International survey shows expense processing is ripe target for cost-cutting corporations
That’s the headline from an interesting article published at Daily Travel News back in December 2008.
“Business travelers are frequently out of pocket as a result of their employers’ archaic or unhelpful expense claim systems, which causes some staff to feel entirely justified in filing fictitious claims to recoup their losses. At the same time, these outmoded systems are saddling employers with excessive admin costs at exactly the time that they most need to trim budgets, according to new research from KDS, the European leader in on-demand travel and expense solutions.”
Here are the key findings:
- As many as 60% of respondents employers remain wedded to time-intensive spreadsheets for expense systems.
- Expenses are a major drag on executive time: 23% of travellers spend over an hour on each claim, and 35% take between 30 minutes and an hour.
- Staff may be padding their expenses as ‘retaliation’ for enduring convoluted claims procedures: 24% say they fail to claim back all their expenses, often losing track of receipts; 10% say this can cost them as much as EURO;100 personally per claim; 11% have to wait over a month to be reimbursed.
- 11% of respondents say their employers expect them to pay the Internet charges for checking work emails whilst travelling.
- 16% of US respondents admit to inflating their expenses, versus 9% of British and 10% of French.
- French staff cheat more often than their UK and US counterparts. However, while UK and US employees falsify expenses less frequently, when they do so it will, on average, be for a larger amount than their French counterparts would claim.
- The favourite method of boosting an expense claim in France is – quelle surprise – restaurant bills. Brits and Americans prefer more mundane taxi fares.
We hate to be smug, but neither we as a company, nor our employees and Partners here at BillBandit Ltd suffer the problems mentioned in this article. We use our own products! 
SOURCE ARTICLE: http://www.traveldailynews.com/pages/show_page/28538-International-survey-shows-expense-processing-is-ripe-target-for-cost-cutting-corporations
