Accounting Firms Are Transforming T&E for Their Customers. Here’s How

Quick question for accounting firms: How long does it take your clients to create and submit expense reports? Now, what if you could make this traditionally time-consuming process disappear?

And why stop there? With one change, you could radically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your customers’ entire travel and expense programs, helping to spur them to greater growth and profitability.

Here’s the secret.

The Root of the Problem

Let’s back up. Travel is often one of a company’s biggest line items, and it’s certainly one of the most nuanced. And while the resulting expense reports are onerous and unpopular, the reason they exist begins further upstream.

That’s because different departments and roles often need different rules for spending company money — rules that often require exceptions. These complications are why many travel and expense policies aren’t up to the task (if they exist at all).

And when employees don’t have T&E policies to follow — or don’t know what those policies are — they book travel and spend money blindly. So, after travelers diligently collect receipts and painstakingly assemble expense reports, finance teams have to review each charge — manually — and possibly send it back to the employee for explanations and further context.

Now, multiply that process by the number of expense reports each of your customers generates each week, each month, each year — especially customers with many frequent travelers.

That’s not the only practice dragging down companies’ profits. Another is per diems, which some companies provide without guardrails. What can happen? Simple: Employees who spend less than the full amount may simply keep the rest, especially if there’s no policy enforcement (or policy at all). Here, too, the multiplier effect can turn an innocent practice into an intrinsic problem for finance teams.

And speaking of finance teams, what are they doing throughout the employee travel experience? They’re waiting. Waiting for expense reports to roll in so they can see — finally and (sometimes way) after the fact — what’s been spent.

Your customers simply can’t afford to do business this way anymore. But they may not even know there’s another option. (Spoiler alert: there is.)

Making Change

We created the Navan Partner Console so accounting firms can offer their customers the streamlining, money-saving benefits of Navan’s innovative expense management solution.

That process begins with policies. Using Navan, your clients can easily create policies as broad or granular as necessary. Per department? Per role? Per employee? No problem. Those policies are easy to change — essential during fast-evolving times (which is always) — and easy to tie to a GL code, so you can roll them out seamlessly to each of your clients.

The result: When employees travel and spend within policy, expenses no longer have to be manually reviewed — submitted receipts are captured in real time and automatically reconciled, which could save your accounting firm many days of work. It’s also the secret behind the magic trick of making those onerous traditional expense reports disappear.

Something else that disappears? A finance team’s waiting game for the month’s end. Navan offers real-time visibility into spend — a true game-changer for accounting firms. And it’s not visibility you have to dig for: A personalized, easily accessible client and staff management dashboard offers a centralized view of all clients.

Here’s the best part: Your clients don’t have to change their current corporate card to take advantage of these benefits. Through the magic of Navan Connect — a technology no one thought was even possible until Navan created it — customers can get all the benefits of Navan’s innovative expense management platform with their current corporate card solution.

The Bottom Line

What’s the end result? Policies that are easy to create and easily enforceable. No expense reports. Real-time visibility. Automatic reconciliation.

For your clients with frequent travelers — lawyers, consultants, sales teams — expense management becomes almost effortless. Plus, you can help your customers save both hard dollars and soft costs through better spend visibility and control.

With the Navan Partner Console, you’ll find an innovative, scalable game-changer you can put to work for your firm and your customers — and finally say goodbye to business travel expense reports.

See how the Navan Partner Console is changing the game for accounting firms and their clients!