Complete Expense Management

We all know that Expense Management Systems do a great

job of letting your travelling employees file their expenses

quickly and efficiently. However, gaining complete control

over your organisation’s travel expenses requires two

additional crucial tasks that an Expense Management System

(EMS) cannot handle:

1. Auditing paper expense receipts for expense claim

accuracy and travel policy compliance

2. Analysing those same receipts to maximise VAT recovery

By taking those two additional steps, which is what Meridian’s

Expenseflo UNIQUELY does, you can save up to another

6 per cent on your total travel bill.

So instead of looking like this:

complete, expense management which truly maximises your

savings looks like this:

Welcome to Expenseflo – Complete Expense Management.

Welcome to complete expense management

Making paper work

Expenseflo turns a bureaucratic nightmare into a dream

solution. Paper expense invoices are a nuisance for every

organisation, but you can’t get rid of them: many national

tax authorities still insist on seeing them.

Expenseflo makes that paper work. We take all the invoices off

your hands (we can even scan and archive them for you) and

then we extract value from the paper by using it to check your

employees’ expense claims as well as recover your VAT.

It means we aren’t just here to create process savings for your

organisation; we reduce your travel costs too.

Why finance directors like Expenseflo• Minimises expense-handling process costs

• Provides full reporting of expenses

• Maximises employee expense compliance

• Integrates seamlessly with card provider, ERP and

accounts payable systems

• Maximises VAT recovery – a business in which Meridian

is the world leader

Why travel managers like Expenseflo• Optimises compliance with preferred supplier policy

• Provides full spending data to aid supplier negotiations

• Removes the emotion from enforcing travel policy

• Integrates seamlessly with corporate travel

self-booking tools

Why business travellers like Expenseflo• Reduced time for filing expense claims

• Reduced time for approving and reimbursing expenses

• Greater clarity about which expenses are acceptable and

which aren’t (in our experience, most employees happily

follow the rules so long as they know what they are)

Expense management

system – Expenseflo EMS

(or 3rd party provider)

Expense receipts auditing – Expenseflo

EXPENSE AUDIT

VAT recovery – Expenseflo

VAT RECOVERY

Expense management

system

Why should we introduce an automated expense management system?

It is estimated that well under half of corporations have an

automated expense management system. If you are not one of

the converted yet, here’s why you should have one:

Reduces travel costs• Provides management information for supplier negotiation

• Boosts traveller compliance with preferred suppliers,

via pre-trip approval

Reduces process costs• Eliminates many manual, paper-based tasks, reducing

processing costs by up to 80%

Reduces employee and management time• Radically reduces time taken for business travellers to

complete expense claims and receive reimbursement

• Easy, one-click approval for line managers

Expenseflo EMS

Expense management

system – Expenseflo EMS (or third-party

provider)

Expense receipts

auditing – Expenseflo

EXPENSE AUDIT

VAT recovery – Expenseflo

VAT RECOVERY

Complete Expense Management

Okay, I’m convinced. We need an expense management system. But why should we choose Expenseflo EMS?

Expenseflo EMS excels in its simplicity of use and integration,

while being flexible enough to handle the complexities of

widely differing reporting requirements in each country.

Simplicity – ease of useThe tool could not be easier for travellers to complete their

expense claims or for line managers to approve it. In fact,

if there are no problems with the claim, approval takes a

single click.

Simplicity – ease of integrationExpense management systems don’t exist in a vacuum. They

have to integrate with your internal systems and workflow.

They also have to work smoothly with a range of third-party

systems, from online booking tools (as an independent

company, we do not favour one booking tool in preference

to all others) to ERPs.

Expenseflo EMS has been developed on software architecture

which ensures it integrates with other systems with ease.

Complexity – the German per diem testGermany probably has more complicated laws governing

expense claims – especially per diems – than any other

country. It is often said that if an expense management system

works there, it will work anywhere.

Expenseflo EMS passes that test. It works in Germany, it works

in the UK, it works in the USA and many other countries.

It was not originally designed for one market, then adapted

piecemeal in the hope it might be good enough elsewhere.

Expenseflo EMS has been developed as a true multinational

product – both multi-lingual and multi-currency.

Other benefits include:

• ASP-hosted – quick to implement

• Any time, any place access for travellers and approvers

• On-demand, real-time reporting

• Multi-lingual helpdesk support

• Full paper digitisation, indexing and e-archiving service

Your expense management system or ours?

Our expense management system, Expenseflo EMS, is

the best on the market. However, we recognise many

companies already have an expense management system

and don’t want to change.

That’s not a problem. We can plug any expense

management system (or more than one) of your choice

into Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT and Expenseflo VAT

RECOVERY so you can get the full benefit of complete

expense management.

Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT

One expense claim in eight is wrong

Our Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT experts can check every one of

your business travellers’ expense receipts against their expense

claims for accuracy and policy compliance.

We find that on average one expense claim in eight needs

amending. Some errors are accidental, some deliberate. Either

way, they cost your company big money.

Huge savings

The results speak for themselves. When one major European

manufacturer signed up for Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT,

our team found €3.5 million of savings in €63 million of

submitted expenses.

Why not?

Each year, approximately 15,000 companies worldwide send

Meridian their travellers’ receipts to recover the VAT on them.

