Providing corporate credit cards to employees has many financial and operational benefits, and it helps streamline expense management. Using corporate credit cards tends to reduce expense report fraud, but you’ll still need to keep an eye out for employees trying to beat the system.
Using the latest software and automation strategies makes it easier to audit travel expenses, according to an article on Pymnts.com. To keep employees honest and ensure that they adhere to the rules, watch for these five warning signs of expense fraud.
- Unexplained car mileage. Mileage reports alone are difficult to verify. To reduce the temptation to pad reports, require such concrete trip details as date, location and reason.
- Generous tipping. Travelers who routinely report large cash tips may be pocketing the money. Let’s say an employee submits a dinner receipt for $100 that includes a 10 percent gratuity but also turns in a separate claim for a 20 percent cash tip. Requiring the use of a corporate card can help prevent this kind of overstatement of an expense and make abuses easier to spot.
- Duplicate transactions and unusual amounts. For example, if your company only requires receipts for purchases over $50 and you see several charges for just under that amount, an employee may be splitting a transaction to conceal unauthorized use.
- Cash reimbursement requests. Providing significant cash reimbursement invites expense fraud, so it’s wise to require employees to use the corporate card for all but the smallest purchases. Most merchants today accept a wide variety of credit cards, so employees should rarely need to use cash.
- No airline receipt. By requiring a flight receipt, you can ensure a spouse hasn’t been traveling on the company’s dime.
We’d love to hear your ideas and feedback. How has your company used corporate cards to prevent fraud? Please leave a comment below.
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Our choice of Chrome River EXPENSE was made in part due to the very user-friendly interface, easy configurability, and the clear commitment to impactful customer service – all aspects in which Chrome River was the clear winner. While Chrome River is not as large as some of the other vendors we considered, we found that to be a benefit and our due diligence showed that it could support us as well as any large players in the space, along with a personalized level of customer care.
We are excited to be able to enforce much more stringent compliance to our expense guidelines and significantly enhance our expense reporting and analytics. By automating these processes, we will be able to free up AP time formerly spent on manual administrative tasks, and enhance the role by being much more strategic.
