Expense Policy

How to Avoid an ‘OK Boomer’ Reaction to Your Corporate Travel Policy

by Tim Wheatcroft

How to Avoid an ‘OK Boomer’ Reaction to Your Corporate Travel Policy

In the era of bleisure travel, ride-sharing and electric scooters, expense policies of old sound positively archaic. Any travel leader who expects their team to follow the policy down to the letter will likely be met with eye rolling and mutterings of “OK Boomer.” How can organisations keep their business travellers happy without killing the bottom line?

Does Your Organisation Have a Proactive Travel & Expense Process?

by Tim Wheatcroft

Does Your Organisation Have a Proactive Travel & Expense Process?

Do the travel processes and policies within your organisation help or hinder its core goals? Take our quiz to see how your organisation's travel culture could impact the bottom line.

Readying your T&E Program for the Next Decade

by Tim Wheatcroft

Readying your T&E Program for the Next Decade

We're now less than 90 days away from the end of not just the year, but the decade. Is your T&E program future-ready and prepared for the next era of business and travel?

Why is Your Company STILL Doing Manual Expense Reporting?

by Tim Wheatcroft

Why is Your Company STILL Doing Manual Expense Reporting?

We’re in 2019. Cars can drive themselves. You can order niche products on Amazon and have them delivered to your door the same day. You can tell your phone to play some obscure song from your youth that you’ve not even thought about in 30 years. So why are you making your employees do their expenses using tape and printed spreadsheets?

Is Your Travel Expense Policy Keeping Up With the Times?

by Tim Wheatcroft

Is Your Travel Expense Policy Keeping Up With the Times?

Your organisation must ensure that its travel and expense policy stays updated, to support the requirements of both the employer and also those who need to submit expense claims. With services such as Uber/Lyft and Airbnb now in the mainstream, is your policy keeping up?

How I Did It: Speeding up Expense Reimbursement with Automated Policy Compliance

How I Did It: Speeding up Expense Reimbursement with Automated Policy Compliance

Idaho State University (ISU) is a public research university in Pocatello, Idaho. Founded in 1901 as the Academy of Idaho, ISU now has 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students and more than 2,000 faculty and staff. In this guest blog post, Lisa Leyshon, assistant controller at ISU, explains how the university let business flow by automating expense policy compliance and speeding up the approval process, getting reimbursements back in travellers’ accounts much more quickly.

How I Did It: Speeding up Expense Reimbursement with Automated Policy Compliance

How I Did It: Speeding up Expense Reimbursement with Automated Policy Compliance

Idaho State University (ISU) is a public research university in Pocatello, Idaho. Founded in 1901 as the Academy of Idaho, ISU now has 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students and more than 2,000 faculty and staff. In this guest blog post, Lisa Leyshon, assistant controller at ISU, explains how the university let business flow by automating expense policy compliance and speeding up the approval process, getting reimbursements back in travellers’ accounts much more quickly.

Will Your Expense Management Solution Evolve with Your Organisation?

by Tim Wheatcroft

Will Your Expense Management Solution Evolve with Your Organisation?

Change is a constant in the business world. New business units. International growth. Acquisitions. For an organisation's software solutions to keep up, it needs to be flexible and robust enough to adapt as a company evolves. When choosing an expense management solution, how can organisations ensure that it will be able to adapt to the changing tides?

Playing by the Rules: Why Configurability is Key in Expense Management Choice

by Tim Wheatcroft

Playing by the Rules: Why Configurability is Key in Expense Management Choice

One of the biggest benefits that an expense management solution can deliver is automated enforcement of an organisation's expense policy and approval processes. However, not all expense solutions have the capability or flexibility to support the requirements of complex global organisations.

How I Did It: Five Key Steps to Manage Technology Change

by Karen Keegan, Nixon Peabody

How I Did It: Five Key Steps to Manage Technology Change

Nixon Peabody, LLP is a Global 100 law firm with more than 700 attorneys across the U.S., Europe and Asia. In this guest post, Karen Keegan, Nixon Peabody’s assistant controller, discusses how to the firm let business flow by effectively managing technology change.

Intelligent Automation with Chrome River Autobot: Eliminating Repetitive Tasks in Expense Approval

by Tim Wheatcroft

Intelligent Automation with Chrome River Autobot: Eliminating Repetitive Tasks in Expense Approval

Chrome River announces the launch of Autobot - an intelligent automation solution which enables organizations to create custom workflows that streamline repetitive manual tasks.

How I Did it: Best Practices for Implementing Business Rules

by Melody Ragan, Schiff Hardin

How I Did it: Best Practices for Implementing Business Rules

Schiff Hardin LLP is a national general practice law firm serving corporate clients, with more than 300 attorneys practicing out of six offices across the U.S. In this guest post, Melody Ragan, Controller/Financial Manager at Schiff Hardin discusses how the firm lets business flow by leveraging Chrome River’s business rules engine to streamline expense submission and approval.

