Expense Management
A Brave New World: 3 Ways for Finance Teams to Navigate the Post- Pandemic Landscape
“Change is the only constant in life.” These were the wise words of Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and they hit closer to home now than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic shook up the world and work as we knew it, leaving many organizations scrambling to figure out how to survive and what to do next.
4 Tips for Month-End & Year-End Closing That Finance Managers Should Know
Anyone working on a finance team knows exactly how stressful accounting periods are. There are a ton of last-minute requests, unexpected bottlenecks, and unpredictable delays that arise from running both accounts payable and receivables while maintaining the highest quality and compliance standards.
The Path to Better Company Spend Management: 4 Spend Data Analytics Trends You Should Know
Since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, more companies have been forced to rethink the way they budget and spend money. For instance, 49% of businesses reviewed supplier terms and 46% reviewed customer payment terms in 2020 alone.
Is Paying Top Dollar for “Just Okay” Expense Management Software Good Enough?
Have you seen the Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl commercial with Tracy Morgan? In the commercial, Tracy Morgan shows us why “certain” is better than “pretty sure” through a series of instructive scenarios: “I’m pretty sure these aren’t poisonous” (before eating a poisonous mushroom).
The Future of Travel Part 1: Five Findings That Prove Business Travel is Here to Stay
As the world gets used to a new, pandemic-informed status quo, decision-makers need to decide how to best budget for and incorporate travel into their strategies. Many executives are planning to resume domestic business trips before the end of the year. Some believe the future of travel will involve fewer, more strategic trips that require more upfront planning and cost more per flyer.
Elsevier: Overcoming Global Finance Complexities
A global footprint is indicative of an organization’s success. For finance teams, expense management across international locations can lead to many frustrations. Learn how Dutch enterprise information solutions provider Elsevier solved these challenges with Emburse Chrome River.
9 Signs it’s Time to Switch Expense Management Systems
It’s not too long ago that the panacea to everyone’s expense problems was “get expense management automation software.” Anything was a quantum leap from having to staple or tape your receipts to a spreadsheet, then hand it into your accounting team, and then wait a pay cycle (or two) for them to be reviewed, and then go up the approval chain, and then finally to the payroll team who would often cut you a paper check... that you often had to take to the bank or ATM to deposit.
Buy, Pay, Expense: Save Time on Amazon Business Expenses with Chrome River and Mastercard
We are excited to launch a new relationship with Amazon Business and Mastercard that will make the expense process even easier when making business purchases. This is another major step toward our goal of automating the entire expense process.
How We Did It: Supporting Front Line Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Outbreak
A sudden transition to working from home meant that nonprofit Compass Health Network needed to rapidly bring its expense processing online. The organization also needed to ensure that it could effectively support its front line employees, so they could focus on their core mission of supporting their clients.
Controlling Car Rental Spend With Car FOLIO
Many organizations have negotiated corporate rates with their preferred car rental providers. But with potentially many thousands of rentals each year, how can they verify that each traveler receives the appropriate rates? Chrome River is making it far easier to analyze the data with the launch of FOLIO for car rentals.
Solving the Travel and Expense Management Dilemma for Job Candidates and Non-Employees
While many traveling employees have benefited from automated expense management solutions for several years, one group remains almost universally underserved: non-employees. Abacus REACH helps ease expense issues for this group.
Empowering our Customers’ Administrators with Configuration Self-Service
Chrome River is further empowering our customers with the introduction of configuration self-service, allowing administrators to quickly and easily make changes within their expense management solution.
Gartner Digital Markets Reviews Crown Chrome River the Leader in Expense Management
Gartner Digital Markets uses real reviews from verified users to rate software products. So when its reports list us as the leading expense software solution, we're pretty happy. See for yourself where we stacked up against three of our key competitors.
Tackling the Challenge of German Per Diems
German per diems may not suddenly spring to mind as a critical business issue for global organizations. However, if you work in the world of corporate travel, expense or accounting, it can be a major source of angst. Thankfully, help is at hand.
What Makes People Commit Expense Fraud?
An estimated 5% of business travelers commit expense fraud. But what makes them do it? Is it just that the temptation is too much to resist, or that they bear a grudge against their company. Our survey revealed some interesting findings.
HBR Research: How to Use Data to Protect Your Corporate Travel Culture
How can organizations protect their travel culture and insulate their budgets during times of economic uncertainly. Harvard Business Review analyzes industry data and talks to leading experts in the field to develop best practices that are a must-read for every finance or corporate travel leader.
