Is your company’s Travel and Expense process fully automated?  If not, your company is missing out on potential savings by driving travel and expense compliance and reining in rogue T&E spend.  If your company isn’t automating, the good news is that it’s not in the minority yet; however, Travel and Expense Management (TEM) solutions are on the rise. Survey results reveal that over one-third (36 percent) of survey respondents report that their T&E process is fully automated and is a single/integrated system, up 4 percent from 2012.

In an effort to gain insights and current trends in TEM solutions, PayStream conducted an in-depth survey in Q1 2013, of over 200 accounts payable and finance professionals at U.S. based enterprises.  Key survey findings include:

• Companies continue to increase the amount of money they spend on T&E.  Fifty-eight percent of survey respondents report their T&E spend increased over the last three years.
• The inability to enforce corporate travel policies (43 percent) ranks as the number one challenge that organizations face in the expense management process.
• Automated solutions ranks as the number one expense report submission method (53 percent).  Nearly one-third (32 percent) of survey respondents are still utilizing inter-office mail.
• Fewer paper receipts are mailed to the AP department for expense receipt submission (45 percent, down 3 percent from 2012).
• Direct deposit to employee bank accounts ranks as the number one expense reimbursement method – 55 percent.
• Over half of survey respondents (52 percent) are required to submit a receipt for all expenses.
• Over one-third (36 percent) of survey respondents report their companies are fully automated and use a single/integrated TEM system.
• The belief that current TEM processes work (27 percent) is the number on reason organizations have not automated the T&E process.
• Forty-four percent of survey respondents are currently using a best-of-breed T&E provider and another 12 percent are planning to in the next 6 months.
• Reporting and analysis capabilities are the most widely used feature of TEM solutions – 74 percent.
• The biggest benefit achieved through automating the T&E process is improved visibility over spend – 56 percent.

Every business trip starts with planning and booking, and ends once all business travel expenses are reimbursed.  The intricate details that occur between planning and reimbursement present an opportunity for companies to enforce compliance of travel and expense policies in order to maximize savings.  Travel is one of the highest single expenditures for companies, which is why it’s one of the largest opportunities for savings.  Travel and Expense Management (TEM) solutions work to streamline the entire process, providing an end-to-end solution from pre-trip approval and online booking to travel receipt capture and expense reimbursements, while ensuring corporate travel compliance is strictly adhered to.

The 2013 Travel and Expense Management Benchmark report was underwritten in part by Chrome River, Concur, Coupa and SAP. Read an abstract of the report HERE or LOGIN and download the entire report for free.

 

PayStream Advisors released the 2013 Dynamic Discount Management: Moving Toward Mainstream report today, which reveals that over 90 percent of AP practitioners say Dynamic Discount Management (DDM) is a priority (up from 80 percent a year ago), proof that DDM is rapidly moving into the mainstream.

While more practitioners reveal that capturing discounts is a priority, only 24 percent of the companies that PayStream surveyed were able to capture all discounts offered.  The reasons most often given for failure to take early payment discounts were lengthy approval cycles and lost or missing invoices – both problems commonly associated with manual payment processing and paper invoices.

PayStream research suggests that recent innovations, such as buyer-suggested discounts are being positively received, resulting in more captured discounts and the growing perception that dynamic discounting can be used as a cash management tool.  The potential for high, risk-free returns and the opportunity cost of failing to act is driving more companies to implement DDM first, and use the proceeds to pay for other Accounts Payable process improvements.

Seeking to gain insights and current trends in Dynamic Discount Management, PayStream conducted an in-depth survey in Q4 2012, of over 200 accounts payable and procurement professionals at U.S. based enterprises.  Key survey findings include:

• Over one-third (37 percent) of survey respondents report that capturing discounts is a high priority.
• Nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of companies are able to capture all available discounts.
• Nearly half (46 percent) are able to capture at least 10 percent of discounts.
• Lengthy approval cycles (27 percent) and lost or missing invoices (21 percent) are the top reasons for late payments and missed discounts.
• Supplier resistance to accept electronic payments (21 percent) is the number one reason companies are not utilizing electronic payments.
• Lower processing costs (80 percent) and the reduction in the procure-to-pay cycle time (49 percent) rank as the top benefits to utilizing electronic payments.

