Crude Oil Prices Posied to Rise and Affect Air Travel...Again

Regarding crude oil prices, writer Joe Brancatelli reminds us of the eery similarities, which faced the economy in 2008 as compared to what we are currently dealing with thus far in 2012.  With surging oil prices, Brancatelli has no doubt business travel will be affected by the price hikes and that many airlines will likely suffer as a result.  


Check out his full article at Portfolio.com: http://www.portfolio.com/business-travel/2012/02/22/surging-oil-prices-to-cause-price-pain-at-airports

The Changing Business Travel Environment

Check out this latest article from Flightglobal:

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/adapting-to-the-changing-relationships-between-tmcs-gdss-and-coprorate-buyers-368515/

Regardless of how a company goes about booking their travel, an expense management solution such as ExpenseAnywhere, can significantly benefit how that company organizes and reconciles their travel expenses.  Improving efficiency while saving time and money.

Europe's Economy Could Affect U.S. Business Travel

With the world's economy becoming more interdependent than ever before, changes in the EU could cause significant side affects on the U.S.  Tim Devaney of the The Washington Times interviews senior members of the GBTA (Global Business Travel Association) to gather their opinion as to how a European crisis would affect business travel and related industries in the U.S.  To read more, check out the article here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/16/european-woes-would-hurt-us-travel-industry/

Great Advice For Frequent Business Travelers

Amanda Cook of The Next Women Business Magazine provides great tips to all business travelers on how to  ease the traveling process by making it a healthier and more stress free experience.  You can check out her helpful tips and tricks here: http://www.thenextwomen.com/2012/02/14/five-key-tips-healthy-business-travel

What do you do to relax on a business trip? Let us know!

Chicago Airport, Next on TSA PreCheck Program

The Chicago Tribune recently announced that O'Hare airport will soon be added to the growing list of airports that will be able to offer expedited security screenings for certain passengers that are part of the TSA's trusted-traveler program.  To read more on the story, check it out here:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0209-tsa-checks-20120209,0,3692910.story

ExpenseAnywhere Announces Ghost Card Module to Help Companies Reconcile Centrally Billed Travel and Expense Accounts

ExpenseAnywhere, a market leader in integrated travel and expense management solutions, announced the release of their Ghost Card Module to empower clients to track, allocate, reconcile and manage the travel-related expenses charged to their centrally billed accounts or “ghost cards.”  With this functionality, ExpenseAnywhere is bringing total automation and transparency to the management of ghost card spending, which is an otherwise daunting and arduous task for most accounts payable professionals. 

More and more businesses are utilizing centrally billed accounts or ghost cards to pay for their employees’ and visitors’ travel expenses. However, managing such expenses is a dreaded and time consuming task for accounting departments and has become a serious concern for many corporate CFOs.  Typically, ghost cards have simplified the purchasing of travel inventory; however, managing such expenses has become increasingly difficult.  To address this market need, and the requirement of its growing roster of clients utilizing centrally billed accounts for travel, ExpenseAnywhere added this functionality to their already robust and easy-to-use web-based travel and expense solution. The ghost card functionality effectively automates the flow of information and automatically assigns expenses to the appropriate users or their aliases to seamlessly achieve 100% allocation and reconciliation of the data in a few clicks.

The Ghost Card Module seamlessly integrates with ExpenseAnywhere’s Intelligent Reporting feature, which automatically matches booked itinerary data with credit card data, irrespective of whether it is a corporate card, a ghost card or a personal card, to create an Intelligent Expense Report, ready for submission. 

“With the addition of the Ghost Card Module to our ExpenseAnywhere solution, our clients can feel assured that their TMC accounts are fully reconciled and properly allocated instantly, easily and efficiently. Most companies have limited visibility into such spending and their accounting departments are faced with a daunting task of reconciling their ghost card charges. With our ghost card functionality, they achieve complete transparency and control on such spending,” says Ashok Dhar, CEO of ExpenseAnywhere.

With this latest announcement of their Ghost Card Module, ExpenseAnywhere continues to deliver robust solutions that add value and provide phenomenal return on investment for their clients as well as improved operational efficiencies.  

Corporate Travel Policies Need a Second Look

According to an American Express survey, there appears to be a large gap in corporate travel policies regarding how companies address current travel practices such as the use of mobile phones.  http://www.tnooz.com/2012/02/06/mobile/american-express-survey-finds-huge-mobile-gap-in-corporate-travel-policies/

It appears that many companies are lacking an up-to-date expense management system including proper corporate policy tracking.  With an automated system such as ExpenseAnywhere, companies would be able to  have their corporate policies easily installed into the software.  Such policies would also be easily modified should any adjustments to corporate policies take place.