KDS Expense

KDS Corporate enables companies to implement their own Travel & Expense management strategy by offering complete control. The solution supports consistent policy enforcement, offers quick and powerful travel inventory search options, and provides customized expense reporting configurations that simplify accounting settings and reporting. Internally, companies can be certain their travel-related spend is being used wisely and, where necessary, can adjust KDS Corporate to optimize supplier relationships.

In addition, by unifying Travel & Expense management in a single system, companies can minimize their total cost of ownership while they maximize the adoption rate of the solution.

Based on the most innovative application service provider (ASP) technology, KDS Corporate provides users with the best service to manage their travel related spend over the Internet. Using Web 2.0 for our second generation of Travel & Expense management solution is based on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). This architecture will help KDS to respond more quickly and cost-effectively to the changing market conditions. Moreover, KDS Corporate new architecture provides ultimate security guarantees, memory management, and exception handling. With KDS, users' experience is closer to desktop applications: they have access to an intuitive, fast and reliable service.

Deploying the KDS Corporate on-demand ASP solution is also fast, with no client site integration issues. And because the system is managed and hosted by KDS is a safe and secure environment, it is always up-to-date and available as it keeps your IT staff focused on their core mission.

New Environment, New Opportunities

KDS understands the temptation to rely on traditional expense tracking and disbursements; changing such an ingrained function can be daunting without the proper motivation. KDS also understands, however, that the motivation has arrived in force:

• Nearly 50 per cent of companies experience internal cases of fraud — and almost 25 per cent of these are expense-related.
• Using KDS Corporate can slash expense management costs by up to 80 per cent, driving average processing fees down to around €15 (current manual processing costs are about €100).
• Strict accounting requirements derived from Sarbanes-Oxley demand full transparency of accounting, including expense submission and disbursement.

These drivers are reason enough to employ an automated expense management system. But beyond the reactive factors, proactive improvements can be just as compelling. Many companies today still rely on dozens of different kinds of expense forms in different departments with different submission and approval processes – making for a wholly complex expense management cycle that is nearly impossible for the home office to accurately track.

KDS Corporate cleans up the clutter. The solution builds in centralized control of spending and greater visibility, with reduced errors in submission and expense coding and more easily enforced spending policies. Instead of files full of employee excel reports, faxes, receipts and credit card statements, managers see a streamlined and uniform process across different company departments, work sites, even across continental borders. Businesses that process numerous expense reports each month stand to gain significant benefits by implementing KDS Corporate, generally gaining a return on their investment in under two years.

Uniting Travel & Expense

With KDS Corporate, the ease of expense submission and reimbursement is backed by a full understanding of how most expenses are generated in the first place: business travel. KDS Corporate helps to accelerate accounting processes by automated expense reconciliation. For example, when trips are booked through KDS Corporate, expense reports with relevant line items are automatically generated to reflect fares, car hires, hotels – and when charges don’t align, warning flags appear for managers to investigate.

Corporate cards open up yet another door for improvement. Using approved credit cards can expedite the process, as charges are expense reports are automatically populated with charges. These items – along with receipts generated on business trips – are assigned bar codes that keep reports and backup consolidated, reducing human error and streamlining approvals.

The use of a single application to manage both Travel & Expense processes means that companies can reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) and as mentioned above, it is quicker, easier and more intuitive to deal with Travel and Expense processes through a single solution than trying to integrate two different tools.

Additionally, training and communication programs are simplified. This leads to improved adoption among employees, who will value an application that allows them to manage their entire travel related processes with a single solution.

KDS Corporate Benefits

With one eye on client needs and another on emerging trends in the market, KDS Corporate was developed to make expense management easier, more accurate and an overall benefit to the business. KDS Corporate includes:

Advanced Day-to-Day Functionality

• Automated expenses reconciliation with travel services;
• Credit card charges importing;
• Hotel e-folio feed;
• Payroll and in-house reimbursement;
• Multiple project code allocation;
• Real-time business rules at the front-end to help enforce corporate policy.

Cross-border Capabilities

KDS knows that as businesses become global, expense management can become even more difficult. Using KDS Corporate can eliminate a great number of barriers that have complicated cross-border expense tracking in the past:

• Daily and historical currency exchange rates allow for regional pricing comparisons;
• Multi-currency reporting, supported by a normalizing base currency, means that the head office can receive expense reports from abroad without the hassle of manual currency conversion;
• Country-specific mileage calculators help keep accurate count from region to region (i.e. as personal mileage rates vary according to the UK’s Inland Revenue, or are calculated by different standards such as horsepower in Belgium).

Business Operations

KDS Corporate Travel & Expense reporting features enables KDS customers to drill down into the detailed spending data required by managers to optimize their policies and contracts. Keeping a full and easily mapped audit trail is essential to operating smoothly in an increasingly tight regulatory environment:

• Reporting capabilities are a key element of KDS Corporate, which provides intuitive and flexible report writing as a standalone solution and also integrates with proven Business Intelligence tools;
• Workflow tracking and multi-level approvals identify and help prevent bottlenecks in the reimbursement process;
• VAT reclaim assistance helps UK companies process and meet tax obligations;
• Sarbanes-Oxley requirements are addressed with self-monitoring features such as fraud detection, detection of duplicate claims, and a comprehensive audit trail.