The Modern Business Travel Payment Solution: Useful Tips for CFOs & Finance Teams
- Last updated: May 6, 2024
- Business payments, Travel and expense management
With companies like On achieving an outstanding 90 per cent automation rate and Buhler reporting a notable 4.7x return on investment (ROI), it is clear that modern business travel payment solutions are having a significant impact on the well-being of an enterprise. These achievements emphasise how crucial these solutions are in enhancing both operational efficiency and financial outcomes for companies.
By automating expense procedures and establishing effective controls, companies can reduce costs linked to manual expense handling, delayed reimbursements, and compliance challenges. A strong ROI demonstrates that investing in these solutions can quickly yield financial benefits through increased efficiency and cost reduction.
Beyond time and cost savings, automation plays a vital role in enhancing compliance. Automated expense tracking, reporting, and approval processes help ensure that expenses meet company guidelines and regulatory standards. This forward-thinking approach to compliance helps mitigate risks and potential financial sanctions. This article shines a light on how to find the perfect solution to establish and merge secure payment options for all occurring business travel needs.
What does a full-scale business travel payment solution look like?
There are several features to look out for when searching for a useful solution. Here is an overview of what we consider crucial:
Corporate cards for easy payment
Full control over spending limits
High security standards
Custom approval workflows
Real-time reporting
Integration in expense management solution for a holistic overview and data synchronisation
Let us elaborate on why these features are so important: A well-rounded business travel payment solution often comes with corporate cards (including virtual cards) specifically crafted for business expenses. These cards simplify payments during business trips, making it easy for employees to handle costs like hotel stays, meals, and transportation without dipping into their personal finances.
An essential aspect of a solid business travel payment solution is the ability to set precise spending limits for physical and virtual payments. Companies can establish spending boundaries for individual employees or departments, and even specify which types of merchants can be used.
A reliable payment solution will also feature robust security measures to safeguard against fraud and unauthorised spending. This could involve extra security layers, card detail encryption, and continuous fraud monitoring. Such measures offer assurance to both employees and employers that all transactions are safe and protected.
Customisable approval workflows empower companies to set up precise systems for approving expenses. These workflows can be adapted to fit a company’s hierarchy and approval chain. For instance, bigger expenses might need multiple approvals, while smaller ones could be greenlit automatically. This customisation ensures that expenses undergo the right level of scrutiny, preserving spending control and compliance.
Immediate reporting capabilities are vital for keeping tabs on expenses in real time and enabling finance teams and managers to track expenses instantly. This timely insight supports better decision-making, quick identification of any anomalies, and prompt adjustments to budgets or spending limits.
Seamless integration with an expense management platform offers a unified view of all business expenses, not just those related to travel. This integration ensures that data flows smoothly between the payment system and expense management tool. It results in a consolidated view of expenses, enhancing clarity, precision, and efficiency in financial management.
Sophisticated AI can handle routine tasks like categorising expenses, scanning receipts, and entering data. This automation cuts down on manual tasks, reduces errors, and accelerates the expense approval and reporting process. Moreover, AI can offer insights and suggestions based on spending behaviours and trends, assisting companies in making well-informed financial choices.
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Why do you actually need to have a business travel payment solution?
In short: A useful corporate travel payment solution nowadays supports automation, gives you control, and increases efficiency. It makes handling expenses easier, lets employees focus on their work trips, and helps companies save time and money. As companies further move towards digital ways of working, automating travel expense handling becomes more than just useful—it is essential. This kind of system makes payments and expense reporting smoother and less prone to mistakes, cutting down on manual work.
Your company can:
set limits on spending
choose which types of merchants or service providers can be used and apply other control mechanisms
track and document varying VAT for accurate reclaiming
smoothen expense reports for employees and the finance team
Some travel costs, like flights or hotels booked through a company system, might come as invoices rather than just reimbursements. The payment system can manage these invoices smoothly, making sure vendors get paid on time and employees get reimbursed quickly.
Overall, using a business travel payment system saves both time and money. By doing things automatically, cutting errors, and reclaiming VAT, companies can significantly slash their travel expenses. With everything syncing automatically and fewer manual inputs, there is less chance of making mistakes in expense reports. This means the company’s financial records stay accurate, and there is less need to fix errors.
Yokoy drives financial innovation
Yokoy is trusted by companies all over the world. On’s high automation rate, for example, is a testament to the value of integrating up-to-date payment solutions in business processes. The company is using Yokoy’s automation solution to cut down on repetitive tasks, allowing employees to concentrate on more important, strategic work. To streamline workflows not only saves time but also minimises errors, ensuring that expense management is more accurate and reliable.
