What do CFOs Need to Know About Expense Management?

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The core benefits of automating the expense management

process have long been known. According to research by analyst

firm Levvel, organizations who use automated processes can

save an average of 74 percent over those who use a fully-manual

system for submitting, approving, processing and reimbursing

employee expenses. For an organization of 2,000 employees,

with 30 percent submitting expenses each month, this alone

represents a potential saving of more than $150,000 per year.

The cost savings from automating manual processes is the most

obvious upfront benefit of expense automation. However, the

benefits that automation provides for CFOs reach far beyond

the cost of labor. Below are four areas that CFOs can see

significant operational and cost benefits from deploying expense

management software.

Actionable Data InsightsBest-in-class expense automation solutions offer deep analytical

capabilities, delivering wide-ranging actionable insights into

corporate travel and expense spend. Unlike spreadsheets,

which are cumbersome to manipulate and don’t easily provide

meaningful insight, expense systems deliver data in clear,

visual dashboards. This data enables CFOs to provide the CEO

and board of directors with fully up-to-date financial and

performance data. For example, this data can be used to:

• Identify patterns of wasteful or inefficient travel spend.

• Track spend by category and merchant to support negotia-

tions for preferred-vendor discounts.

• Reduce expense fraud by tracking trends and anomalies in

expense patterns.

Even if an organization uses a travel agency to manage its travel,

there are always some rogue transactions booked outside

approved channels. In these instances, the expense system

remains the single source of truth, as all transactions pass

through it in order to be reimbursed. As a result, data provided

by the expense system are significantly more accurate than that

provided by the travel agency.

It’s the attention to detail in the implementation process which we anticipated would be the case, and it is the reason we chose Chrome River over competitors.

CFO, OELRICH COnsTRUCTIOn

WHAT DO CFOs NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ExpENsE MANAgEMENT?

Compliance ControlsEmployee travel and out-of-pocket expenses are subject to a broad

range of regulations, ranging from tax treatments of different

expense types, to compliance with regulations for receipt retention

and data storage. For organizations with operations across multiple

countries (either local subsidiaries or domestic employees who

travel to different countries), maintaining compliance with multiple

tax and other regulatory jurisdictions can be extremely challenging.

Automating the submission and approval processes can vastly

simplify compliance verification. Organizations can establish

business rules that ensure mileage rates, sales taxes and other

compliance issues are automatically enforced. These regulations

can also be automatically updated both for the domestic market

and internationally as they come into force.

Business rules can also help maintain compliance with corporate

travel and expense policies. Organizations can configure the

expense tool around their individual policies, so that thresholds

for hotel rates, meal expenses, flights and other expense types

can be automatically enforced. If necessary, organizations can

even use their solution to prevent any expense outside of these

thresholds from being submitted for reimbursement, reducing

the potential for conflict.

Process AutomationIncreasing operational efficiency enables organizations to

remain agile. Automating expenses enables organizations to

increase accuracy, streamline the approval process and enforce

routing paths to maintain compliance. This in turn speeds up

reimbursement times, eliminates data entry errors and reduces

fraud and noncompliance.

Expense submitters simply need to take a photo of a receipt

within the expense app on their mobile device and upload it.

From there, optical character recognition technology extracts

all transaction data in seconds, categorizes the transaction and

creates an expense line item. The system will automatically check

each expense against the expense policy and match receipts

with card transactions before submission.

Expense reports are then automatically routed to approvers

based on rules regarding amount, department and, if required,

billing code or client. Each reviewer is automatically notified

of their turn in the process and reminded if their approval is

outstanding. Integration between expense and accounting/

ERP systems also means that expenses can be processed for

reimbursement and entered into the GL with any manual data

entry. This eliminates the potential for data to be incorrectly

entered into the system, both inadvertently or deliberately.

Team ProductivityAutomated expense solutions can significantly enhance

productivity both for submission and approval/reimbursement.

For those on the road who are creating and submitting reports,

this means the ability to submit receipts in a single click within

an app, and then easily create and submit expense reports in

minutes from a mobile device. This enables your most valuable

assets—revenue generators—to drive value for the organization.

