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.
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 organisation 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.
Managing Traveller Safety in a Post-Coronavirus World
For organisations to remain strong when the coronavirus pandemic begins to ease, business travel must restart. How can they ensure that employees aren't travelling into infection hot spots?
Controlling Car Rental Spend With Car FOLIO
Many organisations 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 traveller receives the appropriate rates? Chrome River is making it far easier to analyse the data with the launch of FOLIO for car rentals.
COVID-19: We’ll Continue to be Here for You
Statement from Emburse CEO, Eric Freidrichsen, regarding our measures to prevent any service disruption during the coronavirus outbreak.
Welcome to Emburse!
Today sees the launch of Emburse, a new global expense management and accounts payable automation company. Emburse's new CEO, Eric Friedrichsen, talks about his vision for the organisation.
Getting Your Users in Peak Form with Chrome River Training Camp
Making our users’ lives easier has been part of Chrome River’s DNA since day one. Today, we're taking that philosophy a step further with the launch of Chrome River Training Camp, offering free, unlimited training for all users.
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 Reporting
Gartner Digital Markets uses real reviews from verified users to rate software products. So when its reports list us as the leading expense software solutions, 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 organisations. 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 travellers 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 organisations 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 practises 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 organisation’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 organisation’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: Eliminating the Risks of Paper-Intensive Expense Processes
The University of New Mexico upgraded its expense claims to Chrome River in 2016. In this guest blog post, Lorrie Black, a senior business analyst at UNM, discusses how the university’s decision to move to Chrome River from a home-grown system reduced risk and increased employee satisfaction.
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 behavioural 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.
Avoid Becoming the Next Victim of Invoice Fraud
It was recently revealed that a sophisticated invoice fraud scheme extracted more than A$150 million from two of the world's largest companies. What steps can AP teams take to avoid their own organisation falling victim to scams like these?
Leverage AP Automation for the Perfect Match
By integrating your PO data, you can match your invoices in your AP automation system to your ERP’s PO data – and more importantly, systematically identify when (and what) line item data does not match. Learn how this can be done and how it can be used to drive compliance in the AP process.
How Manual Expense Reporting is Killing Your Finance Team’s Efficiency
Manually attaching receipts to spreadsheets is a real drudge for business travellers. 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 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: Modernizing Invoice Approval for a Rapidly-Growing Organization
The University of Pennsylvania Health System is a diverse research and clinical care organisation that includes four hospitals, two regional medical centers and a multitude of clinical care providers. In this guest blog post, Steve Kelly, UPHS’ director of disbursements, outlines how the organisation lets business flow by delivering a mobile, highly-automated integrated expense and invoice automation solution.
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.
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.
A Decade of Innovation: Looking Back at the First 10 Years of Chrome River EXPENSE
April 27, 2018 marks the 10th anniversary of Chrome River EXPENSE going live. Alan Rich, Chrome River's CEO and co-founder, looks back at the past decade and how far the company has come.
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 organisation 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.
How an Unfriendly Expense Submission Process can Negatively Impact Your Quarter-close
A company that provides its employees with manual or cumbersome expense reporting solutions may be hurting itself in many ways. One which is often overlooked is that employees who procrastinate over submitting their expenses could jeopardize the accuracy of the quarter-close, which could have serious ramifications.
Five Questions that CIOs Need to Ask about Expense Management
As essential end-user features are in the selection of an expense management solution, any front-end benefits are meaningless if the solution doesn’t easily integrate into your tech stack, introduces security vulnerabilities for your network and your users’ data, or simply isn’t available when you need it to be.
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?
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?
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 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.
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 organisations 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.
How Can Invoice Workflow Automation Work for Your Organisation?
Interest in back-office technology continues to increase as a way to control costs and increase productivity. What are the latest trends in the industry, and what benefits could it bring to the way your AP team processes invoices?
Which Way Does Your Non-Profit Handle Non-Employee Expenses?
Volunteers can offer an incredibly valuable resource for non-profit and non-governmental organisations, and other non-employees, such as scholarship and grant recipients, are a key part of many of these organisations. However, properly tracking and recording any out-of-pocket expenses they incur can be a major headache. Organisations 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.
Our new Los Angeles Headquarters - Welcome to The River
Take a peek inside Chrome River's shiny (literally) new office on Los Angeles' historic Miracle Mile.
Top 10 Perils of Using a Manual Expense Solution
Nearly half of all organisations are still stuck using manual expense claiming 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
Fifty-four percent of respondents to the recent GBTA / American Express Traveller Sentiment Survey said that they submit their expenses electronically. While the adoption of expense claim automation solutions is at a record level, it still highlights that nearly half of all business travellers are forced to stuff their pockets, wallets and briefcases with receipts, which they then have to staple to sheets of paper and mail to accounting departments, along with a printed spreadsheet that needs to be typed up with every detail of every item.
