A lot of time is spent on travel expense reporting – and the travel administration is also quite costly.
With Travel Clearing’s payment service, Swedbank’s 6,000 business travellers no longer have to manage as many receipts as before. And they spend much less time on expense reporting.
Thanks to Travel Clearing, all the traveller’s air and rail tickets, hotel and rental car bills end up on the same account, invoiced centrally to Swedbank each month. The traveller, the cost centre and even, when required, a project number, is clearly specified on the invoice – all automatically taken care of when the trip is booked.
– This payment solution is very smart. The people behind Travel Clearing must have been quite visionary to come up with it, says Evaldas Darskus, Group Travel Manager at Swedbank.
Today, Swedbank’s business travellers no longer have to sort out all receipts, or use their personal credit card for air, hotel, taxi and rental car expenses.
– We started to use Travel Clearing in September 2015. We have 6,000 business travellers using the payment service and it works perfectly. Before we chose Travel Clearing, we were looking for a solution for quite some time. We looked at different providers but didn’t find any that could offer a similar degree of functionality.
In the past, Swedbank’s employees had to pay for all travel expenses and then they had to wait to be reimbursed until the administration had sorted out all the paperwork. This is a process that takes time and costs money. And also – a lost receipt meant lost money for the employee.
– I know how it is when you travel extensively and are supposed to keep track of all receipts and expenses for tickets, rental cars and hotel rooms – you end up with a wallet filled with paper. With this payment solution, our employees no longer have to use their private or company card for these expenses. Instead we receive one invoice for all expenses at the end of the month, Evaldas Darskus explains.
The invoice is received electronically and every item is specified to ensure correct cost allocation. The response from our employees has been very positive. The payment service is smooth and the fact that you no longer have to take care of receipts and wait to be reimbursed for your expenses are really appreciated.
– With Travel Clearing we save both time and money. Take for instance a group of 16 persons travelling to an event.That’s a whole lot of receipts that must be administrated at the end of the trip. Maybe we don’t cut direct travel costs but we save in indirect costs by reducing administration time. At the same time we now have a very good overview over our travel spend, broken down to the very details if we want to.
Travel Clearing continuously extend the service to new travel suppliers. Recently the online booking channel SmartResenar came onboard, offering booking of all public transportation operators across Sweden. Swedbank’s target is to include all taxi expenses at the end of 2017 and regional buses and public transportation during 2018.
– I have only heard a few negative remarks from our employees. In some cases it is no longer possible to use loyalty programs to collect bonuses. And some smaller hotels are not that familiar with Travel Clearing’s payment service. In the Nordics and Baltics the service works perfectly but internationally there are regions with an underdeveloped payment infrastructure. As far as I am concerned I see this as a truly global solution, says Evaldas Darskus in closing.