Once an expense has been submitted, removing the

requirement to manually check transactions against receipts,

review expenses against policies, and then manually enter data

into the system can dramatically increase productivity and

cut down cycle times. This allows expense administrators and

AP teams to spend more time on higher-value tasks such as

analyzing expense data to deliver insights for the CFO.

A user-friendly program that makes a daunting task quick, easy and efficient.

FInAnCE COORdInATOR, HOCkEy CAnAdA

Chrome River EXPENSE is straightforward and user-friendly. I’m very pleased with the system, and I particularly like that it is highly configurable and flexible to accommodate changes as our business evolves.

AP MAnAGER, WHEELABRATOR TECHnOLOGIEs

www.chromeriver.com | info@chromeriver.com | +1 (888) 781.0088

We were focused on finding an expense management system that our employees would love to use, while still giving us the control and analytics that we need.

dIRECTOR, GLOBAL TRAvEL And PROFEssIOnAL sERvICEs, CARGILL

Why Chrome River is the Right Choice for Forward-Thinking CFOs

We Empower You for Long-term SuccessThe journey to success is never just about the destination. Our

mission includes a long-term commitment to innovation: we

empower your organization to derive value from our solutions for

future readiness. As your trusted advisor, we provide myriad ways

for your organization to utilize our solutions to their fullest extent.

We Provide a Superior Price/Value EquationEverything’s included: our simplified saas subscription model

means virtually all costs are covered in a single monthly fee.

no user fees, software licenses or hidden charges to contend

with. Chrome River has implemented thousands of projects and

established best practices for achieving ROI quickly.

We Guarantee World-class Implementation Design and DeliveryOur implementation process forms the foundation of your

success with our expense management and invoice automation

solutions. Every new customer benefits from the domain

knowledge and expertise our team has gained from years

of managing, configuring, and implementing saas-based

enterprise solutions.

We Support You in Change ManagementWhether it’s an acquisition, entry into a new market, or

upgrading other enterprise software solutions, change for

any organization requires proper planning and preparation.

We get your employees up and running quickly with Chrome

River’s solutions after implementation by facilitating change

management with effective tools.

We Understand Your Global NeedsChrome River is a global solution designed for the needs of

global organizations. We work with you to support regional

offices, divisions, and businesses for a simplified global business

expense strategy. We support more than 30 languages, all

180 currencies, complex per diem policies and we’ve teamed

with PwC to deliver global baseline templates for expense

reimbursement compliance. We integrate with ERP and financial

systems seamlessly at every touchpoint along the way.

We Surpass Customer ExpectationsWe surpass customer expectation. Our customer support team

has a 97% satisfaction rating and our expense application has an

average uptime of 99.95%. These are just two of the reasons why

leading organizations choose Chrome River.

WHAT DO CFOs NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ExpENsE MANAgEMENT?

ConclusionEach of these areas can deliver considerable opportunities for

cost savings and value creation over manual expense processing.

Whether it’s cutting the risk of penalties for regulatory non-

compliance, more accurate and timely data to make smarter

decisions, reducing losses from fraud and out-of-policy spend,

or more productive business travelers and finance teams, the

ROI from expense automation can be many times the cost of the

software itself.

CFOs whose organizations continue to rely on manual or

outdated expense submission, approval and reimbursement

solutions should consider the overall impact of expense

automation across the organization.

We looked at Chrome River and Concur. Concur didn’t meet our scope of requirements and was too expensive.

ACCOUnTs PAyABLE MAnAGER, JAnnEy

Everyone is very excited about Chrome River and the elimination of our wasteful paper process.

GLOBAL TRAvEL MAnAGER, HARd ROCk

www.chromeriver.com | info@chromeriver.com | +1 (888) 781.0088

Chrome River provides expense and invoice automation solutions that let business

flow for more than 1,000 organizations worldwide. The company’s easy-to-use,

enterprise-scale solutions enable future-readiness for its customers. As a result of

this focus on innovation, Chrome River is rated as a Leader in expense management

by analyst firm IdC. Chrome River’s commitment to delivering a superior customer

journey by creating long-term value for its customers, makes it a preferred choice

of CFOs, CIOs, AP teams, travel managers and business travelers. details on Chrome

River’s customers can be found on the company’s web site.

To find out why more than 2 million business travelers around the world trust Chrome

River, contact the company at 888-781-0088, or visit chromeriver.com and its social

pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Chrome River