Conshohocken, Pa., ExpenseWatch.com™ is partnering with Egencia™, the fifth largest travel management company in the world, to provide a comprehensive, fully integrated travel and expense management system. The combined solution will be demonstrated at the National Association of Business Travelers International Convention and Expo in San Diego Aug. 23-26.

Using ExpenseWatch.com and Egencia, companies can integrate their online travel management program and best-of-breed expense control system to create an end-to-end solution encompassing pre-trip approvals through to expense report reimbursement. Company spending policies and controls are automatically applied throughout the entire process, significantly reducing the opportunities for out-of-policy spending and fraud.

"Tightly integrating travel bookings with an expense management system allows companies to cut travel costs by enabling easier enforcement of company policies, greater efficiency and deeper visibility into spending processes," said Robert D. Kugel, senior vice president at Ventana Research, a benchmark business and information technology research and advisory services firm. "We believe ExpenseWatch.com’s integration with Egencia will give small and midsized companies multiple ways to improve how they manage travel and get more bang for their buck. We especially like the new ExpenseWatch.com interface and how it logically brings travel data, credit card charges and expense reporting together in a way that is straightforward and easy to use."

"Empowering small and midsized businesses to control and reduce all spending, while increasing employee efficiency is more important than ever in today’s economy," said Bill Vergantino, president and CEO of ExpenseWatch.com."Because these organizations are inherently dynamic, they need partnerships with subscription-based solution providers that are non-proprietary, open and flexible to adapt as their needs change. Our open platform will offer the ability to integrate our best-of-breed expense control system with Egencia and our other travel management partner systems for ultimate flexibility."

"Egencia’s customers look to us to create an open ecosystem around travel management that combines flexibility and choice," said Simon Tam, Senior Vice President,Product and Technology, Egencia. "Our integration with ExpenseWatch.com enables us to offer our customers an integrated travel and expense management system that provides the tools they need to streamline processes and control spend."

The ExpenseWatch.com and Egencia travel and expense management system speeds expense report creation for traveling employees.Employees book travel through Egencia’s leading self-booking platform where corporate-defined policy is enforced through powerful tools and all data is fed into a real-time global reporting system. At the same time, corporate credit card and travel booking data flows into ExpenseWatch.com and users are notified that travel itineraries and/or credit card charges are waiting to be put onto an expense report.

ExpenseWatch.com offers filers the flexibility to create an expense report the way they want. Data that feeds into ExpenseWatch.com is presented in up to three ways –as separate credit card charges and/or travel bookings, and as linked items,where the system automatically associates credit card transactions to booked itineraries. Any of these items can be dragged onto an expense report to enter the expense. Cash transactions are easily added to expense report and receipts can be scanned, photographed or faxed and attached to the top of the report or with each line item entered.

As expense reports are created, company spending policies are applied. Tolerance levels for out-of-policy spending can be set according to company preference and culture. The configurable policy enforcement options range from allowing an expense report to be routed for approval with indicators of what is out of policy, all the way to not allowing a report to be routed until a transaction has been changed to align with company spending policy.

ExpenseWatch.com accounts for the dynamic nature of business travel and keeps a running tab of booked versus expensed travel for the life of each expense report. Expense report filers, approvers and accounting reviewers can see at a glance the anticipated expense for hotel, airfare and car at the time travel was booked, compared with the actual amounts being submitted for reimbursement for those same items, helping to prevent fraud and out-of-policy spending.

Because ExpenseWatch.com is an open expense control platform, companies can set up multiple travel management systems within their expense control program. The integration of Egencia with ExpenseWatch.com is expected to be generally available early in the fourth quarter.