One of the easiest ways to boost efficiency and compliance for traveling employees is with travel and expense management software. But all travel and expense management software is not created equal, nor are every company’s needs exactly the same.
One of the most effective ways to choose the travel and expense management solution that’s right for you and your crew is to review the features offered by various companies. PayStream Advisors compiled a checklist for selecting travel and expense management software, and the essential information is outlined below.
Must-Have Basic Features
Whether you’re sending employees to China every year or Chicago once a week, all travel and expense management software should come equipped with the basics. These include features found at the very core of quality TEM software.
Basic features include options for:
- Pre-approving trips
- Travel booking
- Scanning and attaching receipts
- Mobile reporting and workflow
- Expense reporting and approval workflow
- Integrating credit cards for payments if needed
- Providing employee reimbursements via direct deposit
- Reviewing expenses using analytics
- Using electronic payments
- Establishing consistent expense types and audit rules
- Dashboard reporting for instant spend visibility
- IRS compliance
Advanced Features
Advanced features are designed to take your travel and expense management solution to the next level, improving efficiency, employee control and ease-of-use. The most sophisticated travel and expense management software will come equipped with these features, many of which are geared toward enhancing the basic features.
Advanced features can include options for:
- Real-time expense reporting and performance
- Integrating software with competitive travel booking
- Optical character recognition (OCR) receipt capture
- Mobile expense reporting offline modes
- Allowing users to work with software on any device and when switching between them
- Ability for admins to pay approved expenses to credit card companies on behalf of employees
- Ability to adapt globally for different currencies, languages, tax requirements
- Location services and GPS
- Real-time and post-trip business trip reviews
- Benchmark reporting
- Advanced TEM auditing features and spend analysis
- Integration with existing systems for accounting, payroll, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and others
- Compatibility with APIs for data integration
- Mileage tracking
Choosing the travel and expense management solution that works best for you and your company first involves prioritizing your needs and then choosing a software package that can meet them. Finding the solution that’s the most cost-effective and relevant to your company goes a long way toward maximizing both your efficiency and ROI.
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