Data Driven Truth: Manual Expense Review is Harming Your Company

Our awesome technology partner, Concur, recently released a study that reveals how manual expense management is harming employees and companies. While these stats are primarily based on findings in the UK, we find them eerily similar to things we have experienced over 14 years of auditing business expenses for fraud, waste, and misuse at Oversight.

Interesting findings from the Concur survey include:

• 23 % of employees in the study agreed it is acceptable to exaggerate expense claims.
• 50% of employees feel embarrassed submitting expenses less than $25 (such as newspapers, small cab or bus fares).
• 68% of managers spend less than 15 minutes reviewing expense reports submitted by employees, 17% reported spending less than five minutes.
• Of managers surveyed for the study, 39% admit to approving an expense report they believed was noncompliant with company policy.

The culprit? The article (and Concur survey) hints it is resentment for the time it takes to compile, manage, and approve expense reports at all levels of the team that is to blame. If time is the issue, then businesses definitely need to consider leveraging technology to make the expense review and audit process easier on managers who ultimately hold the approving power.

What might happen if you don’t implement an expense audit technology partner? Another recent study from JPMorgan finds:

• $1 billion of the $186 billion spent on T&E expenses in the U.S. goes to fraudulent activity.
• Businesses lose a medium sum of more than $30,000 each due to fraud on the expense report.
• In our own Spend Analysis Report for T&E, we’ve found that companies are missing out on millions of dollars in duplicate transactions alone.

What we also found for the 2015 Spend Analysis Report? When using a technology to analyze expenses, businesses see a reduction in non-compliant activity by as much as 70%. 

What are you waiting for? Request a Personal Demo.