3 Ways to Avoid Business Expense Fraud

Prevent business expense fraud through corporate cards. Expense fraud is one of the biggest pain points those industries face every day, every quarter, and every year. Around 48% of companies in India lack a system to detect business travel expense and expense management frauds as they do it manually, according to a report generated by an expense management company in India.

But there is no pain from now onwards because the virtual credit card is designed to prevent duplicate payments. Also, it allows you to monitor all direct and indirect expenses related to the business are charged. Additionally, corporate business cards are the one-stop solution to do seamless transactions without sharing your personal information across the platforms.

We will take more in-depth about the EnKash expense management software and how to apply for business credit card. But before that, let’s have a look at what the survey says about business expense fraud in India.

Statistics of Expense Fraud Faced by Businesses

The survey was conducted in India between July and September 2018 and found that nearly 55% of the companies stated their inability to retrieve past expense data as a key bottleneck in auditing and managing T&E expenses. Around 82% of companies covered in the survey are either partially or entirely lacking in making the whole T&E process automated despite it being the second-largest operational expense after payroll.

According to the ACFE Global Fraud Study, 5% of a typical organization's annual revenue is lost due to fraud and not having any smart expense management tool. T&E is just one kind of expense fraud that a business can bear. There are many kinds of expense frauds that trouble businesses- big or small.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has distinguished expense fraud into four categories

Mischaracterized Expenses

Claiming personal expenses under the garb of company expenses is the easiest yet the toughest business expense fraud to catch. It is almost impossible to identify an expense based solely on the submitted receipt so the chances of the claim getting denied is almost nil.

Fictitious Expenses

Employees get crafty with design skills and software to counterfeit expense receipts and submit them for reimbursement.

Overstated Expenses

Employees balloon up the expenses incurred on the business trip and get reimbursed for more than what they paid.

Multiple Reimbursements

Employees end up submitting the same receipt, again and again, to reclaim the amount, thus getting duplicate payments.

All these frauds are punishable offenses globally. There is no one-stop solution to 100% safeguard your company from being a victim of expense fraud. There are a few steps you can take to ensure that business expense fraud happens in the least and if it does, it is caught.

3 Best Ways To Deal With Business Expense Fraud And Duplicate Payment

Set stringent policies in place

Start by setting stringent policies in place for all kinds of expense reimbursements. An expense receipt should be submitted within 30-60 days, all purchases over a certain amount need to be furnished with an authentic purchase receipt, all spends should be properly categorized under entertainment, travel, meals, offenses, and so on.

Random audits

Maintain the fear of prosecution by randomly auditing the expenses of any employee and ensuring that they fall under the company guidelines. If not, do not shy away from punishing the act as that will set an example for fellow employees and they'll think twice before indulging in expense fraud themselves.

Provide your employees with the correct tools

Eliminate paper receipts to claim expenses as they are unreliable and easy to commit fraud. Enable your employees with the right set of tools and systems so they can follow policies easily. These methods are used widely, but they go only so far in decreasing the chances of business expense fraud.

Adopt EnKash expense management solutions

One of the best ways to manage expense fraud is by investing in virtual credit cards, also known as corporate cards, Purchase Card, or P-Card.

Corporate cards are a robust tool to handle all kinds of business expenses. Get a host of corporate cards, which can be controlled & managed by one of its kind platforms, for each kind of business expense you can imagine.

When expenses are routed through this corporate business card & expense approval system combinations, they are easy to track, reconcile, and report. These cards can help you manage all direct and indirect expenses related to the business. You can preload the virtual credit card or credit cards, depending on the expense that needs to be done.

The credit cards come with a flexible billing cycle so you can choose when to pay the bill, depending on your cash flow. There is no waitlist as you can get quickly onboarded with e-KYC upon furnishing authentic identity proofs. The future of Safe Digital Expense Management is here.

Benefits of using a corporate business card

The EnKash expense approval system is preloaded cards available in the form of virtual cards. These can be used digitally or offline as per convenience. There are many benefits of using expense management software and here are some of them:

• Virtual credit cards can be used to manage business travel expenses.
• Also, EnKash cards can be given to employees, teams, branches, or departments, as and when needed, as they can be generated from a digital platform.
• Corporate business cards can be customized via a platform with a pre-set expense limit, predefined merchants where the card can be used, the number of times the card can be swiped, and many more alterations.
• You can set custom end-usage and usage limits to eliminate the possibility of expense fraud entirely when using business travel expenses.
• You can activate or deactivate the purchase cards for ATM/ POS/ Online usage and restrict by merchant and usage category too.
• The beauty of using these corporate cards & platforms is that you can view the expenses in real time. This makes tracking expenses super easy and efficient.
• You can monitor any expense as it happens. And if it looks suspicious, you can block the corporate card right away and take appropriate action.
• This kind of spend management suite also ensures adherence to budgets and company spend policies.
• Corporate business cards come with in-built approvals, so you save precious time in purchasing as time is money.

Corporate expense cards and virtual cards are some of the safest bets to eliminate causes of expense fraud. Apart from this, maintaining employee faith is also instrumental in ensuring that they do not engage in such fraudulent activities. Invest in a strong spend management tool like EnKash to uplift your employees' morale and take your business to newer heights. Must Apply for a business credit card today to leverage your company with rewards and benefits.