Finance Week explores expenses management in lunchtime webinar with Concur

According to Concur's European product marketing director Chris Juneau, travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses typically make up 10% of a company’s operating expenses, making them the second largest controllable expense in most businesses. Research from the Aberdeen Group found that 20% of employee T&E spending was out of policy, and four out of five organisations have seen T&E expenses increase over the last year by an average of 14%. Aberdeen also found that 54% of executives responsible for controlling expenses costs lacked sufficient T&E data.

This, in essence, is the underlying business case for expenses automation. The Finance Week seminar heard from Fergal O'Connor, the finance manager who oversaw the implementation of Concur's expenses management system at the Advanced Medical Optics ' Incorporated's shared services centre in Ireland.

Tax editor Nichola Ross Martin recently commented that now is a very good time to think about expenses management because of recent changes to HMRC's guidance on employee expenses.

"Expenses are the bane of everybody's life," she said. "The recent changes put the onus on employers to work out scale rates and to notify HMRC of changes in their policies, backed with evidence. HMRC is going to do more risk-based assessments, and will be asking employers about the procedures and policies they have in place for dealing with expense claims. Web-based systems are definitely worth investigating. They can make life easier for mobile employees and will make it easier to deal with HMRC checks."

The webinar is now available to download. To run this from your desktop right click on the link and select save as: Concur Expense Management Webinar