The Dynamic Discount Management report was underwritten in part by Ariba and Taulia and can be downloaded for free HERE. Download your complimentary copy today.

 

 

 

 

We often encounter similar concerns when we’re working with companies to implement a payments project. Outsourcing or revising A/P processes can seem daunting, but we can address some of the larger concerns here. I’ll cover moving from check to virtual card first, and in the next blog, I’ll discuss concerns with ACH and check printing projects.

Check to Virtual Card:
The benefits of moving to virtual card are obvious, with clear savings in moving from check to electronic payments along with rebates that can be derived from moving even a small portion of payments to card. But the most frequent underlying concern is the sometimes unspoken question – why would a company take v-card when there may be a fee involved? It seems counter-intuitive, but there are several reasons that it makes sense for many companies:

• Reduced risk of fraud – the use of v-card removes the need to supply bank account information to all of their payers for ACH payments, and also removes the rising risk of check fraud, which now affects 85% of organizations (see my previous blog, Payments Fraud Remains High, for more information).
• Clear remittance details and notification – Often with ACH payments, the money arrives in a company’s bank account without remittance details, leading to huge hassles in trying to apply the payment. Companies have been known to miss budget due to this problem. In addition, companies like to receive notification ahead of the payment. Our system provides both an email notification and clear remittance details with every payment.
• Simplified bank management – If a company has given out bank payment details to receive ACH payments and they change banks, it can be a project of enormous dimensions for A/R to get new bank information to all of their payers. Accepting v-cards can remove that maintenance step and remove dependence on the bank.

Some other concerns we hear are that A/P managers often believe that only their small suppliers will want to accept v-cards. In our experience, that’s simply not the case. We have seen six- and seven-figure v-card payments processed. A/P managers might also be concerned about affecting their relationships with their suppliers. Because we allow you to dictate who we call, what we discuss, and whether we make more than one attempt, we can help maintain those great relationships that they have built over time. If a company has a discount have in place with their main suppliers that they are concerned about impacting, we can just remove that company from the contact list. In many cases, though, suppliers have actually already built the cost of card processing into their prices.

Have you implemented a check-to-v-card project? We’d like to hear about concerns you may have had prior to implementing.

 

The 2013 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey has been published and this year’s survey results indicate an overall decrease in the incidence of fraud attempts. This downward trend is due in part to the increasing shift from paper to electronic payments. With fewer checks in the system, less check fraud occurs although checks still remain the most popular vehicles for criminals committing payments fraud.

87% of survey respondents reported that checks were targeted, compared with 29% for corporate/commercial purchasing cards, 27% for ACH Debits, 11% for wire transfers and 8% for ACH credits. Nearly three-quarters of organizations that were subject to at least one payments fraud attempt in 2012 did not suffer actual losses from the attempt. This is largely due to effective fraud detection and controls.

External vs. Internal Threats
Most payments fraud originates outside the victimized organization. Eighty percent of the organizations surveyed experienced attempted or actual payments fraud as a result of actions taken by an outside individual. Eighteen percent were a result of organized crime while ten percent were subject to fraud from an internal party. Generally less than 1% was attributed to a lost or stolen laptop or a compromised mobile device.

Controls
Positive pay, ACH filters and daily reconciliations are among the methods used to identify exception items that may include fraudulent transactions. For most of the respondents, the number of exceptions is relatively small and items can be easily identified. One best practice that organizations can follow is to segregate accounts by payment type (wire, ACH, check, card) and by purpose (taxes, payroll, AP). This is because separation of accounts allows for more timely and focused review of payment activity.

Social Engineering
Corporate Account Takeover (CAT) typically involves gaining access to a company’s online banking site in order to create fraudulent transactions. Attacks are often introduced through “social engineering” that relies on human interaction and tricking people into performing actions that can compromise security. A good example of this is an innocent looking email containing links that when clicked, install malware or keystroke loggers to capture access credentials. The good news is that the incidence of this is still very low – only 2% of respondents reported being attacked and actually having had credentials compromised or an unauthorized transaction initiated. One effective way to mitigate CAT is to conduct daily reconciliations of transaction activity and following up on a timely basis when questionable activity is detected. Other effective techniques include separation of duties and dual controls for payment release.
How does this report align with your experience? We’d like to hear from you!