Cargill Adopts Expense Express
<H1>Cargill Adopts Expense Express</H1><H3>Corp.-Tailored Reporting Software Will Slash Costs, Paperwork</H3> By Mary Ann McNulty
<I>Minneapolis </I>- After a successful pilot test with 100 employees, Cargill Inc. is rolling out a custom-made electronic expense reporting system that its developer, InterPro, is now marketing to a number of other corporations.
The product, called Expense Express, will save "anywhere from $5 to $7 and maybe as high as $10 an expense report," according to Wade Dillon, a member of Cargill's financial management change team.
Cargill processes more than 150,000 reports a year and expects to process half of them electronically by the end of the fiscal year next May.
About 3,000 of Cargill's 10,000 corporate cardholders in the United States have been trained on the software since January, along with the majority of the 1,000 travelers in the United Kingdom. By May, Cargill expects to have the electronic expense software deployed in Australia, Singapore, Brazil and Argentina.
Cargill also is saving money by using a new report that tracks airline tickets purchased on the corporate card, but not expensed.
The global commodities processor and marketer set out three years ago to reengineer its financial operation (<I>BTN</I>, July 15), including travel and entertainment expense management. The trick was to find solutions that could be deployed as easily in Des Moines as in São Paulo or London.
At the time, an off-the-shelf solution wasn't available, so Cargill worked with InterPro Software Systems, the Rosemont, Ill., maker of Expense Express, to beta test and modify an object-technology, client server-based product in order to meet its worldwide requirements. After working with two other large corporate clients, InterPro is now marketing the product to midsized and large corporations, joining close to 20 other vendors that have launched electronic T&E solutions since last year.
Similar to most other T&E solutions, Expense Express features an intuitive interface with pull-down menus, fill-in-the-blank formats, electronic auditing and the capability to send reports through e-mail.
One unique aspect is a module called Expense Regulator, which allows corporations to define their own expense reporting guidelines and rules. Regulator allows users to define a "personality" for the expense reporting software, Dillon said.
For example, at Cargill, travelers based in the United States report meals and lodging expenses separately. However, in the United Kingdom, travelers report lodging, meals and other expenses in a new category called subsistence.
Another feature that Cargill's global travelers required is the capability to tailor foreign currency conversions. The company has built tables for selected currencies but allows employees to override the rates, if necessary. The system also allows employees to track multiple currencies on the same day and change rates at the end of a day, a week or even a particular trip, Dillon said.
A third unique feature available in a new version of Expense Express is two-way translation into 28 different languages, according to Michael Hanna, president of InterPro Software.
Six languages are built into the product, and any of the others can be added in a matter of weeks. The product also captures VAT data and can be used to track time spent on client projects (for billing purposes) and other expenditures such as relocation, Hanna noted.
When Dillon and the team first analyzed T&E processes three years ago, they found the process highly decentralized. Every office had its own clerk to process T&E reports.
"Even though we had a corporate travel policy, everyone who signed off on an expense report had their own policy," Dillon said. The situation was complicated even further by the fact that reports were compiled manually, footnoted and cross-footnoted. Not only did employees have to get the math correct, but they had to list the proper accounting codes.
Secretaries reviewed each expense report and verified that receipts were attached. The managers then signed off on the report and forwarded the expense records to accounting, where a clerk again verified the receipts. After accounting cut a check, another clerk once again checked all receipts.
"We were tying up way too much time on functions that would have little financial impact to the company," Dillon said. "The big question was whether to make the trip or not."
To streamline the process, Cargill centralized all processing of expense reports in its Fargo, N.D., office for the United States, and at other locations worldwide. The company redesigned its expense report form, making it a self-mailer, and decided to move to electronic forms as quickly as possible.
Cargill also changed its reimbursement practices to pay its global corporate card vendor, American Express, instead of reimbursing employees. Employees who are owed money go to an automatic teller machine and withdraw the cash. Company employees usually carry a small credit balance or take extra cash to balance their accounts.
In order to move to the electronic expense report, Cargill was required to develop interfaces to its proprietary account system, building databases that would list employee numbers and American Express account numbers in addition to accounting codes.
Once the back end was complete, the company began pilot testing the software product. And until now, Dillon has had nothing but positive reviews from the employees who tested it.
Dillon said he expects a one-year return on Cargill's investment in the software, which he declined to reveal. Although Cargill has debated the merits of populating expense reports with charge card data, Dillon said, the company has decided not to try the concept.
Meanwhile, Hanna said pricing of his software is based on site licenses, which range from $10,000 to $200,000, depending on the number of users.