How to Monitor Travel and Entertainment Expenses With Exception Reports and Analytics

Travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses are a common area of concern for businesses, as they tend to involve disjointed processes across multiple systems.

A high degree of fraud can occur within this area, which makes it an excellent starting point for continuous process monitoring. Since its data is typically cleaner and less confusing than other areas, T&E can yield a lot of value through the analysis of large data dumps.

Here, we’ll discuss several T&E expense exception reports and analytics that businesses can use to monitor their T&E expenses.

12 Types of T&E Exception Reports and Analytics

• Outlier by Category: Compares the travel and entertainment expenses of an individual against the company average for each category of expenses, such as airfare, lodging, meals and transportation. It helps identify any outliers or anomalies that may require further investigation.
• Miscellaneous Expenses: Checks for any miscellaneous or unspecified expenses to help identify potentially fraudulent or non-compliant expenses.
• Personal Expenses: Checks for any expenses that are personal in nature, such as gifts, clothing or personal meals. This can help identify any potential misuse of company funds.
• Suspicious Keyword Analysis: Checks for high-risk or suspicious keywords, such as “cash,” “gift” or “bribe.”
• Duplicate Expenses: Identifies expenses that have been submitted more than once.
• Split Expenses: Checks for any expenses that have been split between multiple reports or categories, potentially with the aim of circumventing transaction limits.
• Cash-to-Card Ratio: Checks the ratio of cash expenses to card expenses, and can identify employees who only submit cash expenses despite having a corporate card.
• Even or Round Dollar Expenses: Checks for any expenses that are even- or round-dollar amounts, which can potentially indicate fraud or non-compliance.
• High-Dollar Expenses: Identifies any expenses that are unusually high compared to the company average or industry standards.
• Weekend/Holiday Expenses: Identifies expenses that were incurred on a weekend or holiday, which could potentially indicate misuse of company funds or non-compliance with company policies.
• No-Receipt Expenses: No-receipt reports identify expenses that have been submitted without a receipt.
• Mileage & Rental Same-Expense Report: Helps to identify any expenses that have both mileage and rental car expenses on the same report. A second analytic can also be created to identify mileage expenses that overlap.