New Survey Reveals Impact of COVID and Remote Work on Employees

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New Survey Reveals Impact of COVID and Remote Work on Employees

December 19th, 2020 Anant Kale Leave a comment

Organizations have made significant changes to enable working from home – but what has it meant for employees, and specifically their expense claims?

New data released by AppZen, the leading AI solution for modern finance teams, reveals how the pandemic and remote work have impacted company expense reports.

CEO Anant Kale provides insights into the findings and how companies should take note when it comes to how to handle employee expenses moving forward.

Why did AppZen do the survey and what were the primary findings?

We surveyed 1,000 workers of companies with at least 250 employees, to gain insight into how companies have adapted new expense policies and how those changes have impacted employees.

AppZen’s research shows the drastic shift from office to home working and the importance of clearly stated policies. 17% worked remotely prior to COVID, spiking to 83% during the pandemic.

We also found 75% of employees submitted work from home expenses during the pandemic versus 69% of employees who submitted expenses pre-COVID.

The findings also shed light on the importance of clear policies. 83% of employees who received an updated policy said their employer fairly compensates them for work from home-related expenses compared to only 29% of employees at companies where the policy was not updated due to COVID.

What are employees submitting expenses for?

Our findings show claims for internet usage at home rose 6% and 46% of companies are reimbursing their employees for internet during COVID.

While the pandemic has led to different kinds of expenses for workers, only 29% of employees feel they are fairly compensated for these new types of work from home expenses – such as childcare. And what’s more, only 26% say they feel uncomfortable about actually claiming these types of expenses.

How do gender and position play a role in expense reports and company reimbursements?

AppZen’s data shows differences among executives and non-executives in the expense report process and a gender divide.

Women are less likely (59%) than men (80%) to feel fairly reimbursed for work from home-related expenses.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the C-suite and company executives are more likely to have company credit cards and expense accounts while the majority of employees are reimbursed for work-related expenses paid for with their own money.

The COVID lockdown had a disproportionate effect on the shift to work from home on specific jobs and roles. 42% of business owners/business partners and 37% of sales managers worked from home prior to the COVID lockdown.

What can companies learn from this survey?

Our research has highlighted some of the challenges faced by organizations during the COVID pandemic. Most have resulted from a lack of action or, to be more precise, a lack of proactive steps to adapt to the changing situation. Here are 3 recommendations for organizations; to re-engage with their workforce, and to build a modern, repeatable structure for managing expenses and change moving forward.

Embrace work from home expenses

Expense types have changed. Employees are not claiming classic travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses – but are claiming new types of work from home-related expenses. These include one-off items such as office chairs, external monitors, and desks; subscription costs such as internet usage; and COVID-specific items like hand-sanitizer and face masks.

Organizations need to adapt their expense policies quickly to embrace this changing environment. The new policies need to be clear, fair and configured in a software system that can apply them the second they are activated.

Ongoing review and adaptation of policies

Crises come and go but what we have learned from COVID is that the ability to adapt and roll out new policies quickly and dynamically is the cornerstone of resiliency.

Best practice organizations will utilize their AI-enabled expense management platforms to automatically identify trends and changes in expense behavior – but all enterprises should create adaptive policy frameworks to ensure policies receive regular reviews.

With new policies in place, the organization should proactively communicate the changes and why the changes have been made. The first time such as significant change is made, the communication should be as visible and personal as possible – webinars or video meetings are Ideal in this situation.

But communication should not stop after the initial flurry of activity. Reinforcement of the new policy rules and regulations is an essential tool for ensuring maximum understanding and compliance.

Listen to employee concerns

We see several unexpected nuances in the research. From a perception that senior executives are getting preferential treatment, to women feeling less well compensated for work from home expenses, these nuances can only be truly understood by talking to staff.

CFOs understand the cost of perpetuating harmful industry and societal practices. This can cost the company valuable employees and put the company at risk of blowback. Through analytics and rapid adaptability, finance leaders are equipped to change these practices and therefore the overall health of the business.

