Expenses Solutions for Multi-nationals

A manual expenses system

When Deborah Rees, Manager of Finance Projects at Rockwool started work at the company, she inherited a manual system for travel and entertainment expense claims, based on Excel. As the company grew, this proved increasingly cumbersome.

The parent company, Rockwool International, has 35 operating companies throughout Europe and North America and employs around 8,600 people worldwide.  About 500 of those are in the UK. The manufacturing plant near Bridgend, South Wales is the UK's leading manufacturer of mineral wool insulation for thermal, fire and acoustic protection.

With employees travelling increasingly between the organization’s European and Canadian offices, as well as to see clients, processing and authorizing the expense claims for travel, hotels and subsistence and entertaining became a major task. Getting signatures on paper copies of expense claims, particularly for more senior staff, took a great deal of time.

Why WebExpenses?

Deborah persuaded the Finance Director to allow her to investigate some automated expense claim solutions. She looked in detail at systems from three different companies in the UK and US. She took care to involve two key sales managers in the decision making process, and they all attended demonstrations of the systems. They particularly liked the SMS text messaging capability that WebExpenses offers, which allows employees to text expenses items which then automatically appear in an expense claim. They also liked the fact that the system was UK-based and that the company provided a personal service. Deborah says, “We always knew the person we were speaking with and nothing was too much trouble.”

WebExpenses provided ongoing support when it was needed. For example, when expenses accumulated on company Barclaycards, the WebExpenses team talked them through how to import them into the WebExpenses system. “It was actually very easy,” said Deborah. “After a couple of goes we’d got it.” WebExpenses also helped them upload files from the WebExpenses system into the company's financial system, SAP, and showed them the procedures to follow to ensure that the detailed ledger file was not altered in the upload process. The WebExpenses team also tailored the system specifically for Rockwool by assigning codes to assist, for example, with reclaiming the correct proportion of VAT for entertaining, which saved a great deal of time - previously this had to be calculated manually. The system forces users to include the necessary level of detail to ensure PAYE compliance, such as full details of corporate hospitality expenditure.

“Now we do an upload once a week at a regular time, which has made things much easier and given discipline to our internal processes,” said Deborah.

Much quicker and easier

Rockwool has had good feedback both from those making expense claims and those processing them.  “Few people really like change,” Deborah commented, “but they found the system much quicker and easier than the one we had before”.  To help employees get used to the system she produced a quick guide which was sent to everyone, together with pre-paid envelopes so that receipts can be submitted as back-up.   Queries are now resolved more quickly using the electronic system, and expense claims are reimbursed electronically. The system has helped with traceability, and being able to import expenses from Barclaycard, and upload the figures automatically into the SAP system has helped streamline the entire process.

Instead of one person full time processing expense claims when Deborah started at the company, the organisation now manages its much greater volume of expenses with one part time person.

“We are really pleased,” said Deborah. “I was particularly happy as it was my first major project for the company, and it has gone according to plan, on time and within budget, and is already proving its worth.”

The company now plans to add procurement card transactions into the WebExpenses solution in addition to travel and entertainment.