With the 6 Million Receipts Can't Be Wrong

Each quarter, the Certify SpendSmart Report reveals how business travelers are spending the corporate dime while on the road. The report analyzes Certify's most recent business expense and vendor ratings data, providing valuable insights to Certify clients as well s the corporate T&E industry at large.

One expense category that the SpendSmart Report reviews is restaurants. The restaurant summary is a snapshot of the most frequently expensed restaurants, top rated restaurants, and the most expense restaurants by meal type. Some of the top rating in the restaurant summary include:

Most Expensed Restaurants Starbucks McDonald's Subway

Top Rated Restaurants Chick-Fil-A Chipotle Dunkin Donuts/Olive Garden

Most Expensed by Meal Breakfast - Starbucks Lunch - McDonald's Dinner - McDonald's

The SpendSmart Report offers insight into where and how much money business travelers are spending while on the road. It also shows the competition among the varying companies for the business traveler's buck. This quarter's report highlighted a new competitor on the scene. Seamless, an online and mobile company that allows you to order food for delivery and pickup from over 12,000 restaurants replaced Starbucks as the most expensed vendor in New York City. Seamless has over one million members, and spans across 1,000 cities in the US, with over 80 cuisines to choose from. As CEO of Certify, Robert Neveu, told CNN in a recent article, "It's Seamless over Starbucks for business travelers...Seamless is aggregating a lot of the meal traffic." Neveu explained that business travelers want something fast, convenient, and of reasonable quality and price. Indeed, Seamless allows you to search, check prices, and read reviews and ratings, which is especially valuable for business travelers in new cities on a budget.

This quarter's report also found that fast food is still number one in the life of a business traveler, with Starbucks and McDonald's continuing to be the top two most expensed restaurants, with a reported low average speed of $8.17 at McDonald's to a high average spend of $39.83 at Panera bread.

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Amazon Fire is Coming Out Soon and Certify is Ready

Everyone's talking about Amazon's new Fire Phone and here at Certify, we couldn't be more excited for this new addition to the movie phone market. Definitely Certify are giving the best that they can as they can to give the best to their clients especially in managing their expense reports.

Haven't heard about it yet? Well here's the scoop: the new Amazon Fire Phone will be released on Friday, July 25th, and includes several impressive features: 4.7 inch screen with a built-in ambient light sensor and Dynamic Image Contrast Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.2GHz processor with 2GB of RAM Runs a forked version of Android, Fire OS 3.5.0 13MP rear camera with an f/2.0 lens, and a 2.1MP front-facing camera Free unlimited photo storage on Amazon Cloud Dolby Digital Plus surround sound speakers 285 hours of standby time, up to 22 hours of talk time, up to 65 hours of audio playback time, and up to 11 hours of video playback Pre-installed nanoSIM Space for a microUSB 2.0 Dynamic Perspective interface

And best of all, Fire Phone users will have instant access to third-party apps including Certify Mobile.

If you just can't wait to get your hands on the new Amazon Fire Phone and want to be one of the first to own one, it's available for pre-order now through Amazon.com and AT&T.com. Once you've got it up and running, don't forget to download Certify Mobile so you can start capturing those receipts in Fire Phone style on your next business trip - all while staying policy compliant. And just as a reminder, you don't need Wi-Fi to use Certify Mobile to capture your receipts. Go ahead and use that downtime to take photos of all of your receipts and once you're back online, Certify Mobile will automatically sync those receipts, pulling the data from each receipt image for you so you can just review the data and make updates if you need to. That's nice, right? As always, Certify makes it easy for you by cutting down on the tedious stuff so that you can focus on the important stuff.

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How Do Online Expense Approvals Work?

To help employees manage everyday costs, a company could benefit if it invests in Certify. This expense management solution enables team members to track receipts online, making it incredibly simple to submit error-free materials to supervisors.

While receipt management may have been a majors problem for a business in the past, Certify could help eliminate this issue entirely. Demand Media contributor Lynn Lauren points out that streamlining corporate spending is a top priority for many business leaders, and using a system that offers online approvals allows workers to send accurate expense reports to their superiors at any time.