What Critical Factors Must You Know About For Global Expense Management?

by Tim Wheatcroft

What Critical Factors Must You Know About For Global Expense Management?

Every company has unique requirements for its expense management solution, be it industry-specific regulations that need to be followed or complex business rules for approval routing. However, few organizations have as specific and complex needs for their expense management system as those with a significant global presence.

Overcoming the Headache of Changing Global Expense Tax Regulations

by Anne Becknell

Overcoming the Headache of Changing Global Expense Tax Regulations

There are countless nuances of international business regulations that organisations need to follow. In particular, how can companies ensure that they stay compliant with global statutory requirements for expense reimbursement?

Keeping Your Team Happy (and Healthy) on the Road

by Alan Rich

Keeping Your Team Happy (and Healthy) on the Road

For the team members that are at the core of driving revenue--sales reps, those managing suppliers, key partners, or account managers--frequent travel is imperative to their role and their company’s success. To keep these employees both happy and healthy, it’s critical that employers take steps to look after their team-members’ well-being while on the road. How can companies support this without breaking the bank?

Where is Expense Management Going in 2018 (and Beyond)? Part One

by Alan Rich

Where is Expense Management Going in 2018 (and Beyond)? Part One

Chrome River's CEO, Alan Rich, starts the year by looking at some of the macro trends which will impact the world of expense management not just in 2018, but for years to come.

How to Ensure Travel and Expense Policies and Processes Support Your Sales Organization

by Julie Roy

How to Ensure Travel and Expense Policies and Processes Support Your Sales Organization

The sales team is typically the division within an organization that has the greatest travel and entertainment expense budgets. They travel the most and spend the most on entertainment for prospects, suppliers or current customers. However, and perhaps most importantly, the sales team also is the greatest contributor to top-line revenue. How can companies ensure that best performers remain engaged and drive revenue, while effectively controlling costs?

Three Reasons Why Manual Expense Management Kills Policy Compliance

by Julie Roy

Three Reasons Why Manual Expense Management Kills Policy Compliance

Corporate travel expense policies are created for a reason: to provide clear guidelines for travellers, which saves the organisation money by minimising excessive or wasteful spend. As with all regulations, these policies are only effective if they’re adhered to. To achieve this, organisations need to make it easy for them to be followed and hard for them to be sidestepped.

Why your Expense Policy Should Follow your Business Travellers (Not Just the Other Way Around)

by Tim Wheatcroft

Why your Expense Policy Should Follow your Business Travellers (Not Just the Other Way Around)

How often does your organisation's expense policy get updated, and how does it address innovations in travel and travel technology? In order to keep your employees satisfied, you should ensure that your policy stays abreast of emerging travel trends.

The Cost-Control Benefits of Analytics in Expense Management

by Tim Wheatcroft

The Cost-Control Benefits of Analytics in Expense Management

Expense report software solutions can create huge volumes of data on employees' business travel spend. How can organisations use this to make smarter decisions?

Creating and Enforcing Expense Policies: The Happy Medium for Cost Control and Employee Satisfaction

by Julie Roy

Creating and Enforcing Expense Policies: The Happy Medium for Cost Control and Employee Satisfaction

Corporate travel and expense policies have long been a hot-button issue for HR departments. On one side are travelling employees, who want to be able to choose the airlines and hotel chains where they have high status, or select flights and lodgings that are more convenient for them. On the other side are CFOs and corporate controllers, whose primary focus is to manage costs and minimise unnecessary spend. While these may seem like two groups that will never find common ground, a combination of reasonable policies, intelligent enforcement, and smart technology tools can keep all parties happy.

Reducing Employee Expense Fraud – Strategies and Tools for HR Leaders

by Greg Allworth

Reducing Employee Expense Fraud – Strategies and Tools for HR Leaders

It’s estimated that expense fraud committed by employees adds up to nearly $3 billion per year across North America. How can HR teams prevent this from happening at their organisation?

Capturing and Optimising Your True Corporate Travel Programme Spend Using Total Cost of Ownership

by Ted Stavropoulos

Capturing and Optimising Your True Corporate Travel Programme Spend Using Total Cost of Ownership

If your CFO or controller asked you to provide the organisation’s total travel spend over the past year, how would you get that data? The obvious (and traditional) answer is to ask for reports from your travel agency, breaking down hotel, flight and rental car costs. That should give you a pretty accurate figure, right? Well – not really.

How Improving your Travel and Expense Policy Can Help Retain your Best Staff

by Tim Wheatcroft

How Improving your Travel and Expense Policy Can Help Retain your Best Staff

Business travel is a topic that can engender huge differences in opinion among those whose jobs require them to spend time on the road. For some, it’s viewed as a perk, for others, a burden. Regardless of whether your employees love or loathe life on the road, it's essential to optimise the traveller experience.

