Volopay on TruTrip: 5 ways travel expense management can be improved

Travel demand has skyrocketed. Employees are actively seeking human interaction after two years of online-only meetings and remote work, which has resulted in an increase in business travel costs and travel expenditures. 

Travel expense management has never been more crucial because now that people are travelling again, they face a new challenge: soaring inflation. The issue is that jet fuel prices have risen by more than 30% in the past few months, a cost that many carriers have decided to pass on to their passengers, with average rates rising by up to 100% compared to 2021.

Following the rise in inflation, many businesses are forced to increase their corporate travel costs. 41 per cent of employers said they had raised employee travel expenses for air travel, 34 per cent for lodging, 33 per cent for vehicle rentals, and 26 per cent for ride-sharing and taxis. 

Inflation’s impact on corporate travel costs is growing more and more evident, and travel managers are beginning to see it as a signal that they need to pay more attention to prioritizing how they can better handle travel expense management and rethink how they are spending on it. 

If not properly managed, business travel expenses can rack up quickly. For business leaders or HR leaders, it’s important to prioritize spending the right amount on corporate travel as well as keeping your employees safe, healthy, and happy. Without a good travel management solution, you are likely spending 30% or more than you should be on business travel costs. By identifying areas where expenditure may be reduced or additional funds allocated to areas with great business outcomes, there are clever and modern solutions for you to keep track of your travel expenses and keep your business costs under control. 

Partnering up with a good Travel Management Company (TMC) is one way to stay on top of everything that has to do with corporate travel for your company.  Aside from cutting costs with the help of your chosen TMC, you can take reducing financial distress to the next level by setting up a travel expense management tool that can revolutionize your process.

What is an Expense Management Tool?

Expenses are an inherent aspect of operating a business. It’s critical to have a strategy in place to keep track of every expense, including those incurred by your staff, as with any type of spending. While some companies and organizations choose to manually track spending, using a tool for the management of expenses enables businesses to make this process more efficient for both employers and employees.

An expense management tool is a  cutting-edge method of expenditure management that enables managers and employers to swiftly accept or deny claims. The tool can send the finance department-approved expenses. 

Key features Volopay provides for its user:

Volopay is a spend management platform integrated on TruTrip. With Volopay you can take care of all your travel and stay bookings without exceeding your corporate travel budget. Here are a few

Easier Budget Limit Control

Setting the budget cap for employees is considerably simpler for companies using Volopay. Companies can lock budgets and rules for all expenditures thanks to the system in place. For instance, if an employee travels for business, he may easily view the daily budgets assigned to him for his lodging, meals, and other expenses. Travel managers can better manage costs in this way. 

Quicker Transactions 

Enjoy quicker transactions or payments with Volopay.  Integrating TruTrip with Volopay enables users to make purchases in TruTrip with Volopay Wallet. Remove the hassle of having to add credit cards for every transaction; it offers a streamlined process that will protect you and your company from the security risk that comes with this. As an all-encompassing spend management solution, Volopay combines and integrates all of these aspects of business transactions on a single central platform, making them more efficient. It also features automated credit and corporate card reconciliation. There is no need to create and add different credit cards for each transaction and different travel suppliers.

Corporate Cards

Volopay corporate cards help your company to spend smarter with every card while having proactive, and dynamic spend controls. Employees can request funds on the go and approvers can approve or deny them in real-time. For every spend that happens on a Volopay card, you get to know the where, when, and why of the spend. Equip your travelling employees with efficient expense management tools that remove the hassle of reimbursements, and are enabled for easy global usage.

Better visibility and tracking

With Volopay you can view and manage each traveller and track their expenses in real-time. Volopay aggregates information on employee expenses and presents it in an understandable visual way. Managers have access to indicators such as the amount spent by employees or per category.

Faster expense reporting 

Integrating Volopay on TruTrip, automatically updates travel expenses across different platforms. Have those payments be transformed into expenses instantly. Real-time information about your costs is available. You have access to all the data you require through reporting and analytics to compile all expenses into a single report. Simple and effortless, no more manual admin work! 

Better accounting accuracy results

With handwritten expense reports, you or your staff members run the risk of making a mistake or even a little data-entry error that could lead to major issues down the road. However, you can avoid this using an expenditure management solution. Insight into real-time spending on a single platform. minimizing errors and avoiding unnecessary costs.

Some other benefits of a travel expense management tool:

• Become paperless: environmentally friendly strategy. 
• Capturing and uploading receipts using a smartphone, then sending them to the right approvers.
• Prevent fraud: Have detailed audit trails and look for any policy violations. To avoid being taken advantage of in any way, the spending management software puts you in complete command of your finances.
• Increased productivity streamlines the entire reimbursement procedure. You will spend less time managing your finances, giving you more time to focus on other vital tasks and add value to your organization.
• Custom rules and other techniques can be used by the software to identify both benign errors and more nefarious problems like fraudulent entries, duplicate entries, and other suspicious submissions.

Looking into levelling up your Travel expense management process?

Effective travel expense management will help your business grow. Why not try it out and see for yourself? Book a demo or sign up for a free trial with one of our specialists to learn more about Volopay and find out how TruTrip can become the right solution for you and your company.