10 Things to Look for on Your Expense Management Shortlist (And Why Chrome River Needs to Be on It)
Your old expense processes simply don’t support your organization’s existing needs, so you’ve decided that it’s time to search for a new expense management solution. Whether it’s finally moving from soul-crushing spreadsheets, or freeing your company from the shackles of a clunky old system, you need to be sure that the solution will support your organization’s needs today and for years into the future. Here are 10 key reasons why Chrome River needs to be on your shortlist:
How I Did It: Reducing Administrative Time to Devote More Resources to Our Core Mission
Northeast Treatment Centers is a Philadelphia-based non-profit which provides a continuum of trauma-informed behavioral health and social services designed to meet complex needs of all family members. In this guest blog post, NET’s Controller, Robert Ferrandino, and Accounts Payable Specialist, Teresamarie Morris, explain how Chrome River’s expense and invoice automation solutions let business flow by enabling the finance team to focus on high value activities.
How Manual Expense Reporting is Killing Your Finance Team’s Efficiency
Manually attaching receipts to spreadsheets is a real drudge for business travelers. However, their frustrations pale in comparison to those of the finance team, who have to navigate cumbersome approval workflows, enforce confusing T&E policies, and spend hours manually entering data into their accounting system.
What do Expense Professionals Expect to See in 2019 and Beyond?
At Chrome River, we are interested in what’s next for the expense automation industry. To find out where our customers see the world of corporate expense management going, we asked them what their number one prediction is for expense management in 2019.
How I Did It: Building an Integrated Card and Expense Program
Cleveland, Ohio-based Dealer Tire manages replacement tire and parts programs for more than 20 automotive OEMs in the U.S. and China. In this guest blog post, Mary Hayat, Dealer Tire’s director of accounting, explains how the company lets business flow by building an integrated card and expense program.
Is Your Travel Expense Policy Keeping Up With the Times?
Your organization 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 reports. With services such as Uber/Lyft and Airbnb now in the mainstream, is your policy keeping up?
How I Did It: Upgrading to Chrome River from Another Expense Solution
Latham & Watkins was founded in 1934 and is one of the world’s largest and most prestigious law firms. It has annual revenues of more than $3 billion, and has 2,500 attorneys. In this guest post, Neil Ackley, Latham & Watkins’ director of global accounting explains how he let business flow for the firm by upgrading its expense management solution to Chrome River.
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
Chrome River announces the launch of Autobot - an intelligent automation solution which enables organizations to create custom workflows that streamline repetitive manual tasks.
Chrome River Leads Global Expense Players in Building Stronger Customer Relationships
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Product capabilities and functionality are almost top of any company’s list of priorities when assessing software solutions. However, any organization that’s looking to deploy a software solution across the enterprise needs to understand that the relationship with the solution provider can be just as critical for long-term success as the product itself.
Why is Mobility the Foundation of Effective Expense Management in Construction?
The construction industry is more exposed to economic ebbs and flows than almost any other sector of the economy. As a result of this position, construction companies must ensure that they carefully maintain cash flow and cost control, even during boom periods. How can employee expense automation solutions help this?
How Expense Automation Can Increase Manufacturers’ Profit Margins
Any opportunity for manufacturers to lower manufacturers' operating expenses is welcomed by the CFO, whether this is hedging against commodity price increases and exchange rate fluctuations, or identifying opportunities for cost reductions within the supply chain. But what about reducing the cost of back-office processes?
Capturing and Optimizing Your True Corporate Travel Program Spend Using Total Cost of Ownership
If your CFO or controller asked you to provide the organization’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.
Specialist Expense Vendors vs. ERP Suite Modules: Pros and Cons
For mid-size and large companies, best-of-breed travel and expense or all-in-on isn’t the only decision to be made when it comes to expense software. Many ERP providers also offer expense management capabilities as part of their broader suite of financial and HR tools. How do you decide which works best for you?
Alternative Facts and The Fallacy of Offline Expense Management
There has been a lot of discussion in the business software market about the benefits of browser-based, responsive web (RWD) apps versus native Android and iOS apps. Even though there is evidence showing that more and more organizations are moving toward RWD for mobile software deployment, the debate continues as to which is better, just like Mac vs. Windows, Peyton vs. Tom and Pepsi vs. Coke.
Which Way Does Your Non-Profit Handle Non-Employee Expenses?