With Certify's online approval process, managers will receive emails notifying them that expense reports are ready to be viewed. Meanwhile, supervisors can log into Certify on their PCs, smartphones or tablets and evaluate clean, easy-to-read reports.

This software also flags any expense items that fall outside of a firm's expense reporting policy, helping managers evaluate questionable costs. Additionally, company leaders can click on these expenses and learn more about them instantly.

After a manager completes the review process, he or she can submit the expense report to an accounting department or to the next approver without delay. By relying on Certify, a company can streamline its expense reporting process so it can reduce its operating costs over an extended period of time.

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Automated Expense Reporting in Protecting your Business

We've often wrote about the ways that automated expense reporting technology can help to make life easier for employees at a given company. But what about the ways that it can protect both a company and its employees? Listed below are just four ways that programs like Certify, which automates and digitizes the expense reporting process, are able to afford added securities and protections to an organization.

Protects your employees from losing receipts and reimbursements When employees misplace a receipt for a cost they want reimbursed, they're typically out of luck - the accounting department will have no way of verifying the cost. When you're out on business, it's actually pretty easy to lose a significant receipt. You're traveling from place to place, you're rushing in and out of your hotel room, you're stuffing receipts into your briefcase for every meal you eat and every expense you incur - throughout all this, it's not surprising that you might misplace a small piece of paper.

With automated programs like Certify, that never has to be a concern. Employees with smartphones can simply snap a picture of their receipt, upload it into Certify's cloud-based database, and see it immediately entered into and reflected in their real-time expense report. The receipt never has to leave the place where it was printed, because it's backed up in our system from the very moment that its uploaded.

Prevents your company from losing expense data Because of that cloud-based database, Certify protects and improves your business in yet another way: by eliminating the need for you to keep paper expense records. So long as your business is using Certify, all the costs you and your employees have entered into the system will be backed up in our cloud database. That'll allow you to clear out the paper documents regarding your expenses - and it also allows you to trust that any financial information logged while your company is using Certify will be backed up and available should it ever become necessary for your company to look back into its own financial records and bookkeeping.

Keeps your accountants from paying out-of-policy expenditures Certify also informs your employees if they ever upload a cost into their expense report that violates your company expense policy. Accountants will never again have to decide between confronting a high-ranking employee on their exorbitant dinner costs and reimbursing those costs anyway: instead, Certify places a "red flag" next to the costs's in the employee's own expense reporting, necessitating that they address the issue before pushing their report forward to company accountants. So if you're worried that your business has been paying too much for luxury dinners on behalf of your traveling employees, you can rely on Certify to rectify the problem: it will prevent those costs from ever being reported for reimbursement in the first place.

Prevents executives from letting trends or spending increases go unnoticed Finally, Certify protects the higher-ups at a company from allowing spending trends or increases to go unnoticed. Our automated expense reporting technology tracks a number of metrics and statistics across the entire company using the program, allowing executives valuable insights as to when and where employees are spending, and what they're spending on.

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Business Travel Try Online Booking

Every business have their own strategy in how they will make their own firm stands in the market but somehow as always it takes a big responsibility in every employee inside the firm in how to handle it. In order for the business to stay successful it takes a lot of effort, time, cooperation, skills and knowledge so that you firm can make its name mark in the market. As the time goes the technology become a big part of every business and makes every business related transactions easier and faster. Most of the businesses today rely in the technology to make every aspect of the business easier. One of an example is business traveling as far as I know every business firms have their own businesses that takes outside in your firm and an employee is need to travel and meet up with the clients which is most of the scenario happens. Business travel is another thing that every the head of the firms must need to take of attention.

Business travels are considered part of every firms in managing the business but sometimes traveling frequently is not a good thing to a business especially if your firm have the hard time managing the financial status of the company. When it comes to business travel the company is responsible for the expenses of the employee but somehow every employee expenses must need to meet with the policy of the company. For that employee that travels frequently sometimes they are having the hard time in booking their flights since we are now living in the era of the technology online businesses are in hand today. If you are hassle to buy your tickets in over the counter outlets why not try the online booking? The online travel booking is the latest on hand today when it comes to business travel. Most of the business people in the market today makes that online booking is easy and faster for them to travel especially if they are in the hurry.

