AUDITING
5 2
AGGREGATE TRANSACTIONS TO SPOT TRENDS
Faisal Jafri at Barclaycard points out that his Compliance Manager solution can also highlight trends. “You can aggregate by type of transaction or traveller type,” he says. “So rather than just addressing individual instances of non-compliant spending you can tackle the root causes.” He points to a recent review his department made of organisations that had implemented the tool. They showed a 46 per cent reduction in restricted MCC (merchant category code) spend, a 28 per cent decrease in spend on weekends and a 13 per cent drop off in split transactions.
3
MAKE IT EASIER FOR EMPLOYEES TO DO THEIR EXPENSES
“The biggest issue with corporate cards is late payment fees,” argues Isabela Montesdeoca, senior vice-president and general manager EMEA at Concur. “The primary reason these occur is because employees haven’t got round to doing their expenses and so haven’t been paid for the expense by the company.” So, she says, everything you can do to make it easy for employees to do their expenses will reduce the likelihood of late payment fees. “Cutting down on these will certainly make your dealings with finance easier.” She adds: “Few people enjoy doing their expenses, but a system like ours – which allows them to photograph their receipts and quickly upload them – makes it a great deal easier.”
4
MAKE AUDITING A CONTINUAL PROCESS, NOT AN ANNUAL EVENT
Rene Stynen, head of corporate payment solutions at Mastercard Worldwide, says it is important to encourage employees to file their expenses and to be smart with data use, but it must be done in real time. “Orders and purchases must be reconciled in real- time, not only with bank account records but also with corporate policy,” he explains. “Not all organisations are enthusiastic about the idea, but those that have most fully embraced the concept of continual auditing tend to have the most successful programmes.”
In association with
MAINTAIN CLEAR POLICIES AND ENFORCE THEM
Rene Stynen at Mastercard points out that technology can only be effective when deployed in support of policy. “The companies that have travel policies which are clear to all employees and which are enforced consistently tend to have the fewest issues with audit,” he says. However, he accepts that flexibility is unavoidable in many sectors. He explains: “For example, sales people who are meeting clients face a wide range of situations, and it is impossible for a policy to cover all of them. The key is to make a policy as straightforward as possible, and then to provide technology to make it as easy as possible for all to comply with it.”
6
CONSIDER VIRTUAL CARDS Corporate Pay’s Sarah Keane suggests a
radical solution. “Corporate travel buyers can ease the headaches of corporate card auditing by moving away from traditional payment methods and using virtual cards,” she says. “These allow businesses to generate virtual Mastercard or Visa cards, and because they are transaction-specific, and are used only once, they are very easy to track for reconciliation.”
7
MAKE THE TOUGH CALLS You need to be prepared to take tough
decisions and enforce them. As Kevin Phalen, head of global card and comprehensive payables at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, points out: “It’s up to a company to make sometimes unpopular choices during the implementation and configuration of its programme, such as eliminating the use of personal cards for business purposes. However, these changes will ensure the company has the visibility necessary to simplify the auditing process.” He points out that, according to the most recent
RPMG Travel Card Benchmark Survey (2011), companies with a mandated travel card programme capture 18 per cent more travel data than companies without one. He also argues that just having a programme is not in itself enough – you need to work with your corporate card provider to put controls on the cards. He adds: “Without the right tools, corporate card
audit can be quite excruciating and time-consuming. Potentially, you could be sorting through thousands of pieces of paper to locate a particular receipt to complete an audit. Thankfully, there have been many advances in the travel management arena over the past few years so that for today’s travel managers, corporate card auditing need not be the burden it once was.”
2013 Buying Business Travel • 27
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36