6 Best Practices for Reducing Expense Fraud

by Greg Allworth

6 Best Practices for Reducing Expense Fraud

Expense fraud can happen at even the best-run organisations, but your company can definitely arm itself with the tools and processes to rein it in.

Creating an Expense Policy that Helps, not Hinders Your Employees

by Chad Peters

Creating an Expense Policy that Helps, not Hinders Your Employees

Creating an effective expense policy is a balancing act. You need to walk the fine line between eliminating unnecessary costs and establishing a policy that is reasonable and workable for employees and managers alike. Create a policy that’s too lax and you’ll watch travel costs skyrocket. Create one that’s too stringent and you’ll end up with impractical restrictions, unhappy business travellers, and an increased risk of expense fraud.

How to Prevent Business Expense Fraud

by Brian Deleon

How to Prevent Business Expense Fraud

Businesses lose an estimated $2.8 billion per to expense fraud in the U.S. alone. How does this happen, and what can be done to prevent it?

Bridging the Generation Gap: Catering to Millennials in Business Travel

by Tim Wheatcroft

Bridging the Generation Gap: Catering to Millennials in Business Travel

In a previous post we spoke a little about the recent GBTA / American Express Business Traveller Sentiment Survey, and the impact of booking and expense policies on business travellers. This week, let’s look at how organisations can best bridge the generation gap when it comes to providing a better experience for their largest (and growing) audience - Millennials.

Why Sensible Travel Expense Policies are Critical for Business Traveller Happiness

by Tim Wheatcroft

Why Sensible Travel Expense Policies are Critical for Business Traveller Happiness

The Global Business Travel Association recently announced the results of its Business Traveller Sentiment Index Global Report. The report assesses the overall happiness with several aspects of travellers’ overall experience, from making travel arrangements through to getting through airport security and taking various forms of ground and air transport.

How Can You Maximise Expense Policy Compliance and Maintain Traveller Happiness?

by Tim Wheatcroft

How Can You Maximise Expense Policy Compliance and Maintain Traveller Happiness?

Corporate travel and expense policy compliance is a constant theme in the business travel industry. Although using the corporate expense policy manual as a stick to beat your travelers may be a short-term solution to enforce compliance, it doesn’t address the underlying issues of why employees don’t adhere to the policy, and could also alienate travellers by imposing regulations that reduce productivity and create frustration.

5 Benefits of Corporate Card Programs

by Robin Hanselman

5 Benefits of Corporate Card Programs

Ah, here we are, the ever-popular debate on the pros vs the cons of corporate card programs! Why should businesses allow employees to have corporate cards? Some feel that they have the potential to increase the organisation’s financial exposure, risk employees racking up large bills, and are potentially tricky for finance teams to both implement and manage on an ongoing basis. Done right, however, corporate credit and payment cards can offer wide-ranging financial, operational and security benefits.

Expense best practices to delight your employees AND your CFO

by Alan Rich

Expense best practices to delight your employees AND your CFO

Anyone who has looked at some of the perks that companies offer will understand that any forward-thinking organisation places a premium on attracting and retaining the best talent. When you factor that it costs an average of 6-9 months’ salary to replace an employee, spending a little extra to keep your team happy is a sound investment. The hard cost of employee turnover is, of course, just one issue here. Companies’ ability to thrive is reliant upon attracting and retaining the best talent. Being unable to keep and hire staff can have a seriously detrimental impact on an organisation’s overall health.

Seven tips for creating an expense policy that your employees will love (well, almost)

by Mandy Neske

Seven tips for creating an expense policy that your employees will love (well, almost)

We’d all love to fly first class and eat steak dinners on somebody else’s dime, but if everyone did that, many companies would run out of cash pretty quickly. Therefore, creating a sensible expense policy is a must for any organisation to both control costs and, as we recently said in our white paper, reduce business expense fraud. Without a clear policy, staff are left in the dark about what is and isn’t allowed, and will just assume how much they can spend. And we all know what “assume” does.

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Our choice of Chrome River EXPENSE was made in part due to the very user-friendly interface, easy configurability, and the clear commitment to impactful customer service – all aspects in which Chrome River was the clear winner. While Chrome River is not as large as some of the other vendors we considered, we found that to be a benefit and our due diligence showed that it could support us as well as any large players in the space, along with a personalized level of customer care. Sally Abella, Director of Corporate Travel Harman International
We are excited to be able to enforce much more stringent compliance to our expense guidelines and significantly enhance our expense reporting and analytics. By automating these processes, we will be able to free up AP time formerly spent on manual administrative tasks, and enhance the role by being much more strategic. Ben Zastrow Zelle