Business travel financial platform Trevium and card issuer Pliant have partnered to offer a new billing approach that ensures all transactions, hotels in particular, include the full data needed for automated processing, the companies announced.
Christopher Hecht, global payment solutions officer for corporate travel technology group S4BT—which launched Trevium earlier this year—said the industry has made great strides in enriching payment data for hotel transactions. Companies like HRS, Hecht's former employer, can capture and integrate itemized data, including taxes, into expense workflows, allowing for automatic processing.
An automation snag can arise, however, when hotel charges come near the end of a payment billing cycle, Hecht said. Often, the billing cycle closes before that enriched data is received, and the transaction must be manually reconciled and closed into a company's ERP system.
That is especially a problem for large multinational companies working across multiple tools and ERP platforms, where those manual reconciliations can add up to a lot of work even if they are a small percentage of total transactions, he said.
"We look from an industry perspective always what do we do for the traveler, and this is what we've solved over the decades," Hecht said. "Unfortunately, it's not end to end. On the traveler side, you've eliminated the cost of payment and invoices, but on the finance side, you've gained the cost, because you need someone who is doing the cleaning."
Trevium and Pliant have launched Guaranteed Transaction Enrichment, with which transactions are held from billing until the complete data is received. Pliant is providing the payment infrastructure in the partnership, while Trevium is providing the enriched data, including booking data, structured invoices, VAT details and financial metadata.
"Every transaction within the statement that is not enriched, we are pushing it into the next billing cycle," Hecht said. "With this, you deliver the corporate statement and accounting file that is 100 percent completed, so you take the manual hassle away from the finance department."
Hotels are the initial focus of the feature's deployment, but the companies said it is structured to support air, rail and other travel transactions as well. The companies said they also plan to collaborate on additional capabilities to simplify corporate travel finance.