WebExpenses blog

Tightening the belt on travel and entertainment

When the going gets tough, the tough tighten up on travel and entertainment spending.

This is what we’re hearing from customers and the theme has filtered down to the mainstream media, as reflected by this article in the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/05/cccity105.xml

And it makes sense. Cost savings in T&E are significantly less painful to achieve than the alternative of cutting staff. 

What’s more, a slight tightening in T&E processes and policy sends a message. In other words, a focus on one set of costs (T&E) will likely result in a positive spillover effect on broader costs within the organisation. Reducing costs is contagious.

Here’s our advice for WebExpenses users:

Introduce a couple of policy changes under the ‘View Policy’ link on each user’s Welcome page:

• Focus on an area that will make a difference. In the article above, Deutsche Bank determined that business lunches should cost no more than £51 a head while Goldman Sachs has pushed back an hour, to 10pm, the time at which it offers free meals and taxis home.

Encourage self-policing by letting staff know that the reports functionality of WebExpenses is used by senior staff. For example, you could:

• Ask the MD/CEO to send a message saying “Times are tough and we all need to contribute to cost saving efforts. Travel and entertainment the ares in which we’re looking to save costs. So use your common sense, and be aware that I’ll be logging in to WebExpenses regularly so that I can monitor the savings that we’re making in that area”.

MPs' expenses and expenses policy best practice

In case you’ve missed it, the papers have been full of descriptions of the wonderfully elaborate expenses scam undertaken by our esteemed representatives in government.

Our MPs are not required to submit receipts, would appear to be provided with unlimited taxi fares for spouses and are able to spend up to £23,000 per year on items from the infamous ‘John Lewis’ list, that allows you to stock up on all from coffee makers, flat screen TVs and air conditioning to full kitchen and bathroom refits, all funded at the taxpayer’s expense. 

It’s so far from what we and our customers consider ‘best practice’ that we would be laughing if we weren’t as outraged as the rest of the populace.

So it’s timely to raise the question: What is expenses policy best practice?

The short answer is that there’s no single model. The policy that is appropriate for your organisation depends on your organisational culture:

• Do you believe in rigid rules or broad guidelines?
• Do you want to be intimidating or easy going in the tone that you take with staff?

To help you define expenses policy ‘best practice’ as it relates to your organisation, we’ve written a White Paper (Title: Does your Expenses Policy Measure Up?) that includes a Expenses Policy Template.

Download it here: http://www.webexpenses.com/downloads/Expenses_Policy_Guide_and_Template.doc

Partner offer - free product

To celebrate our winning the Sage Developer of the Year Award we’ve made a unique offer to Sage Business Partners and Accountants:

FREE use of our award-winning web-based expenses software for up to 20 users.

We’ve extended the offer out of the Sage universe to other qualified partners: If you’re an accountant, supplier of accounting, ERP or payroll solutions, or if you’re offering accounting services to clients, you also qualify.

There’s no catch: This is a perfect opportunity to save costs, make your staff happy and learn about our solutions first hand.

All that you need do is visit our Partners page www.WebExpenses.com/partners.htm to download the set-up spreadsheet, complete it and return it to us by email at partners@webexpenses.com. 

Customise WebExpenses with Instant Eyedropper

If you’re set up as an Administrator, it’s easy to change the look and feel of WebExpenses for your users.

You can add your corporate logo and change field labels. It’s also easy to change the colours by amending the hex colours.

There’s a great little free tool that we recommend that lets you use your corporate colours from your corporate website. It’s called Instant Eyedropper and you can download it here: http://instant-eyedropper.com/

Once you’ve downloaded it, the process is easy: 

1. Drag the Instant Eyedropper icon over your corporate website to choose the colour you wish to use.
2. Click on Customisation and Screens in WebExpenses.
3. Paste the new colour to Menu Background Colour and click Save.

Sage Developer of the Year 2007

Sage users are a key audience for us. For example, we’ve gone the extra mile to develop interfaces that allow users of Sage 50, Sage Line 100, Sage MMS/200 or Sage 500/1000 to post expenses data to their accounting software at the click of a button.

Accordingly, we’re delighted that our efforts over a number of years have now been recognised - Sage have announced that we are their Developer of the Year for 2007.

Thanks Sage!

New feature - "Duty of Care"

A number of our customers have a “duty of care” to ensure that staff periodically confirm that they are in compliance with policy or legal requirements.

We can accommodate these requirements by allowing customised messages to be added to the ‘Submit Claim’ screen. 

Here an example:

By submitting this expense claim, I certify that unless otherwise stated in the Notes box below:

• Any vehicle used for business purposes is owned by me.
• Any vehicle used for business purposes is covered by business use insurance.
• Any vehicle used for business purposes has current tax, MOT and is roadworthy.
• If I drive on company business that I have a valid driving license.
• That no meals have been provided free of charge for which meal subsistence is being claimed.

Do you have a “duty of care” to ensure that your staff remain properly insured, properly licensed or similar? Let us know, and we’ll incorporate this into your configuration.

Multi-entity: quick and easy

One of our multi-entity customers, an internet pioneer with offices across the globe, came to us today with a request to add an additional entity ’and we need it yesterday’. The request came in at 3 pm. The job was done by 5 pm.

Well done to the team for delivering so quickly - it’s great to know that ‘out-of-the-box’ can be achieved.

For those not familiar, our multi-entity functionality lets you set up different ‘entities’ under a single umbrella configuration, allowing complex scenarios to be addressed quickly and easily. If you’d like to read more, visit http://www.webexpenses.com/multientity.htm.

New feature - multiple approver levels

A new feature, fresh from testing: Multiple approver levels can now be set for each user.

We’ll use this feature as the platform to address the specific needs of customers, such as routing expense claims based on the value of the claim, the approval limit of the approver and the client/project codes in the claim.

Feature tweaks - adapting features to customer needs