Vendors Debut T&E Systems
Several major suppliers of accounting and business software are launching expense reporting systems for the corporate travel market.
ADP, the Roseland, N.J., firm known for payroll expertise, is beginning to market the e-XPENSE software it purchased from San Leandro, Calif.-based Adisoft in July. ADP has developed regional implementation teams and customer service across the country and is now rolling out e-XPENSE to its 500-person sales force. Adi-soft's employees are now on the ADP payroll to support the 30 existing customers and others.
Like most other systems, e-XPENSE features a graphical user interface to enter expense data. Once a report is completed, users can click a check button and the software will indicate whether the report passes or fails a policy check. Users also can check an online tutorial on policy for clarification. Online auditing capabilities help managers identify exceptions to policy.
Customers are telling ADP that the system's automated coding and auditing components are producing enough savings to cover the cost of the software in 10 to 14 months, said vice president of sales Robert Raczkowski. Even companies that have only 75 travelers are finding return on their investment within a year, he said.
Intuit, the consumer-based maker of Quicken, QuickBooks and ExpensAble, is turning its attention to the corporate market through a business partnership with Global Business Solutions in Costa Mesa, Calif. The firms are offering corporations a server or Internet/intranet-based expense reporting product called Global Expense Management Solution. Intuit provides the front-end, easy-to-use expense software for employees to use, while GBS offers the back-end component that includes automatic auditing of expense reports, routing, coding to corporate general ledger accounts and downloading to financial systems.
As a business systems integrator specializing in accounting systems, GBS has found that corporations frequently need customization of software or code to complement existing systems. In addition to offering the standard back-end component, Expense Server, it will provide custom solutions.
"Intuit's core competency is in developing excellent end-user software; GBS' is in core business processing. We're bringing together a best-of-breed partnership to cover all needs," said Robert Crumpler, senior manager of business development for Mountain View, Calif.-based Intuit.
About a year ago, Intuit bought Crumpler's Expense It product line, which was incorporated into ExpensAble's version 2. Another feature of this revision is an interface to Intuit's QuickBooks, a small-business accounting package.
Another partnership teams J.D. Edwards with Rosemont, Ill.-based InterPro Inc. Instead of building its own system, Edwards has aligned with InterPro, which has been marketing for about a year an object-oriented, client-server based software called Expense Express.
"InterPro had the functionality, flexibility and global support, including multilanguage and multicurrency capabilities, that we need for our multinational customers," said Lisa Fellows, director of financial products development at J.D. Edwards. "Expense Express integrates with our general ledger, accounts payable, human resources and payroll modules, creating a complete solution for our customers." J.D. Edwards, one of the world's largest software companies, has more than 3,900 customers in 94 countries.
SAP, the German-based enterprise system vendor, is enhancing its three-year-old expense reporting module, making it Java-enabled. When Microsoft releases its next version of Office, users will be able to use the new version of Excel to submit expense reports over the Internet to SAP's accounting system.
In other T&E developments, Portable Software will provide Worldspan with its expense reporting software as part of an integrated booking and expense management suite. Portable also is one of Sabre's suppliers for the T&E component of Business Travel Solutions.