $140,000 annually just on expense report management. Switching to an automated T&E solution that offers automated expense submission, approval, and reimbursement helps you eliminate tedious workflows while bringing the cost down to under $10 per report.

Manual processes also rob the accounts payable (AP) team of precious time and are a major factor in delayed approvals and reimbursements of expense reports. In a manual environment, finance teams spend excessive time chasing down documentation and meticulously reviewing for policy compliance. Some organizations even take up to a month to process a single expense report manually, as indicated in a recent Emburse survey of 515 finance professionals.

How do forward-thinking business leaders overcome manual reporting? The answer lies in digitalization. By integrating an automated T&E solution with their existing ERP system, Garmin successfully reduced manual data entry and freed up eight hours per week for their AP team to focus on more critical tasks. Additionally, the system's built-in rules identified duplicate expenses in minutes, compared to the time-consuming manual sorting and review by the AP team.

Employees who manually submit expenses using hard-copy receipts and spreadsheets are more than twice as likely to commit fraud than employees using automated T&E solutions, according to an Emburse report. Ensuring policy compliance and reducing expense fraud is a top priority—and a significant challenge—for those reviewing and approving expenses. Manual systems make it easy for fraudulent expenses to slip through, as your employees only have limited time and resources available to check every report and verify each line item against receipts.

Intelligent, automated T&E solutions can enable you to leverage machine learning to detect anomalies against defined business rules, preventing fraudulent expenses from occurring at the point of sale. These automated solutions also further reduce errors by alerting approvers to missing receipts, preventing policy violations.

Many organizations have benefited from the transition to an automated T&E solution. By digitalizing their expense processes, these companies enhanced workflows and reduced manual data entry, giving their finance teams time back for more value-adding tasks.

Let’s take a closer look at three case studies where customers achieved their time and cost savings with a T&E management solution.