Expense management provider Abacus is bolstering its
platform with a travel booking tool, adding to the growing list of end-to-end
booking and expense providers on the market.
The new Abacus Travel booking service is based on online
booking technology that Abacus parent company Certify purchased
from NuTravel in 2017. Certify subsequently acquired
Abacus in 2018, and Abacus Travel is the first significant product
launch for Abacus since coming under the Certify umbrella, the company said.
Abacus Travel offers flight, hotel, car rental and rail content.
Travel managers can set pre-booking controls to show only in-policy travel
options for a particular traveler. After a booking is complete, the itinerary
flows into Abacus' expense management system, which tracks all travel-related
expenses in one dashboard. Abacus doesn't batch expenses into reports but
rather submits them on a running basis, and employees are reimbursed as soon as
the next day, Abacus said.
A growing number of providers have combined booking and
expense management under one roof. Industry titan Concur began the boom when it
acquired Outtask in 2006. Since then, companies like Egencia
and Abacus parent Certify have expanded their capabilities to encompass both
functions. Meanwhile, end-to-end platforms like AmTrav
have been designed and built from the ground up to offer both booking and
expense. And travel management startup TripActions is believed to be exploring the
addition of expense
functionality after quietly teaming up with payment and expense
provider Divvy late last year.