A decade after automated expense reporting solutions first hit the market, adoption remains at about 40 percent of large companies and 10 to 25 percent of midsize companies, according to a 2005 PayStream Advisors report. However, a newer PayStream survey of finance, treasury and accounting professionals indicated that almost 75 percent of companies are either currently using an automated expense solution or plan to implement one in the next year.
"Our models predict that adoption among large and mid-sized companies will further accelerate as the benefits of expense automation become increasingly clear and well-known," stated PayStream senior research analyst Sush Koka in a company report. The market for such solutions, Koka added, will grow to an estimated $1.7 billion by 2009 from $1 billion last year.
Benefits of automated expense processing include greater policy controls, automated auditing, spend data visibility and faster reimbursement to travelers.
As more corporations focus on driving efficiencies through automation, they are integrating expense reporting solutions with travel and entertainment, procurement, "ghost" and other corporate cards.
Companies surveyed for a Visa/Deloitte Consulting report cited annual savings of $900,000 to $4.5 million from integrating automated expense reporting and credit card feeds. Savings are derived primarily from more efficient expense reporting processes for employees and their accounts payable departments. The investment in expense reporting solutions and card integration ranged from $500,000 to $2 million, according to the report.
To foster client compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, vendors have added new controls to ensure authorization, recording and reporting of transactions. They also have enhanced their solutions to incorporate the increasing amount of Level 3 and enhanced folio data that they are receiving. Level 3 is the most detailed credit card data, delivering not only the merchant name, location and charge amount, but also details about the transaction. Hotel folio provides the actual room rate, number of nights and details on all charges that appear on a traveler's bill.
Necho Expense, now a division of CyberShift Inc., has added the ability to build a graphical corporate structure to help corporations more accurately map their reporting hierarchy in the implementation phase, said Craig Fearon, senior director of product management. Using drag-and-drop functionality, corporations can ensure that expenses for certain projects, business units and divisions roll up to the correct general ledger account. Necho also redesigned the administration module to make it easier to use and allow users to further configure the application themselves. Necho also delivered new CFO dashboard reports that make report creation and drill-down as easy as clicking a mouse. For Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, Necho has added proactive fraud detection capabilities.
Concur Technologies this month reaffirmedplans to integrate by September its expense product with the recently acquired Outtask Cliqbook online booking system. [Concur also acquired Outtask's Vinnet expense solution and continues to support existing users, but no longer markets that product.] With one click, users will be able to view booked, credit card (including e-folio and Level 3 card data, where available) and expense data. In reconciling expensed against the booked data, Concur expects to deliver a level of analytics that customers are not getting today, said chairman and CEO Steve Singh. "We will maintain the record all the way through," but the value is in the analysis of booked to expensed, he added.
HRG North America is offering a new Web-based portal for corporate clients to book, expense and manage travel. Integrating with Spendvision, HRG is offering customers an expense tool that can incorporate T&E, fleet, procurement and other credit cards, as well as mobile phone bills. Developed within Deloitte in 1999, Spendvision was sold to a management group in 2004. Hogg Robinson invested in the company in late 2004. More than 300 government and corporate entities are using the product, according to Shane Bruhns, COO of Spendvision Holdings Limited; the company plans to service several thousand customers by the end of the year.
HRG touts a 60-90 day implementation, full policy and regulatory controls, and easily accessible data analytics. For travel managers, the portal offers a one-stop look at usage of the tools, but not all travel spend and bookings.
In the latest version of its expense solution, Extensity has automated receipt of hotel folio and enhanced credit card data to help travelers more quickly reconcile expenses. It also offers more choices for client interfaces and improved e-mail approval capabilities, according to senior director of product management A.G. Lambert.
With this release, Extensity also returns to its original name. In March, Golden Gate Capital acquired Geac Computer Corporation Limited and split it into two parts. The financial performance management portion was named Extensity, while the enterprise resource planning solutions were merged into Infor, another Golden Gate Capital firm. In addition to expense reporting, Extensity offers tools for payment requests, corporate travel plans and employee timesheets. Two other divisions provide management applications for forecasting, budgeting and reporting, while a transaction systems unit provides tools for accounts, asset management, human resources, procurement and inventory management.
Meanwhile, Gelco reported enhancements to its multinational capabilities to automate local business policies while standardizing business processes.
While large ERP vendors such as SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft also offer expense reporting modules, a bevy of point solutions (developed for a specific purpose) has garnered much of the market share thus far.