Volunteers can offer an incredibly valuable resource for non-profit and non-governmental organizations, and other non-employees, such as scholarship and grant recipients, are a key part of many of these organizations. However, properly tracking and recording any out-of-pocket expenses they incur can be a major headache. Organizations typically have two options for handling expenses accrued by volunteers and non-employees. One involves a time-consuming, tedious process, while the other offers a quick and easy resolution.
Top 10 Perils of Using a Manual Expense Solution
Nearly half of all organizations are still stuck using manual expense reporting systems. If you continue to use paper-based processes instead of an expense automation solution, the risks could easily outweigh any perceived benefits.
How to Make the Business Case for an Expense Management System
As we move into budget planning, it’s time for team leads to start creating wish lists for the coming year. One of the most critical questions is, “how much will it cost, and what’s the ROI?” This is essential decision-making information every year, but many CFOs will be reluctant to provide a budget for any new spend that doesn’t deliver tangible ROI. Therefore, you’d better make sure you have a rock-solid business case.
Chrome River and Sabre: Making Integrated Travel and Expense Even Smoother
As you may have noticed from today’s announcement made at the GBTA national conference, we are proud to become a Premier Provider of expense reporting for Sabre, one of the world’s biggest travel technology providers. This comes just a couple of weeks after we announced Sabre as the latest travel industry leader to adopt our expense management solution for its own 10,000 global employees.
Chrome River and Traxo Means Even Easier Hotel Expenses
As you may have seen from today’s press release, we’ve just announced an exciting new relationship with Traxo for hotel receipt integration. This will give Chrome River EXPENSE users an even better (and easier) experience when preparing their expense reports, and we’re sure it will be very well received by anyone who’s ever had to manually import or allocate hotel receipt data into their expense report.
5 Things to Consider When Choosing a Global Expense Management Solution
If you are a global organization looking to upgrade your expense management solution, there is a dizzying array of offerings on the market. Many of the vendors you speak to will tell you that they offer a global solution. However, there’s being able to process the occasional foreign hotel and restaurant bill, and then there’s a true global solution that will work for thousands of end users across dozens of different countries, supporting complex workflows, tax requirements and regional standards.
6 Questions Expense Management Vendors Don’t Want You to Ask
When you’re looking at new expense management software, or looking to replace your existing system, every vendor will be more than happy to highlight the key selling points of their solution. “Look at this feature!” “See how we can make your life easier.” While shiny features are certainly great, they don’t always tell the full story, and sometimes you should be more focused on what the sales people don’t say. If you want to get the skinny on which solution will best match your organization’s needs, you need to delve a little deeper and get beyond the sales pitch.
Welcoming MERCURY
Those of you with a keen knowledge of Roman mythology will know Mercury was the god of financial gain, and travelers (among other things). This is really quite fitting given that today we unveil Chrome River MERCURY, which delivers a completely new experience in corporate expense management, making your travel smoother, and speeding up your expense processing.
Should Your Business Approve Luxury Hotel Expenses?
Travel expenses can be pretty high to begin with, making the idea of luxury hotel stays for employees seem ludicrous. But that added bit of luxury can go a long way toward offsetting the bustle, headaches and hassle of corporate travel. Buying Business Travel says investing in the well-being of your regular business travelers can pay off handsomely.
What Did Marilyn Monroe Wear When Traveling With Her Boss?
Not the same thing you would wear when traveling with your boss—that’s for sure! So, is there actually such a thing as etiquette when traveling with your boss— and guidelines on what to wear? Indeed! One man taking his first ever business trip found out the hard way. Here are some tips to follow that will keep you in the comfort zone and make you shine like the professional that you are when traveling with the Big Kahuna!
What’s Organizational Clutter and Why Should You Care?
Is the complexity of your office environment making business more difficult? Clutter can be defined as scattered items or, for businesses, disordered processes that impede or reduce organizational effectiveness, productivity and revenue. The manufacturing industry has spent decades de-cluttering their factory floors, machining processes and assembly techniques. Today, unfortunately this is no longer limited to manufacturing; the typical office environment has extreme organizational clutter.
Survival of the Fittest: Be Ruthless or Die
When it comes to survival of the midsize firm, you have two choices. You can be ruthless. Or you can die. Time is your biggest resource and the one most often abused. Because of the precarious spot in which midsize companies are wedged, inefficient use of time will kill you every time.
The Secret Test To Assure Superhero Hires For Your Finance Team
When it comes to hiring finance staff members, the traditional hiring process may not be enough to ensure you’re getting the best candidate for the job. Candidates may shine at the interviews, ace your proficiency tests and amaze with their litany of technical skills, but you won’t really know what they're all about unless you throw a real-world financial dilemma into their lap.