When it comes to business travel every employee must be aware also of their expenses especially that the receipts that they have during the trip. Since you are in the business travel automatically the company is responsible for your expenses after your trip all you have to do is make those expense reports wait for the approval and finally you have your reimbursement back in your hand. A sound so easy to do but sometimes the problem is in your missing receipts that makes the hard time in managing every time your business expenses.

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Kronos Introduces Certify In the Marketplace

Kronos, Inc., a global leader in cloud-based workforce management who helps tens of thousands of organizations in over 100 countries control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity, has added Certify’s travel and expense management solution to its Workforce Ready Marketplace.

The Workforce Ready Marketplace allows users access to third-party applications that they can purchase directly from the Workforce Ready online user interface. For the first time ever, users can now enjoy cloud-based, automated travel booking and expense reporting using their desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device with Certify. Certify is the only travel and expense management solution that Kronos is currently offering on its Workforce Ready Marketplace.

Commenting on Certify’s addition to the Marketplace, Mark Ellis, the general manager of small and midsize business for Kronos, stated “the addition of Certify to our already robust Workforce Ready Marketplace brings additional value to Workforce Ready users.” He further adds, “Travel and expense is a pain point for many organizations and Certify offers a top-notch solution that will benefit our customers.”

Certify president Bob Neveu also commented, stating, “we make travel and expense easy with auto-generated reports and seamless integration and we are excited to join other leading providers in the Workforce Ready Marketplace.”

The availability of Certify’s travel and expense management software through the Workforce Ready Marketplace is sure to make life easier for current and future Kronos Workforce Ready users, through mobile receipt capturing and complete expense report automation.

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Improving your Receipt Management Using Mobile

There are a number of ways that a company can make work easier for employees, while still achieving goals and completing tasks. When it comes to expense reports, executives may want to consider taking advantage of a program that will give their employees the tools to be both accurate and successful, while still cutting down overspending and updating progress in real time. Luckily, Certify Mobile is able to accomplish all of these tasks, and getting involved today may change the way the business operates for the better.

Why use mobile options for expense reports Most of the time, employees will need to charge expenses on the company while they are outside of the office's walls. With this in mind, having the tools to be able to do this in a quick manner can change the way businesses look at expense management. Certify Mobile can remove the worry of losing paper receipts, while still getting the proper information to the right executives, managers and accountants in time for deadlines.

In this day and age, nearly everyone is connected, no matter where they happen to be. So, seeking out ways to take advantage of the tools at hand is crucial. Certify Mobile can be used on most devices, and it just requires a smartphone or a tablet with a camera. These tools are useful because it only takes a second to take a picture of a receipt while the employee is on the run, even if it is something as small as a payment for a parking meter.

How Certify Mobile functions Having the app and making it work for automated expense reporting is quite simple. The employee just needs to take a photo of the receipt, then have the AutoFill option do the hard work through the Certify ReceiptParse tool.

When this is all done, the employee just needs to check over the expense details in the app, and make edits as necessary. Then, just send the receipt and other expense details to sync with the Certify Wallet, and it will be ready to be meshed with the necessary expense report. Having such a quick option allows for many company members to quickly and easily process this information, and move on to the next issues on their plates.

Stay on top of travel needs Another great option that employees have with Certify Mobile is to ensure that they are aware of any changes in their travel plans. With travel a major expense aspect that employees need to deal with, knowing if there are any bumps in the road are important. Certify Mobile has a partnership with TripCase, which is a tool that will provide a number of different updates, ensuring people have the most accurate news about the travel information that affects them the most. Whether an employee wants to learn about their flight status, how the weather will be on a travel day or even changes to their plans, this tool will provide just that. This information can be vital to keep up with, especially with the busy schedules that may prevent employees from finding out about these events otherwise.

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