AirPlus. Corporate Payment Solutions. Commerzbank tackles total trip costs with AirPlus.
The Commerzbank’s UK travel manager is gaining full visibility of travel expenditure thanks to the unique ability of AirPlus to feed both lodge card and plastic card data into Concur.
Why AirPlus?
Commerzbank UK has used AirPlus International’s corporate payment tools for nearly a decade - for everything from generating spend data for airline ne- gotiations to monitoring compliance with travel policy.
Now head of travel-related services Kate Hellier is enthusing about another new benefit for her company – pre-populating her travellers’ Concur expense re- ports with both AirPlus lodge card and corporate card transaction data. No other card issuer is able to feed Concur in this way, maximising total trip cost visibility for Hellier while minimising time spent on expenses for Commerzbank travellers.
1 1
Combined lodge and plastic card data – why it matters Hellier hails this development as a major break- through for her company’s travel and expense management programme. Like many companies, Commerzbank uses Concur as an automated expense management tool, allowing travellers to file their ex- penses online and then upload the reports into their SAP accounting system.
One benefit of using Concur is that it can take an automated feed from most plastic corporate cards to pre-populate its expense reports automatically. So far
so good, but plastic cards are ideal mainly for han- dling expenses incurred during a trip. What they often don’t cover are expenses incurred before a trip - especially air bookings through a travel management company. Many organisations, including Commerz- bank, prefer to pay for TMC transactions with a lodge card. Only one card issuer can pre-populate Concur with its lodge data: AirPlus.
Full data capture Hellier is delighted with the results. “I need to report on our full travel expenditure and my goal has always been to capture all our data in one place,” she says. “Now that AirPlus is pre-populating our Concur re- ports with lodge card data, we can do that without the need for a separate data warehouse.
“The way it works is that our TMC issues the ticket locator number as a reference number. Travellers use the number for an expense report covering their entire trip. Lines on their Concur expense reports which have been paid for by lodge card are labelled ‘Company Paid’ so the traveller cannot claim the expense as well.”
Minimal work for travellers As well as providing excellent visibility for Hellier, travellers benefit from having minimal work to com- plete their expense reports. Concur automatically lists the vendor, amount and (if relevant) exchange rate for each pre-populated lodge and plastic card transaction fed in by AirPlus. The traveller has to do little more than add any out-of-pocket cash expenses before the claim is sent off for approval and reim- bursement, and the report is loaded into Commerz- bank’s SAP financial system.