What Percentage of Revenue Is Your Organization Losing to Fraud?
What if someone told you that about 5 percent of your organization’s revenue was being lost to fraud? It’s worth considering, because that’s the average loss for an organization, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Most of that revenue slips away through fraudulent expense claims, payments and procurement.
Enjoy the Meals You Love While Stretching Your Per Diem
After a long day of meetings, you head back to your hotel room, kick back, and start thinking about dinner. You could go to one of the restaurants nearby, but you already have your shoes off, and eating alone in public can feel awkward. There’s always room service, but the menu doesn’t look appealing and the high prices would be a stretch for your per diem. Fortunately, a wide variety of delicious cuisine is also available via your smartphone.
3 Benefits of Integrating Corporate Credit Card Programs
The primary advantage of a corporate credit card program is the convenience it offers to an organization and its employees, especially when integrated with expense management software. For example, a system like Chrome River EXPENSE allows an employee to automatically download charges to an expense report, taking the tedium of data entry out of business expense tracking. An article on BusinessTravelNews.com reports that employees tend to respond well to this convenience, resulting in improved compliance with internal policies.
4 Keys to Reimbursing Employees Under an IRS Accountable Plan: Part 1
Editor’s note: This article is the first in a four-part series on reporting travel and entertainment expenses.
3 Keys to Solving Common Invoice Headaches
An invoice from a vendor arrives in the day’s mail and sets off a complex process. First, the invoice envelope must be sorted and opened, the return envelopes and ads tucked inside discarded. From there, your company may scan the invoice or key in data and begin validating individual items. By the time the document reaches an approver for payment verification, it’s no mystery why processing paper invoices is often expensive, inaccurate and inefficient.
Don’t Get Shortchanged on Business Mileage
If you have to travel for your job, you’re probably very aware of how important it is to keep track of your business mileage. You might think that you’re keeping a close eye on the miles, but you might actually be losing money on your travels. To make sure you don't get shortchanged on business mileage, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself. The simplest method of tracking mileage is, of course, good old-fashioned pen and paper. Write down your car’s mileage when you start your trip and when you end it. Or leave yourself voicemails, or send yourself text messages. Of course, things get complicated if you have more than one destination or need to exclude portions of the trip that were not business related. In today’s technologically advanced world, it seems there’s an automated answer for everything. Now, many business travelers use Google Maps to determine the mileage they have traveled. In fact, Chrome River EXPENSE includes Google Maps functionality for calculating mileage for expense-reimbursement purposes. Simply enter the starting and ending addresses for your trip, and Chrome River will automatically calculate how much you should be reimbursed, based on your organization’s rules. You can also calculate mileage between multiple destinations and exclude personal mileage, if necessary. The key to making sure you don’t get shortchanged on business mileage is to keep accurate records. Whether you use a notepad, send a text message to yourself, leave a voicemail on your office phone, or let Chrome River’s Google Maps widget do the work, the important thing is that you make sure you have an accurate record. Doing this prevents problems during an in-house audit and provides useful information when travel budgets are being created for future use.
5 Ways to Convince Your Boss to Automate Expenses
There are very few people who like to hassle with filling out expense reports and dealing with expense management teams. While more and more businesses are moving toward automated travel expense reporting, some companies are still out of touch with the times. If you’re looking for ways to convince your boss to automate expenses, look no further.
3 Benefits to Travel Expense Management
Some businesses fail to see the benefits of travel expense management. They feel that their employees are on the straight and narrow and don’t believe they need to spend any time or effort dealing with travel expense management. Some of these businesses believe they are too small to benefit from this kind of expense management, but no business can afford to ignore any potential area where money or time might be lost.
Why Your Organization Can’t Risk Expense Report Inaccuracies
Few would argue with the truism “Numbers don’t lie,” but inaccurate numbers can and do lie all the time. A good example is the vast number of inaccurate numbers that can enter an organization’s financial system via expense reports. Organizations that allow employees to write or type expenses into a form that is manually reviewed and re-entered into the accounting system by a staff member have introduced several opportunities to enter inaccurate information for each transaction.
Your Employees are Padding their Travel Expenses
Are your employees cheating on their corporate travel expense reports? About 80% claim that they are generally honest with their travel expense reports but some admit to skimming a little of company funds for various reasons. Your employees represent your company on the road. And, their occasional unethical practices should be minimized, if not eliminated.
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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.
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.