Since we are looking at all that paper for you anyway, why

not let Expenseflo audit those same receipts for accuracy and

policy compliance?

Expense management

system – Expenseflo EMS(or third-party

provider)

Expense receipts

auditing – Expenseflo

EXPENSE AUDIT

VAT recovery – Expenseflo

VAT RECOVERY

Complete Expense Management

“Expenseflo has delivered savings of €1,700,000.00”Lawrence Vanderbijl, EMEA Disbursements Manager,

Global Financial Services – Sun Microsystems

How it works

1. What the traveller doesOne of the beauties of the system is the traveller has so little to

do. They submit their online expense report and then they put

all their receipts in a pre-addressed envelope, which is sent to

Meridian. That’s it.

2. Receipt matchingThe Expenseflo EXPENSE AUDIT team matches each line on

the expense report against the paper receipts. They verify

details including:

• Receipt amount – does it match the claim, e.g. has the

business traveller claimed €600 for a €60 receipt?

• Receipt type – has the expense been correctly categorised

as taxi, rail, hotel etc? This is very important for tax

authority declarations.

• Is there an original VAT receipt? – business travellers often

get this wrong, e.g. assuming an express check-out hotel

statement is a valid VAT receipt.

• Is the currency conversion accurate?

3. Checking claims against policy complianceOur expert auditors analyse each line of your business

travellers’ reports to spot any claims which breach policy.

Examples include:

• Exceeding limits for meals

• Incurring car rental refuelling charges

• Claiming both per diem and actual expenses

• Claiming for in-room movies and other non-allowable items

4. Following up invalid claimsIf there are no problems with the claim, payment is authorised

and the receipts passed on to the Expenseflo VAT RECOVERY

team. If there is a problem, we do one of three things

according to what you tell us you want:

a) Refuse ineligible lines in the claim

b) Send the query to the traveller, explaining which line

in the report is being queried and why it breaches

company policy

c) Send the query to the traveller’s line manager

5. Full multi-lingual supportIf travellers are at all unclear, they can call our unique

multi-lingual help desk to resolve the issue. Our staff speak

more than 20 languages between them.

6. Management information – including preferred supplier auditingWe send our client a full summary of spend total, claims

refused (and reasons) etc. Expenseflo can also help clients

audit their preferred supplier agreements. Are travellers

paying at hotel check-out the room rates negotiated by

their procurement team? Data from Expenseflo will tell

you the answer.

The final stage of the Expenseflo complete travel management

system is Meridian’s world-leading VAT recovery process. We

help you maximise your local and foreign VAT claims.

In case you aren’t familiar with VAT recovery, here’s a quick

summary:

Why recover VAT?

That’s a simple one. It is estimated that companies could

reduce their travel budgets by 4 per cent if they recovered all

applicable VAT.

What we do

Our experts check every receipt to identify all incurred local

and foreign VAT.

Local VAT is reported back to the client and uploaded directly

to the client’s ERP or other financial accounting package.

Foreign VAT is claimed from the relevant foreign authorities on

behalf of the client and handled from submission to refund.

However, it is not as easy as it sounds. That’s why the European

Commission reckons more than half of major corporations fail

to recover VAT incurred on foreign trips – and the figure for

smaller businesses is even higher. It’s estimated that €5 billion

of potential refunds go unrecovered in the EU alone each year.

The reason many companies fail to recover their VAT is that

it is time-consuming, highly technical and very easy to get

wrong. VAT claims have to be presented to each country’s

tax authorities in completely different ways with all original

receipts present and correct. Each country also has different

rules about what VAT is recoverable, with plenty of details

to trip you up, like whether a meal was for clients or for

colleagues only.

Expenseflo VAT RECOVERY

Expense management

system – Expenseflo EMS(or third-party

provider)

Expense receipts

auditing – Expenseflo

EXPENSE AUDIT

VAT recovery – Expenseflo

VAT RECOVERY

Complete Expense Management

Expertise and experience

We are the world leaders. Each year we handle more than

€300 million in claims and to date we have recovered

refunds of more than €2.5 billion for our clients.

“Engaging with Meridian has enabled Airbus to work with real experts on expense claim control and VAT recovery solutions.”

Marie-Laure Moncamp, Head of Travel Management –

Airbus in France

EMS AUDIT VAT RecoverySignificant cost and spend reduction

Reduced process costs • • •Reduced IT expenditure •Compliance

Consistent application of travel policy • •Accurate returns of VAT, reducing exposure to risk (penalties) and ensuring compliance with legislation •Enhanced employee experience

Ease of use: anywhere, anytime • Multi-lingual helpdesk • • Automated calculations, reducing human error • •Real-time status for submitted expenses • •Automatic split of business and private expenses • Speedy reimbursement • •Simpler, consistent process • • •Visibility and reporting

Highlights policy violations, facilitating focused reviews • •Assists with planning and forecasting • • •Business intelligence enhances supplier selection • • •VAT

Maximisation of VAT resulting in a positive impact on cash flow •Global expertise and reach • • •Well-established relationships with VAT authorities •Restyling invoices •

Summary of Expenseflo benefits

Meridian Tallaght Business Park, Tallaght, Dublin 24, Ireland.T +353 1 4590 500 F +353 1 4590 540 E expenseflo@meridianglobalservices.com

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