American Medical Technologies has been part of the ExpenseWatch.com family for five years. It provides medical supplies to long term care facilities.

Today, American Medical Technologies has approximately150 clinicians traveling to fifteen-to-thirty sites per month. Up to 40 managers and executives also travel on behalf of the company in any given month. Each employee files an individual expense report and is reimbursed once per month.

Before implementing ExpenseWatch.com Expense Reports, one executive managed expense report approvals. As the company grew, and the number of expense reports increased, this manual process quickly became unwieldy. Reports had to be filed three weeks prior to the reimbursement deadline. There would always be delays as problems and questions were noted and reports sent back and forth to resolve outstanding issues.

Since implementing ExpenseWatch.com Expense Reports, the entire process has been streamlined throughout the organization. The electronic system made it possible for one person to easily manage twice as many expense report approvals, so no additional staff has had to be hired to manage growth. Better information on expenses is collected as it is easier for employees to quickly add comments about spending.

Electronic receipts, emails to manage expense report questions, and the option to challenge individual items on a report, and still approve and pay the rest, have shorted the deadline for filing reports from three weeks to less than a week.

With the ability to integrate credit cards and travel bookings into the ExpenseWatch.com system, the expense reporting process has become even more efficient and robust for American Medical Technologies.

To get travel booking information into ExpenseWatch.com, the company is rolling out TripIt to traveling employees. Travel is booked using the booking sites each individual prefers. Employees email travel reservations to plans@TripIt.com, where a master trip itinerary is created, which helps employees more easily manage trips as they occur. TripIt can also pull itinerary information directly from a Gmail account, and some providers send reservations directly to TripIt for you.

The itinerary is linked to employees’ ExpenseWatch.com accounts. When they log in, their travel itinerary is already in the system. They match it with personal credit card information and drag and drop it onto the expense report, fill in a little information click save and the item is entered. They add cash receipts and the report is done.

“The process is so simple, it’s almost laughable,” said Misty Vaughn, vice president of clinical operations for American Medical Technologies. “I name my trip in TripIt, which feeds into the business purpose on my expense report. With so much information being pre-populated as I drag and drop items onto my report, I can complete line items in seconds, cutting the time it takes for me to create expense reports in half or more.”

Vaughn is also in charge of the final review before expense reports are reimbursed. Because expense policy is built into the system, Vaughn is able to manage accounting review and audits by exception now, rather than combing through each report line by line. The company recently pushed responsibility for expense report approvals to clinician managers, which has tightened policy administration even more.

As Vaughn conducts her monthly review, she can easily see flagged items, and re-assign the over-used miscellaneous category to ensure that the company can capture the complete picture on expense spending. She can run reports against spending categories to get more in-depth views into travel spending. Reports easily show who is spending what with whom; spend per category or by vendor and more. This enables everyone to better manage how money is being spent in the organization.

Vaughn also recently deployed ExpenseWatch.com’s Custom Reporting Module to get specialized spending reports. As part of its employee benefits, American Medical Technologies offers a number of annual or lifetime benefits for continuing and advanced education.

“We can now easily see where employees stand against annual or lifetime benefits, which is a big help to our managers,” said Vaughn. “The Custom Reporting Module has helped us learn a lot about our spending habits and practices, which will ultimately help us better manage how we spend our money.”

ExpenseWatch.com also integrates with Egencia, one of the largest online travel management companies. Because ExpenseWatch.com can integrate with these different booking options, you have the flexibility to build the travel and expense management system that best fits your company’s needs no matter how travel is booked in your organization—“managed,” “unmanaged,” or a combination of both.