In addition, organizations should create a regular cadence for feedback from staff. This ongoing dialogue should be at least quarterly and involve both the finance team and leaders from within the business. By actively eliciting details of employee concerns, the organization can continually develop and refine policies that fairly compensate employees for out-of-pocket expenses.

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For more information, recommendations, and a look at the full report, visit: https://www.appzen.com/blog/four-ways-for-finance-teams-to-avoid-employee-disengagement-during-covid/

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Expenses and Company Culture in the New Normal

October 20th, 2020 Anant Kale Leave a comment

A clearly documented corporate expense policy should eliminate any confusion about what employees can and cannot submit for reimbursement. In the context of the current pandemic, travel and meetings have substantially decreased, while other categories that support employees who are working from home (such as home internet and home office equipment) have increased. This shift gives companies the opportunity to create expense programs that go well beyond travel and expense, and shape the broader company culture moving forward.

Traditionally, companies have thought of their expense program as “travel and entertainment” programs, and indeed that was the bulk – but not all – of employee expenses. However, if your expense policy only focuses on how the company can save as much money as possible, it’s not enough. A corporate expense policy is an effective way to communicate how employers value their employees’ time and happiness.

When designed with a clear direction in mind, your expense policy can strengthen your organization’s values and avoid unnecessary anxiety and mistrust, resulting in higher employee job satisfaction and productivity.

The spectrum of expense policy enforcement

Expense policies at organizations can range from very strict to very lax. An overly-strict expense policy may require manager approval on each expense and refuse reimbursement on anything out of policy, no matter how trivial the dollar amount.

On the other hand, some expense policies are extremely lax. Netflix, the streaming giant, is an example of an expense policy written in a high-trust environment that reflects the company culture. Their company expense policy is only five words, “Act in Netflix’s best interests.” They expect their employees to spend the company money thoughtfully as if it were their own. After implementing this policy, Netflix found it actually saved money on employee expenses. Employees spent company money extremely carefully because of Netflix’s high-performance environment. Also, by letting employees book their own travel without using travel agencies, they found better deals on flights and hotels.

Although this worked well for Netflix, depending on your company culture, an unclear expense policy may result in bad behavior. Palantir, a Silicon Valley decacorn valued at $20B, came under scrutiny after reports of engineers expensing lavish meals at the office, including lobster tails and sashimi, dubbed by media outlets as “Palantir Entitlement Syndrome.” Under Armour was criticized for “being run like a frat house” after it was revealed that executives regularly expensed strip club visits, gambling, and limousines.

Design the expense policy that’s right for your company culture

A carefully crafted expense policy can help reinforce company values and commitment to employees, giving companies a competitive advantage. For example, Starbucks offers 100% tuition coverage for its employees, promising to reimburse any out-of-pocket tuition costs its employees accrue at the end of the semester. Genentech, the San Francisco-based biotechnology company, offers a range of perks ranging from tuition assistance to counseling and legal advice. Other companies reward their employees for spending money wisely – for example, if an employee usually selects the lowest airfare cost, they’ll be rewarded with a free upgrade on a future flight.

Expense policies can also be critical for attracting and retaining talent. LinkedIn, headquartered in highly competitive Silicon Valley, has very generous benefits, including education reimbursement, donation matching, student loan repayments, house cleaning, and personal trainers.

Employee perks in the “new normal”

These types of perks are even more critical to employee happiness in today’s environment, where the majority of office employees are working remotely for the foreseeable future. Google has already announced that it will allow employees to work from home through June 2021. Some tech companies such as Twitter and Square have announced that their employees can work from home permanently if they choose to.

This huge change in the way we work has forced companies to rethink company perks. There’s been a dramatic shift due to the pandemic, and most previous company policies are irrelevant now that employees are working from home. As an organization, how do you make sure your policy is resilient to the changing climate?

