Although travel expenses should be monitored by every business, in order to reduce loss through fraud or padding, all of the corporate expenses do play into the larger picture of company sustainability. Unfortunately, many companies do not have a solid grasp on all the places where loss may be occurring, and this can be highly detrimental. Recently, the use of expense programs and automation has shown positive outcomes in addressing budget drains.

One of the most fascinating things about considering the monitoring of expenses is that the integration that expense programs offer also show how interconnected loss issues really are. This does relate back to employees who abuse spending on travel, but it is also a facet of the operational department of the company.

Regardless of the verity of the expense, traditional means for reimbursement include manual entry, spreadsheets and forms, and receipt retention. Further, once the reimbursement has finally been processed, it is often mailed to the employee, instead of being incorporated into payroll allocations. This already creates a tedious process that expense programs can alleviate.

A further important point that business owners should recognize is that the above process is not only labor intensive, but also high in cost. The estimation for how much it costs to process a single travel expense claim is as high as $26, and is also expected to continue to rise as labour costs rise. However, even partially automated businesses that use limited expense programs cut that figure by more than half.

Obviously, businesses that use fully automated expense programs see a minimal cost in processing claims, comparative to the manual method. This is all very important as a lesson in monitoring expenses, as the focus should sometimes be broadened to include adjunct issues that relate to how connected actions in business are.