Minimizing Expense Reimbursement Headaches Caused by the Traveler, the Manager, and Fraud (Currently Unavailable)

Author: Mary Schaeffer

In AP Now’s recent Travel & Entertainment (T&E) survey, respondents identified their most pressing problems regarding employee expense report handling. Two clear factors emerged. First, the traditional expense reporting handling problems continue with no sign of improvement. Simultaneously, there is an emergence of new issues, sometimes related to new technology (think Uber). Only now are companies starting to identify these issues and create best practice policies around them.

What’s more, expense reimbursement fraud continues, unabated sometimes facilitated by less-than-stellar policies and procedures. In this session we’ll show you more than 15 different ways employees can and do play games with their expense reports along with ways to make sure you stop it. Most of the solutions are quite simple – as long as the organization utilizes best practices, which regrettably many don’t.

Publication Date: May 2019

Designed For
Accountants, controllers, accounting managers, auditors (internal and external), Treasurers, CFOs, CEOs, accounts payable professionals, payroll professionals, procure-to-pay professionals, and travel managers.

Topics Covered

• Expense reimbursement fraud
• Missing receipts
• Employees who submit their expense reports late
• Manager who approve non-complaint expenses
• Slow manager approvals
• Extravagant or inappropriate T&E expenses
• Employee misuse of company card
• Employees who submit the same expense twice
• Employees who do not use approved Vendors
• Unused airline tickets
• Loyalty reward points
• Use of and accounting for new services such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb etc.

Learning Objectives

• Recognize how to stop many expense reimbursement frauds
• Recognize how to implement best practices that will severely reduce other frauds
• Identify how to create a best practice policy to address use of Uber, Lyft etc.
• Recognize how to deduce the number of employees submitting expense reports late
• Design a policy to improve manager accountability for expense report approvals
• Build a policy that deals with employee misuse or abuse of the travel and entertainment policy
• Recognize how to best incentivize managers to approve in a more timely and appropriate manner
• Identify the T&E issue which occurs most frequently
• Identify methods to deal with employees who submit their expense report late
• Identify the last step in the process if approved vendors are not used
• Recognize companies with how many employees had the most instances of T&E fraud greater than $1,000
• Identify the main approaches for how employees play games with their expense reports
• Recognize what the highest percentage of respondents indicate they require receipts for, based on the AP Now Survey
• Recognize what percentage of employees comply with the T&E policy when there is lack of uniform enforcement
• Describe the amount receipts are only required for expenditures, based on IRS guidelines
• Recognize within how many days of being incurred requires the employee must account for expenses
• Identify a best practice for eliminating the problem of employees submitted the same expense twice
• Identify an appropriate response for dealing with a first-time occurrence of a multiple reimbursement request
• Identify the percentage of employees who believe that only some of approvers are really reviewing employee expenses before approving
• Recognize how the IRS has concluded that frequent flyer miles earned due to business travel
• Identify solutions for employees falsifying receipts

Level
Basic

Instructional Method
Self-Study

NASBA Field of Study
Accounting (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
None

Advance Preparation
None