Brussels Airlines' expense management is complex. This is not least because the company has representatives all over the world. To streamline the paperwork, the airline joined forces with Rydoo.
Paperless
It's no surprise that Brussels Airlines has turned to one of Belgium's most successful tech companies for support. “We try to promote the best of Belgium,” says Jan De Raeymaeker, the airline's former CFO. But it’s not just a small Belgian clique. At Brussels Airlines, the time had come for an up-to-date tool, says Jan Derycke, VP of Finance and Accounting. 'For a long time, we processed expenses manually.
With this app, you only have to take a picture of your receipts.” The Rydoo Expense app works not only on mobile phones, but also via a browser. It automatically reads and selects the most important information on the receipt. "This means you can submit your expenses in just a few minutes. Our employees appreciate that very much. They don’t need to keep all their receipts, and they can rely on faster processing and reimbursement of their expenses,” says Derycke.
"You can submit your expenses in just a few minutes. Our employees appreciate that very much."
Jan Derycke, VP of Finance and Accounting
De Raeymaeker says this move is part of a broader digitisation project: 'We want to make the financial department paperless. For example, we now receive all invoices digitally. This makes all business processes within the company easier. As a result, management and salespeople can focus on their core tasks instead of administration.”
“We want our employees to work as efficiently as possible,” says De Raeymaeker. "We try to limit manual work as much as possible to save time and make the job interesting. We want to attract good people and keep them. If you give people repetitive work, they often won’t stay long, and they'll lose motivation. We want to keep things interesting. We want to challenge our people.”
“For a long time, we processed expenses manually. With Rydoo, all you need is to take a picture of your receipts.”
Jan Derycke, VP of Finance and Accounting
The journey of a receipt
Wim Derkinderen, former CCO of Rydoo, noticed that the expense process at many companies generates a significant amount of administrative work. “You can simply solve that problem with innovative technology,” says Derkinderen. “We started to automate the whole process. We started to track the journey a vat receipt makes within a company. We wanted to know what the best process is, in order to simplify each and every step.”
The final result is a significant time saver, he tells us. "An employee used to wait four to eight weeks between submitting expenses and getting refunded. The unique feature of our system is that each receipt is approved individually. Before, the employee had to put all the receipts together.
At the end of each month, they would compile a file of all their receipts. If one or two were disapproved, they would have to start all over again. We now work on the basis of each cost you make. You have lunch, and you immediately forward the receipt.”
Speed
“The speed is a big advantage for both the company and the employees,” says Derkinderen. "Employees no longer have to submit physical receipts. Nobody likes doing that. But it goes faster for them, too. Some employees travel a lot and spend thousands of euros. It’s illogical that they have to wait weeks for reimbursement.”
De Raeymaeker sees a similar situation at Brussels Airlines. “The changes are well received,” he says. “High acceptability is crucial for technologies like SaaS,” says Derkinderen. "Before, these kinds of projects took an extremely long time, but our transition to Rydoo was quick and easy. It was plug-and-play.”
Compliance
The system also enables accountants to work faster thanks to its built-in automatic checks of the expenses policy. "For example, we set up warnings for violations of company policy," says Derkinderen. “You can spend a certain amount of money in a restaurant, but if you exceed this amount, the system will indicate this.”
These kinds of compliance rules offer Brussels Airlines an added advantage. “We started to notice that people don't always follow the rules,” says De Raeymaeker. 'If employees have lunch with someone, they have to mention who, where and when. Digitisation makes people follow the rules, and we can control expenses more effectively."