What Exactly is a “Chrome River?” How we got our Name
When I look at tech company names, I often wonder how they came about. While some companies have some pretty interesting / cool backstories, there are others who make you wonder if they just used a random name generator.
Why Mobility is a Critical Consideration for Your Expense Management Strategy
Expense management is, by its very nature, one of the business apps with the greatest requirement for deep mobile functionality. Many software solutions are mainly used in-office, and can often get by with relatively limited mobile functionality for consuming data. However, expense management requires a significant amount of creating data while on the road – capturing receipts, creating reports and so on.
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 management 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 claims, 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 claim.
Etiquette Tips for Your Business Trip
While leisure travel can be an ideal time to kick back and let down your guard, your guard had better not be going anywhere during a business trip. As a business traveller, you represent your company during every stage of the journey. Everything you say or do can impact your company’s reputation and your eventual success. You can ensure both the company reputation and your success remain strong by following a few straightforward business trip etiquette tips.
4 Ways to Escape Expense Report Purgatory
Whether you’ve just finished a week-long trip, or if you’ve been stashing receipts all month, doing your expenses can become one of those monotonous tasks that ranks even below timesheets at the bottom of the to-do list. This means that they get put off, and off, and off, until you reach a point where a) you’re broke and need them to be reimbursed so you can put food on the table, b) your wallet is bulging more than your financial controller’s eyes will once they see how much you’re claiming for the past few months, or c) both of the above.
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.
5 Things to Consider When Choosing a Global Expense Management Solution
If you are a global organisation 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 organisation’s needs, you need to delve a little deeper and get beyond the sales pitch.
Business Travel Packed with These Top Stressors
While more than one-third of corporate travellers typically feel positive about travelling for business, that doesn’t mean they all enjoy a stress-free experience. In fact, a massive 93 percent of business travellers heading to international destinations feel stressed-out at some point along their journey.
San Francisco Scores for Most Expensive US Business Travel Location (Again)
A daily allowance of £550 might take you far for a night out on your hometown, but it won’t go all that far at all on business trip in San Francisco. The City by the Bay ranks as the most expensive U.S. business travel location, again, with an average day’s expenditures totaled at £547.34.
How could your organisation be exposed to expense fraud?
Employee expense claim fraud is a considerable issue across the world – in fact in a recent survey, it was estimated to cost $2.8 billion a year in the U.S. alone, with more than 1.1 million American employees admitting to submitting deliberately falsified expenses. The impact of expense fraud goes far beyond the financial loss suffered. Organisations’ liabilities can range from audits to loss of investor confidence, and of course for those responsible for expense management and approval, failing to stop fraud can be somewhat career limiting.
How much does business expense fraud cost?
We recently surveyed more than 1,000 frequent business travellers, to see just how honest they are when it comes to submitting their expenses. The good news is that 94.7 percent say that their expense claims are done honestly. The bad news is that the other 5.3 percent equates to about 1.1 million business travellers, who combined cost their employers $2.8 billion per year. Those who admit to committing expense fraud do so to the tune of almost $2,500 per year on average.
Why is streamlined expense management automation so critical for law firms?
Let’s face it, we pretty much all procrastinate when it comes to submitting expenses. For most people in the workforce, the biggest pitfall of late expense submission is that you don’t get paid on time, so you may have to cover a credit card bill out of pocket. A bit of a pain, but rarely more than that. However, the impact of this for law firms can be much more far reaching. A tardy submission often results in a write-off absorbed by the firm, since the client will not pay beyond a certain cut-off date. As profit margins at law firms tend to be narrow, losing profits due to poor or delayed expense claiming can be critical.
Welcoming MERCURY
Those of you with a keen knowledge of Roman mythology will know Mercury was the god of financial gain, and travellers (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.
Small T&E Expenses that Can Make Huge Impact on Bottom Line
Travel and expense managers are likely to keep a keen eye on the big, fat expenses that come with every business trip. However, it’s often the smaller, less costly items that can really start to add up. Flights and hotels typically account for three-quarters of the overall cost of business trips. Ground transportation and auxiliary spending account for the other one-quarter of the costs, and they can be sneaky costs indeed.
What Could Manual AP Processes Be Costing Your Organisation?
We recently ran a webinar in conjunction with Vendorin, which discussed some of the challenges faced by CFOs with their accounts payables processes. As part of the webinar, we asked some questions to gauge the current state of invoice automation, and some of the bigger issues currently impacting the function. The upshot of our findings is that, although technology plays a significantly greater role in AP than just a few years ago, there’s still plenty of opportunity to improve efficiency.
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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.