Companies that usually bolstered morale with happy hours and catered lunches now need to rethink the needs of their employees at home. Some companies are offering food delivery services to their employees via services like GrubHub and DoorDash to replace the catered meals in the office. Facebook gave a $1,000 stipend to each employee to use at their discretion. Slack is offering childcare reimbursement to employees with children, who are now juggling working full-time with their kids at home. Many companies are allowing their employees to expense keyboards, monitors, desks, chairs, and office equipment to build their home offices. Salesforce is giving an extra six weeks of paid vacation for employees with children, to acknowledge the struggle of having to work from home full time while also caring for their children.

Another important consideration is tracking these new types of expenses. With artificial intelligence solutions, companies have better visibility into where employees are spending. Is there a sudden, unexplained spike in Starbucks or food delivery expenses that doesn’t reflect your policy? AI can give you near real-time and up-to-date information on T&E trends so you can make accurate, timely decisions and update your policy where needed.

Conclusion

Setting clear expectations and guidelines around expenses is critical for fostering a healthy company culture. Expense policies around what can and cannot be expensed is reflective of company culture as a whole. Building an atmosphere of trust, transparency, and efficiency around expense reports helps contribute to a similar atmosphere throughout your organization. To learn more, check out our webinar or download our whitepaper.

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Anant Kale is Co-Founder and CEO of AppZen the leader in AI software for finance teams to automate manual finance processes, reduce expenditures, and gain real-time insights into their business spend trends.

Archives, Banking, Global Trade Daily

8 Ways your AP Process Leaks Spend – and How AI can Prevent it

May 17th, 2020 Anant Kale Leave a comment

Today’s companies put huge efforts into negotiating the best terms with their suppliers. Procurement teams regularly spend weeks or months going back and forth on contract terms and volume discounts to get the most bang for their buck.

Too often, these savings aren’t realized. Suppliers may ignore the negotiated terms when invoicing, and AP teams, faced with a deluge of invoices and limited time to get payments out the door, only sample select transactions and only do basic 2 or 3 way matching of volume and price. This inevitably means costly invoice problems fall through the cracks — from mismatched invoice and contract terms, to unapplied discounts, to completely bogus charges, and more.

Optimizing your AP process may seem like a big undertaking, but it’s much easier than it might seem, and worth the effort. According to The International Association of Contracts and Commercial Management (IACCM), companies that work to improve controls over invoice payment will see a return of more than 4 percent of invoice value.

Even if you’re ready to improve your AP process, one pesky question remains: How do you actually do it? Once upon a time, it would have been necessary to hire more people to check every transaction. But today, technology can provide a crucial and cost-effective assist for overstretched AP teams.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more common in business contexts. Nearly 90 percent of companies planned to increase AI spend in 2019, according to a Deloitte survey. However, the idea of actually using AI may feel a little unrealistic for some. While more and more corporations are automating AP processes, 30 percent of businesses still rely on manual invoice processing, according to The Institute of Finance and Management.

If you’ve already implemented other technologies in your workflow, AI can fit in seamlessly. AI-powered spend automation software integrates with existing expense management, invoice automation, contract management, and ERP systems to augment rather than disrupt your status quo.

8 common (and costly) invoice problems

Here are just a few of the problems AI-powered solutions can help your team avoid during the spend audit process:

1. Fraudulent invoices: When it comes to invoice fraud, if you can dream it, chances are fraudsters have tried it: From inflated invoices, to completely made-up charges, to shell companies, to vendor impersonation, and more.

Too often, the calls are coming from inside the house. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) found that occupational fraud (fraud committed by employees against employers) resulted in more than $7 billion in total losses in 2018. AI systems with a compliance component can spot risk factors commonly associated with fraud so your team has a chance to review these invoices manually before they’re paid out.

2. Duplicate invoices: Up to two percent of the average company’s invoices a duplicates, according to AuditNet. This may seem like a relatively small number, but for businesses doling out millions or billions on business activities, the figure is far from trivial.

Some vendors might double up charges on purpose, but often duplicate invoices are mistakes (after all, your vendors’ finance teams are overworked too). While some invoice automation systems try to catch these double charges, they usually only succeed if the invoices are labeled with the same number or have the exact same total — which isn’t always the case, particularly if there’s someone scheming behind the scenes.

