The life cycle of expense and mileage claim reports

Good management of expense and mileage claim reports has an impact on all on all of the different phases of the expense claim management process. Discover the secrets of effective expense report generation, supervision and administration.

Good management of expense reports has an impact on all on all of the different phases of the expense claim management process. Discover the secrets of effective expense report generation, supervision and administration.

The life cycle of an expense report consists of three broad phases: generation, supervision and administration. All three of these links in the chain require the involvement of various company departments, working together in a joint process: expense management.

1. Generation: This is the starting block of the expense report As such, the corporate traveller is responsible for generating the expense report, in the course of which there are two essential stages.  
2. The stage prior to travelling: In this case, we are dealing with trips planned in advance and all of the associated expenses (transport ticket reservations, hotel bookings, car hire, etc.).
3. The stage after the trip: This involves reporting expenses to the department in charge of supervision.

In this phase, effective planning is crucial in order to avoid unnecessary expenses.

2) Supervision. In this case, it is a matter of monitoring and validating the expense reports that corporate travellers have drafted and submitted. So there is a data verification phase and a separate supervision phase to ensure that the expenses comply with the company’s policy.

3) Administration. This is the home straight in the expense reporting process. As such, it is the phase in which the reports are approved. In other words, this is when the corresponding accounting records are made and the money is subsequently reimbursed. In addition, it is important to take the reporting stage into account, with the analysis of the expense reports that enables information to be gathered with respect to the process in order to manage it more efficiently.

In order to achieve efficient management of expense and mileage claim spreadsheets, throughout all of the phases of the process, it is vital to take the leap to expense reports 3.0. To put it another way, we have to automate the process through the digitization of the generation, supervision and administration of the reports.