On processes 10k expenses monthly with Yokoy
“Yokoy has played a pivotal role in revolutionizing our expense management as we experience rapid global growth. The automation rate of nearly 90% is impressive, allowing us to handle a vast number of expenses with ease.”
Christoph Kühne, Group Finance, On
4.7x ROI with Yokoy
Bühler Group selected Yokoy’s spend management suite for its ability to swiftly adapt to the company’s expanding needs and global reach. Not only is it user-friendly for initial implementation, but it also offers easy scalability to additional entities. Yokoy’s suite leverages artificial intelligence and OCR technology to accurately interpret and validate expense documents, irrespective of language or currency differences.
The suite’s flexible API ensures seamless integration with Bühler’s ERP systems. A key factor in their decision-making process was the suite’s compatibility for use in China, meeting another important criterion for the company.
And when BAWAG sought a top-notch spend management solution, they had a clear set of requirements to guide their search. After a thorough evaluation, they opted for Yokoy’s AI-driven expense management solution. This choice promised not just automation but also a smoother, more efficient financial workflow for BAWAG.
While software implementations can often be daunting, the BAWAG team found Yokoy’s customer success team to be exceptionally supportive. They made concerted efforts to keep everyone involved informed, engaged, and well-supported throughout the implementation journey.
BAWAG Group automates spend management with Yokoy
“Yokoy stands out as a visionary company that offers a truly unique solution. Their customer success team has played a pivotal role in automating our spend management processes.”
Enver Sirucic, CFO BAWAG Group
Yokoy is your AI-driven zero-touch solution for business travel payment
Yokoy is the solution for your expense management – simplifying, automating and increasing the efficiency of your business travel payment. With our three products Yokoy Pay, Yokoy Expense and Yokoy Invoice, we save you money, conserve your human resources and increase the satisfaction of your employees. Managing business travel finances has never been easier.
Yokoy Pay
Yokoy Pay offers features designed to make expense tracking, approval, and reimbursement a breeze – including physical cards and or providing a contactless virtual card number for every team member who needs it. This way, employees can effortlessly handle payments while travelling, reducing reliance on manual processes for managing receipts and invoices. Through its automation features, Yokoy Pay ensures prompt reimbursements and offers real-time insights into travel expenditures coming from credit cards (Mastercard, Visa, American Express) and other payment methods, empowering companies with better financial oversight.
Yokoy Expense
Yokoy Expense is a comprehensive expense management solution focused on easing the complexities of travel management. Its user-friendly interface enables employees to easily log expenses related to flights, hotels, or meals. Equipped with features like automated receipt scanning, categorisation, and streamlined approval processes, Yokoy Expense reduces the likelihood of errors and speeds up expense reporting. This approach not only saves time for employees but also ensures the meticulous and compliant handling of business travel expenses for finance teams.
Yokoy Invoice
Yokoy Invoice is a robust tool aimed at simplifying the invoicing aspects of business travel. It automates the process of invoice creation, submission, and approval, cutting down on manual data input and administrative tasks that go along with travel booking. Supporting multiple currencies and tax structures, Yokoy Invoice facilitates the smooth management of international financial transactions. With its real-time tracking and notification features, companies can guarantee timely payments while upholding transparency on cash flow and adherence to your enterprise’s travel policy.
White paper
The Future of Travel and Expense Management
After massive slumps caused by the pandemic, business travel is finally recovering. However, macroeconomic challenges are slowing the catch-up effect, forcing finance and travel leaders to cut costs by limiting business trips.
How can companies adapt?
Next steps
With the highlighted features from Yokoy, you can transform your business travel payment immediately – so why not save time, reduce errors and allow team members to focus on the important aspects of their work?
Begin by pinpointing your organisation’s specific requirements concerning business travel payments. This could include goals such as cutting costs, boosting compliance measures, or streamlining the reimbursement process. Set clear objectives for what you hope to achieve with this new system.
Next, delve into researching and evaluating various travel payment solutions available on the market. Pay close attention to factors like how well they can integrate with your existing systems, ease of use, the level of customer support offered, and their ability to scale. Seek out feedback from businesses of a similar size within your industry to get insights into their experiences and gather recommendations.
Once you have gathered sufficient information, proceed to choose a solution. Make your selection based on the features of the product, its cost-effectiveness, and the quality of customer support provided. It is crucial that the solution you choose not only meets your current business requirements but is also capable of adapting to future needs.
Simplify your spend management
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