How Zetadocs helps control mileage expense fraud

Combining easy mileage management with fraud prevention

Managing expenses on the miles driven by your employees can be a complicated business.

We wrote previously about how to detect and protect against employee expense fraud, highlighting ways in which expense claims can be padded, and how some employees treat this as a perk of the job.

Expense claims on business mileage are particularly open to this kind of abuse.

Even if employees aren’t acting in an underhand manner, it can be difficult to keep track of every single journey over a month. While it’s nothing more complex than noting the odometer reading at both ends of every journey, it’s easy to forget and then just round up miles to the nearest whole number, or simply guess.

In some cases, employees might be tempted to inflate business miles in order to boost their claim amount, and any tax relief which may be payable. Many will know there’s a tolerance range, within which mileage claims won’t be questioned.

On the other side, as an employer, FD or line manager, you need to be able to rely on your employees to make accurate records, and to record only the miles which are strictly work related.

Where trust exists and time is tight, the chances are that managers will not inspect or forensically examine every mileage expense claim to any great depth. After all, as long as the mileage expense claims being submitted aren’t too outrageous, it’s easier to just rubber stamp them, so you can get on with your day to day workload.

To compound matters, a workable mileage expense system can be further complicated by having to:

• Set the business mileage rate allowed from vehicle to vehicle
• Claim back the tax paid on fuel for business mileage by your employees

Put it all together and you have something which requires spreadsheets, multiple working hours, time-consuming approvals analysis, expert advice and close policy management.

It’s difficult to get to grips with. Each year, companies needlessly pay out tens of thousands of dollars, pounds or euros in unnecessary expense claims as a result of inflated or inaccurate mileage claims.

But there is a better way!

Zetadocs Expenses solves all of these problems in one user-friendly package by providing:

• A single system which enables you to manage fuel payments and business mileage, recover tax owed to you and ensure that your expense payments are tax compliant
• Integration with Google Maps, so that journey distances can be calculated accurately, quickly and easily, and validated in seconds. If reasonable mileage limits are breached, relevant administrators will be alerted, avoiding excessive claims which might otherwise slip through the net
• A database of company vehicles so that rates for business mileage and personal mileage are always calculated on the correct basis
• Updates to incorporate the latest tax regulations, up to and including calculating the business mileage per tax year of each individual employee
• Upload capability for fuel expense receipt images, providing a visual storage record of the information needed to reclaim fuel tax

In summary

Zetadocs Expenses can help reduce fraudulent or inflated mileage expense claims because it has features specifically included for this purpose:

• Integration with Google Maps for true mileage measurement
• Vehicle and mileage allowance database
• Regularly updated tax regulation data
• Expense receipt image upload capability

Find out more information about Zetadocs Expenses on our website, or call 0207 203 4000.