Make Your Next Business Trip Fuss-Free with Certify

From Booking to Kayak, TripAdvisor to Expedia, there's no shortage of online travel websites that you and your employees have likely spent a lot of time on, setting up the next business trip on the schedule. As helpful as these website may be however - especially compared to what the booking process was like prior to the advent of the Internet they're far from being user-friendly. And the process is only complicated further when you start to think about all the expenses that you or your workers will need to keep track of for billing purposes.

Fortunately, Certify has the tools you need to make booking a whole lot easier. Take a look at the following tips from now on when you or your employees need to schedule a trip to another part of the U.S. or the world.

Log in to Certify. Start out by entering the address of Certify into your web browser, whether that's through your personal computer, tablet or handheld device. Then enter your login identification. This really expedites the process because this data helps the system know who the user is, what their travel preferences are and whether they have any airfare credits that they may be able to use.

Input travel itinerary. Here's where the system needs more information from the user. Simply enter the travel booking details you have, such as the flight, hotel and/or rental car. Once the system knows when the travel period will be - which, like the other information, can be entered in the requested area - a variety of potential vendors will appear. The one chosen, of course, is a decision for you and/or your employee.

Book the chosen selection. Once you or your workers decide on the appropriate vendor, it should all be smooth sailing from there. In fact, just to confirm, Certify will email you and your worker about the most important details of the upcoming travel itinerary. It's a good idea to really look this over as it will contain information that is crucial to the "en route" portion of the trip going smoothly.

But even if there is a problem - no sweat. So long as you make the appropriate changes within 24 hours, you won't have to worry about incurring a penalty. As far as the expense recording goes, most of that is take care of.

By booking a trip through Certify, the system automatically creates an expense reports document that you or your employee can easily fill out on an as-needed basis.

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Certify Automatically Links Credit Card Data to Expenses

From mobile phone receipt capture to quick and easy reimbursements, we make sure the expense reporting process is simple and straightforward. Certify promises to make travel and expense easy for you, and we take that promise seriously. From mobile phone receipt capture to quick and easy reimbursements, we make sure the expense reporting process is simple and straightforward.

One of the ways we ensure this is by automatically linking credit card data to expenses. No more trying to match up receipts and credit card statements – we do it for you. Even if you’ve already processed and reimbursed the expense!

Certify works directly with the credit companies and the issuing banks to automatically receive your corporate credit card data in Certify. We receive nightly data feeds from all of the major credit card companies, including American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and Diner’s Club. So you can simply swipe your credit card today for a business lunch, and see it tomorrow in your Certify Wallet. It’s that simple!

Here’s how it works: On Monday, Fred makes a $32 purchase using his company credit card. Fred then uses Certify Mobile to capture the receipt and expense details and synchronizes to his Certify account.

In Fred’s excitement to use Certify he does not wait for the credit card charge to be imported to his Certify Wallet and decides to create an expense report using just the receipt. Later on Monday, Fred creates and submits his expense report.

On Thursday, Fred’s company credit card sends the $32 transaction to Fred’s Certify Wallet. On Tuesday, Fred’s approver's quickly approve his expense report and send it to the Accounting team for final processing. On Wednesday, the Accounting team processes his expense report for reimbursement. And here’s where the late credit card linking feature comes in! This feature automatically searches "late" credit card transactions, and then automatically reconciles them by identifying the late credit card expenses and linking them with the matching expense that has already been submitted for approval or has been processed.

When the matching expense is linked with the correct credit card, the expense is then “Imported”, and the "late" expense is deleted from Fred’s Certify Wallet. Pretty nice, right?

With Certify, there’s no need to waste time trying to match receipts to credit card statements when it can be done for you automatically. Let us do all that pesky expense reporting work for you, so you can focus on more important tasks.

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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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