3. Missing discounts: You fought hard for volume discounts, but how often are you checking invoices to make sure they’re applied? AI-based systems can often compare contract and invoice terms automatically to make sure you’re not missing out on early payment, loyalty, or quantity discounts. You’ll be notified of any missing discounts so you can remedy the situation before you pay. In the case of early payment discounts, this software notifies you that the invoice should be prioritized to get payment out in ample time.

4. Mismatched service levels: You signed up for the standard package, but you’re being charged for the premium offering. This type of mismatch is all too easy to overlook amid your monthly deluge of invoices.

The correct AI solution can compare agreed-upon service levels in your contract with every invoice you receive to make sure that this type of costly problem doesn’t fly under the radar. When it comes to physical items, it can ensure you receive all the items you’re being billed for before you pay, by double-checking shipping documents against inventory systems.

5. Double payments: Double payments can happen as a result of vendors submitting duplicate invoices, but the problem can also originate from your own team. Accounting systems hold up an invoice for all sorts of reasons, e.g., it requires further approval or it failed a match. In many cases, an employee might intervene to get the invoice paid manually (to meet a deadline or because they’re being pestered by a supplier or don’t want to damage a relationship). Meanwhile, the invoice is still in your system and when the hold is later cleared up, it’s processed and paid… again.

This is another one of those sources of spend leakage that most companies never become aware of. AI-powered systems constantly cross-check invoices and payments and flag any duplicate payments before you send them out, so the money never leaves the front door.

6. Exorbitant pricing: It can be difficult and time-consuming to keep track of the market rate for all the various services and products your business requires. AI can regularly compare your current costs to thousands of other sources to determine whether your invoices reflect the market rate for the goods or services provided. It can also flag individual invoices where your price exceeds the market rate.

Knowledge is power, and this information helps your business negotiate more effectively with existing suppliers or look to new ones if there’s an opportunity for cost savings without sacrificing quality.

7. Unsatisfactory work activity: When it comes to hiring contractors, there are situations when it’s particularly difficult to understand and assess whether they’re fulfilling their agreed-upon duties, like professional and IT services. AI-based tools can ingest nearly unlimited data to build a profile of what comprises satisfactory work activity — e.g., regular activity in Slack or over email — and highlight changes in the typical patterns. This helps you verify that you’re paying contractors fairly for the work product they’re providing.

8. Overpaying for software: Are you licensed for seven software seats, but only using three? It’s not uncommon for organizations to overpay for software licenses without ever realizing it. AI-based software keeps tabs on your organization’s software usage and compare it to the charges on your monthly invoices to help alert you to savings opportunities.

How AI can help

Implementing a best-in-class AI solution can support a consistent process and add an additional layer of scrutiny. These solutions make it possible to audit 100% of invoice spend prior to payment, automatically and near-instantaneously checking every invoice in your system for risk factors before they’re paid, and flagging the highest risk items for your team to review. This will help your team get ahead of problems and potential leakage, rather than try to recover it afterwards.

Below are the critical requirements for considering an AI solution for AP spend management:

1. Audit 100%, prepayment. Automatically audit 100% of invoices before reimbursement with AI.

2. Understand documents. Instantly scan every line of every invoice to understand charges and track the correct spend category.

3. Enrich with intelligence. Check online sources to identify better prices for similar goods and services.

4. Assess and refine risk. Flag suspicious addresses or billing changes to avoid fraud. Spot duplicate charges from other invoices, other invoice systems, or from expenses.

5. Streamline process. Integrate into your existing AP automation system to audit every invoice in real time to spot errors, waste, and fraud.

Conclusion

The best AI software can help your team regain control over your spend by checking every single transaction to identify high-risk invoices in your pipeline — saving time, streamlining processes, and ultimately reducing spend leakage.

