BCD Explores Pain Points Associated with
Business Travel Expenses
(08/06/23)
The amount of time spent creating expense
reports is the biggest pain point in the expense process
for business travelers, according to a recent BCD Travel survey of 1,349 business travelers worldwide.
The survey about payment
and expense in business travel looked at payment methods travelers
use while traveling, pain points they experience and tools at
their disposal to make the whole process easier.
When it
comes to payment methods, 79% of travelers use a corporate credit
card. Other payment methods include personal cards (26%), personal cash (12%) and direct company payments to travel suppliers through
bank transfers or lodge cards (16%). Only 1% use a virtual card,
even though 26% are familiar with this method. The survey also
found that one in six business travelers have fallen victim to
credit card fraud on a business trip, despite measures taken.
“Companies looking for ways to simplify payment for their
travelers should explore the benefits of payment automation
enabled by virtual credit cards,” said Ajay Singh, vice president,
Digital Payment and Expense Products at BCD. “Virtual payment
automation makes it easier to centrally pay for hotel or car
bookings. It automatically generates a single-use virtual card
number for each transaction and matches all charges to a specific booking. This not only makes the payment process easier for
travelers, it also greatly reduces the risk of fraud.”
In
terms of payment, staying within the reimbursement policy (29%) is
the biggest pain point, followed by the need to pay for travel
expenses out of their own pocket (20%) and the necessity to have
cash in the local currency (20%).
Travelers encounter far more
challenges when it comes to expenses. More than half of the
respondents report the time spent creating expense reports (63%)
as the biggest pain point.
Other key obstacles are collecting
paper receipts (54%), collecting receipts in different formats
(52%), keeping receipts after the trip is over (51%) and expensing
complex categories, such as hotel stays with meals and other
incidentals paid separately (50%).
Looking at expense
tools, the most valuable features for business travelers are all
related to process automation, such as travel receipts
automatically attached to their expense reports (76%), credit card
transactions automatically matched to their trip expenses (72%),
and expense reports automatically pre-populated with trip data
when booking their trip (67%).
“BCD Pay, our proprietary, cloud-based platform for T&E spend management,
can remove the friction and pain points,” said Singh. “BCD Pay
makes it easier for business travelers, who want a simple process
that saves time, enhances payment data and eliminates the need to
submit expense claims. It helps travel management and finance
teams maintain and improve control over corporate travel payments,
reduce manual work and gain greater visibility into payments.”
You can download the full, 18-page, 4.79MB report
in .pdf format
here.
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