American Express is adding more virtual payment capabilities to the Cvent Event Marketing & Management platform to provide new options around budget management and payment automation, Cvent announced.
Among the new features will be additional virtual funding account options via American Express' vPayment tool. Cvent since 2018 has worked with American Express to enable event managers to pay suppliers and manage budgets with American Express virtual account numbers. The enhanced offering, expected to be available later this year in the U.S. and U.K., will assign a single-use account number to each transaction, which Cvent said will increase billing efficiency.
Cvent also is adding the American Express @ Work Reconciliation tool, which automates reconciliation and approval within the invoicing process as well as features it says will improve user experience for clients using Amex corporate meeting cards and vPayment, such as a step-by-step escalation process. Cvent plans to add early next year an automated reconciliation process that will give managers a better view of their budget, better data and more auditing controls, according to Cvent.
"Capturing actual meetings and events spend has long been an organizational pain point with cumbersome invoices, manual spreadsheets and siloed processes, which ultimately leads to decreased visibility and reduced budget control," Cvent SVP of sales Anil Punyapu said in a statement. "With our American Express payment enhancements, organizations can streamline their payment and reconciliation processes to deliver greater visibility and insights into their total meeting and event spend."
An American Express Meetings & Events survey of 305 corporate meeting and event planners, conducted in early September, showed that 81 percent are using an automated payment process for meetings. However, about the same percentage said they plan to automate it further over the next six months, according to the survey.