If your AP team’s efforts to find problematic spend feels neverending, you’re not alone — but it doesn’t have to be that way. AI has changed the paradigm for modern finance teams, giving them greater visibility into their AP process and the time they need to address the highest risk issues. Not only can AI transform the way finance teams operate, it also saves them business money by spotting problems consistently and before invoices are paid. By implementing a leading AI solution, your team can audit 100% of spend, make sure that every invoice complies with its contract terms, and ensure you’re receiving every savings opportunity you’re entitled to — all while paying your bills on time.

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Anant Kale founded AppZen in 2012 to bring AI into back offices around the world. As CEO he is responsible for the product vision and execution of the company’s broad mission. Previously he was the VP of Applications at Fujitsu America from 2009-2012, responsible for product management, and delivery of Fujitsu’s applications and infrastructure for enterprise. He has 15+ years of experience in software development. He has an MBA and a BS in Finance and Engineering from Mumbai University.

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What Employees Are Expensing During the COVID-19 Outbreak

March 27th, 2020 Anant Kale Leave a comment

As the situation surrounding COVID-19 has progressed, more travel restrictions and social distancing practices are being implemented every day. More and more companies are implementing work-from-home policies to adapt to the changing situation.

We’ve been tracking the data since the beginning of the crisis to help your company ensure employee health and safety and make essential decisions around expenses.

Here are a few of the most significant changes we’ve seen.

COVID-19 expenses haven’t shown any sign of slowing down

In our last blog, we noted that COVID-19 expenses skyrocketed, and we expected them to fall as trip cancelations began to taper off. However, these expenses have shown no sign of slowing down. COVID–19–related expenses have doubled from the week ending March 7 to the week ending March 14, with trip cancelation and work-from-home expenses being the primary causes.

Number of claims

Submitted expenses vary by industry

Although changes to travel plans and cancelations still make up over half of all COVID-19-related expense claims overall, the trends change when you look at specific industries.

In the finance and software industries, half of the expenses are related to travel cancelations, and the other half are work-from-home expenses.

In the consumer goods, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical industries, masks still make up 15 to 20% of expenses but are otherwise in the low single digits in other industries.

The growth in expenses also varies by industry.

Work-from-home charges have increased dramatically; masks have fallen

Work from home expenses have grown the most, increasing 3.5x since last week. These charges are mainly related to “remote office setup” or “supplies for remote work,” and include accessories like printers, ink, headphones, and HDMI cables.

In our own workforce, we’ve noticed that everyone has a different set-up at home, ranging from at-home offices to sitting with their spouse at the dining room table or even sitting in bed with their laptops. It’s essential to employee productivity and ergonomics to help everyone make the best of whatever space they have.

Mask expenses have fallen – there was a peak in mid-February, then another dip, and a second peak at the end of February.

What does this data mean for my company’s expense policy?

We hope this data can help you consider the appropriate response to COVID-19 in your organization and how you can best support your employees. It’s clear from the above data that work-from-home expenses are increasingly common, and will likely continue to increase over the next few weeks as more companies continue to close their offices temporarily. We’ve also noticed that several companies have created specific expense types to track COVID-19 spending more closely. Others have created expense categories for their accounts payable departments to pay temporary workers more quickly in times of uncertainty.

If you’re unsure of what you should allow in your expense policy in response to the current climate, we’ve outlined some best practices on work-from-home expense policies from our peers and customers. In the meantime, we hope you and your company are taking the necessary precautions to ensure the health and safety of your employees during this unsettling time.

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Anant Kale is a CEO at AppZen, the world’s leading solution for automated expense report audits that leverages artificial intelligence to audit 100% of expense reports, invoices, and contacts in seconds.

Archives, Global Trade Daily, International Banking

8 Ways Your AP Process Leaks Spend – and How AI Can Prevent It

January 28th, 2020 Anant Kale Leave a comment

Optimizing your AP process may seem like a big undertaking, but it’s much easier than it might seem and worth the effort. According to The International Association of Contracts and Commercial Management (IACCM), companies that work to improve controls over invoice payment will see a return of more than 4 percent of invoice value.