Why should we introduce an automated expense management application?

Expenseflo

We all know that Expense Management Applications do a great job of letting your traveling employees file their expenses quickly and efficiently. However, gaining complete control over your organization’s travel expenses requires two additional crucial tasks that an Expense Management Application (EMA) cannot handle:

1. Auditing paper expense receipts for expense claim accuracy and travel policy compliance
2. Analyzing those same receipts to maximize VAT recovery

By taking those two additional steps, which is what Meridian’s Expenseflo UNIQUELY does, you can save up to 6% on your company's T&E spend.

It is estimated that well under half of corporations have an automated expense management application. If you are not one of the converted yet, here is why you should have one:

Reduced travel costs

• Management information provided for supplier negotiation
• Traveler compliance boosted with preferred suppliers via pre-trip approval

Reduced process costs

• Many manual paper-based tasks are eliminated, reducing processing costs by up to 80%
• Reduced employee and management time
• Radically reduced time taken for business travelers to complete expense claims and receive reimbursement
• Easy one-click approval for line managers

Our expense management application, Expenseflo EMA, is the best on the market. However, we recognize many companies already have an expense management application and do not want to change that.

That’s not a problem. We can plug any expense management application (or more than one) of your choice into Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT and Expenseflo VAT RECOVERY so you can get the full benefit of complete expense management.

Should you wish to discuss Expenseflo service please contact:

Arja Mozejko
e-mail: arja.mozejko@meridianglobalservices.com
phone: +1 212.554.6719

Les Baer
e-mail: les.baer@meridianglobalservices.com
phone: +1 212.554.6655

One expense claim in eight is incorrect

Expenseflo

Our Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT experts can check every one of your business travelers’ expense receipts against their expense claims for accuracy and policy compliance.
We find that on average one expense claim in eight needs amending. Some errors are accidental, some deliberate. Either way, they can cost your company a lot of money.

Significant savings
The results speak for themselves. When one major European manufacturer signed up for Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT, our team found $5 million of savings in $91 million of submitted expenses.

Why not?
Each year, approximately 15,000 companies worldwide including over 50% of the Fortune 500 send Meridian their travelers’ receipts to recover the VAT on them. Since we are looking at all that paper for you, why not let Expenseflo audit those same receipts for accuracy and policy compliance?

World-leading VAT recovery process

Expenseflo

If your company does European travel, you would benefit from our world-leading VAT recovery service. The final stage of the Expenseflo complete travel management system is Meridian’s VAT recovery process. We help you maximize your local and foreign VAT claims.

In case you are not familiar with VAT recovery, here is a quick summary:

Why recover VAT?
It is estimated that companies could reduce their travel budgets by 4% if they recovered all applicable VAT.

What we do
Our experts check every receipt to identify all incurred local and foreign VAT.
Local VAT is reported back to the client and uploaded directly to the client’s ERP or other financial accounting package.

Foreign VAT is claimed from the relevant foreign authorities on behalf of the client and handled from submission to refund.

However, the process is not as easy as it sounds. The European Commission estimates that more than half of all major corporations fail to recover VAT incurred on foreign trips – and the figure for smaller businesses is even higher. It is estimated that €5 billion of potential refunds go unrecovered in the EU alone each year.
The reason many companies fail to recover their VAT is that it is time-consuming, highly technical and very easy to get wrong. VAT claims have to be presented to each country’s tax authorities in completely different ways with all original receipts present and correct. Each country has different rules about what VAT is recoverable, with plenty of details to trip you up, like whether a meal was for clients or for colleagues only.