How Organisations of All Sizes Handle Employee Expenses

Employee travel expenses are business expenditures made by staff members while travelling to enable them to carry out their organisational functions and work duties. Corporate travel is one major employee expense incurred by organisations as travelling to meet clients and prospects is an important aspect of a business. These expenses include transport services, vehicle mileage, costs of meals, airfare and lodging, use of communications devices, etc. Proper documentation of these business travel expenses can help companies to ask for tax relief on these expenditures.

However, these expenses are often difficult to track, verify and reimburse while staying compliant with the rules and regulations of HMRC. This makes the organisation liable for errors and, in extreme cases, fraud. A study showed that one in ten employees in the UK submits wrong expense claims all the time, costing the UK an estimated two billion pounds annually. Nevertheless, even small and medium-sized organisations are now using specific measures, which we will discuss here, to ensure a more transparent employee travel expense management. Check them out.

Receipt for Contactless TfL Travel 

Fortunately for London businesses, the city has one of the world’s best transport systems, making it possible to travel around and make payments with only a contactless card. This eliminates the need for physical receipts, which may be challenging to acquire and verify for business travel expenses incurred from transportation. However, although contactless card payment for Tfl makes it more convenient and easy to travel and make payments as a passenger in London, obtaining a valid digital receipt for these travel expenses may be difficult. 

For one, it may not be easy to separate personal travel expenses from business-related travel expenses on the same card or payment method, especially if you already have a monthly or annual subscription. Additionally, transaction statements from banking apps may not have the information needed to verify these travel expenses, which is necessary to claim tax deductions for these costs.

Companies now use contactless TfL receipts to solve this problem, which you can easily get online with a TfL contactless and Oyster account. This allows organisations to properly manage these transport expenses, track and verify them, make an account for them when necessary, and correctly authorise monetary compensation for employee travel expenses. However, you’ll need proper guidance to avoid complications when using contactless payment for London travel. 

With this information, employees and employers can have a seamless, less-complicated, and more transparent way to manage their work-travel expenses and financial transactions. This also makes monitoring, digitising and automating your employee expense processes easy.

Use of Transparent Employee Expense Management Policy

An employee expenses policy is an outlined set of rules governing an organisation’s entire employee expense process. This policy often specifies what employees can spend company money on, how they will be reimbursed for these expenses, the payment timeframe, and the process’s terms and conditions. 

For this policy to be effective and efficient, the interest of all the parties involved (including but not limited to; the employee, the employer, and the accounting department) must be taken into account. When drafting an employee expense management policy, it is best practice to make the rules clear, easy to understand, fair for every party and updated.

What You Should Know Before You Go

Employee expenses are vital to ensure that your staff members can afford to pay for the things that improve their jobs and positively affect the organisation. It is an excellent addition to any company that wants to succeed, but it must be done correctly to ensure all parties involved feel happy about the process. 

Therefore, to adequately control your employee expenses, you’ll need to create your employee expense management plan and policy, set transparent processes, map out a budget for each employee expense category, provide payment methods, digitise receipts and invoices, and automate the process.

We hope this helps you on your employee expenses management journey!