Business travel expense settlement in SAP

Direct interaction with counterparties, clients, or business partners remains an essential part of doing business – both domestically and internationally. The approval of business trips by managers, their organization, and settlement of their expenses are processes carried out in virtually every company. Business trip planning and expense settlement are often treated as secondary, administrative processes that rarely receive much attention. But is that really justified?

Let’s take time into account. The employee gathers all invoices and tickets (often required in paper form by an accounting department) in order to settle the business travel expenses. If the employee doesn’t do this regularly, mistakes are easy to make – they might not know how to settle fuel expenses, whether they’re entitled to a flat-rate allowance, how much that is, or what the mileage reimbursement rate should be. Beforehand, the employee must seek approval from their manager, who is responsible for verifying that the planned travel costs remain within the company’s accepted budget threshold. And this results in more minutes lost.

Then comes the accounting step: verifying expenses, correcting errors, allocating costs to the right tasks or projects – more time again. If there are dozens or even hundreds of business trips in a company each month (which is not uncommon even in mid-sized organizations), this can quickly add up to dozens of hours of work.

Another key aspect is cost control and process organization – without a system framework in place, the company loses not only time but also money. It is more difficult to monitor expenses, enforce spending limits, and prevent duplicate or unauthorized costs. We don’t have easy access to business travel expense monitoring, and without process analytics, any attempt to rationalize expenses becomes extremely difficult.

Moreover, let’s not ignore the environmental (and financial) aspect. In many companies, travel expense settlement still requires printouts of hotel invoices, train or flight tickets, even though employees usually receive them in digital form (via email or applications). With many business trips requiring expense settlement, this adds up to quite a few reams of paper, which could easily be saved.

And finally – the interest and satisfaction of employees. No one likes paying out of pocket for flights and hotels and then waiting weeks for reimbursement.

Each of the points mentioned above can be translated into measurable savings. The larger the company and the greater the number of domestic and international business trips, the more important and time- and cost-intensive this topic becomes.

In a modern company, in the age of automation, the process of business travel planning and expense settling requires tools that not only eliminate paper-based travel requests, but also enable electronic settlement processing from the trip planning to settlement of trip expenses and allocation of costs to the appropriate accounts (cost centers related to employees, projects, tasks, etc.). The solution is to complement the financial and accounting system with a modern employee self-service scenario for travel expense settlement.

In the SAP environment, we have access to various tools that support the process of travel planning and expense settlement: SAP Travel Management and SAP Concur. An option worth considering is also the integration of third-party tools with the company’s integrated system (SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA). In this area, we particularly recommend the solution from All for One: the Business Trips module in BeeOffice.

BeeOffice is a platform that enables the implementation of various employee self-service scenarios. Among the various features that digitalize handling of multiple matters between employees, their managers, and departments such as HR, Finance, Administration, and IT, the following are particularly noteworthy in the context of business travel expense settlement: Business Trips, as well as Requisitions (used to verify the justification of employee expenses) and Fuel Expense Settlement (for both private and company vehicles).

The advantage of BeeOffice is that the platform can be easily integrated with finance and controlling areas, as well as with HR administration and payroll tools. Moreover, the integration does not require any intervention in the SAP system.

The presented tools for planning and settling business travel expenses in SAP offer a range of options for digitalizing this process. Which one should you choose? There is no single right answer to that question. SAP Concur is a solution preferred by large global corporations, with a large number of business trips, numerous partners cooperating in their organization, and strong pressure for global optimization.

However, in cases where the process is not managed centrally and the company still seeks to digitalize it, BeeOffice can be a strong alternative that does not require any intervention in the core system.

When rethinking the company’s needs and building a concept of the travel expense settlement process, it is worth leveraging the experience of All for One Poland. Support in choosing the optimal tool and service model for this process will help the company save time and more quickly achieve the benefits listed below.

The main advantages of managing business trips in the SAP system include:

• automation of the travel planning and expense settlement process,
• planning and cost management in a single tool (bookings, cost approvals),
• integration with other system areas (e.g., finance, HR, reporting) as well as providers’ tools (e.g., travel agencies),
• the ability to allocate costs to specific accounts (employee cost centers, assignment to projects, tasks, etc.),
• guaranteed compliance with legal regulations and valid per diem rates and flat-rate allowances, as well as with the organization’s business travel policy and negotiated agreements with service providers;
• integrated expense data, available in consolidated reports and analyses,
• reduction of indirect costs through process and workflow automation, as well as decreased administrative workload related to travel expense settlement.

SAP Travel Management optimizes the entire business travel management cycle – from travel requests and approvals through planning and online booking to travel expense management, compliance with company travel policies and analysis.

The solution enables users to submit travel requests, plan and book trips, create expense reports, and transfer cost data to other SAP areas (such as finance and accounting, HR tools (SAP HCM, SuccessFactors), and reporting tools.

Key functionalities:

• Travel planning and pre-trip approval: flight, hotel, car rental, and train ticket bookings; approval workflows for trips and travel costs based on approval paths; integration with travel agencies, hotel chains, airlines, etc.
• Travel expense management: features that accelerate the entry and processing of travel expense reports, streamline posting and reimbursement of costs; up-to-date domestic and international per diems and flat-rate allowances; corporate travel expense settlement policies.
• Travel management reporting: support for decision-making and the implementation of travel management strategies; preconfigured reports (consolidation of data to support negotiations with service providers).

A solution designed for large organizations and corporate groups with a high number of business trips. It is a comprehensive, cloud-based platform that optimizes business travel management and enables cost reduction.

Concur Travel is a functionality that supports travel planning, hotel and transportation bookings, and enables ongoing monitoring of changes to travel routes and itineraries. Available online, through an intuitive mobile application. It provides integrated visibility into business travel expenses and budget usage, as well as a tool for maintaining internal and external business travel regulations.

Concur Expense provides a comprehensive view of all business travel-related expenses. It simplifies financial management and supports the optimization of budget usage. These are tools for forecasting and making strategic business decisions. Expense reports can be created, submitted, and approved from any device, anywhere: the office, home, or on the go.

Concur Invoice enables integration with providers’ systems and automates the settlement process (including invoices and advances). It helps reduce or even eliminate paper usage, minimizes manual effort, reduces errors, and saves time. The solution also allows for monitoring and controlling deadlines of payments to service providers.

Business Trips in BeeOffice is a single form for all: the employee enters receipts for billing, their manager approves the trips and expenses, and the accounting department settles and reimburses the costs.

Based on the start and end times of the trip, meals, accommodation and travel costs, etc., and taking into account the current per diem rates for each country, the application calculates the amount of reimbursement for the employee.

Scans or photos of receipts can be added as attachments to the form, also via the mobile application.

Depending on the company’s requirements, business trip costs can also be split across different teams or projects.

BeeOffice can be integrated with SAP systems according to various scenarios. Data can be directly retrieved from SAP (e.g., employee data) and transferred to SAP (e.g., settlement data). Another option is to use a bot (with RPA, Robotic Process Automation tools). The advantage of the latter model is that it does not require building interfaces or making any changes to the SAP configuration.

Integration with SAP simplifies travel expense posting, makes it easier to reimburse employees, and provides broader controlling and reporting capabilities related to this process.