10 Questions To Ask When Choosing A Global Expense Solution

Global expense implementations pose unique challenges, including local statutory requirements, standards, and customs in addition to intra-enterprise variability with respect to business processes, policies, accounting, and integrations.

• Understanding local requirements
  Knowing what questions to ask and how to find answers
• Having necessary functionality available, including flexibility in being able to limit and assign the scope of configurations
• Leveraging solutions to common requirements across applicable localities
• Maintaining the capacity to “roll-up” information to regional or enterprise levels

All reputable expense reporting solutions offer product support 24/7/365 and should provide time zone, date, and number format, as well as multi-language support in the product.

Your company is unique. The importance of your history, values, strategy, leadership, culture, and way of doing business should never be ignored or diminished in the procurement process.

Assuming that a global rollout of an expense system is a cookie-cutter process—or that an expense reporting system is merely a commodity—does a disservice to both your prospective suppliers and your own organization.

By clearly identifying your objectives, securing leadership buy-in, and communicating these goals to shortlisted vendors, you empower them to propose a solution that truly meets your needs and delivers maximum value.

Objectives do not exist in a vacuum. “Fast” is just as valid an objective as “comprehensive,” but these basic rollout goals often appear to conflict with one another.

Identifying and communicating your priorities to prospective suppliers provides valuable context that enables them to craft a proposal aligned with your needs and handled with integrity.

When properly prioritized, “fast” and “comprehensive” no longer have to be at odds—especially when the selected solution is flexible enough to support a timely initial rollout and continued improvements once the system is in production.

There are both formal and informal stakeholders who must be identified and managed throughout the procurement and rollout process. These may include organizational leadership, solution owners and managers, owners of related systems and processes, frequent travelers, unions, and work councils.

Each group plays a vital role in the project’s success and should be acknowledged early on. Their inclusion in change management and communication plans ensures alignment, minimizes resistance, and promotes smoother adoption across the organization.

• What is your vision for ownership and management of the global solution?
• Do you have a Shared Services structure in place? Will the solution be managed locally?
• How does this affect your roll-out and communication plans?
• How do you control the management of the solution?
• Do you have a role management and/or process audit requirement for the ongoing management of the solution?
• How will you comply with various privacy requirements across Europe and Asia?

Your end users may not be the solution owners, but they are among the most critical stakeholders in ensuring success. User acceptance is often one of the primary objectives of any implementation and plays a central role in a smooth rollout. The system’s design must prioritize a simple, efficient, and intuitive user experience.

While expense reporting serves as an employee-facing extension of your accounting system, the depth of data required for accounting should never compromise usability. Employees should be able to transition seamlessly between desktop and mobile platforms throughout the reporting process.

To encourage strong adoption, involve end-user representatives early in the procurement phase. Integrate communication and change management strategies into your rollout plan, especially where formal requirements exist in specific localities.

Pain points experienced by end users, managers, or administrators won’t automatically vanish with the introduction of a new system. Understanding these challenges upfront is essential to ensuring that your next solution genuinely improves processes rather than merely replacing existing frustrations.

Gather insights from current users to pinpoint what isn’t working today—whether it’s inefficiencies, compliance gaps, or user confusion—and use that knowledge to guide vendor evaluations. Make sure prospective vendors demonstrate not just promises, but practical solutions that address these pain points directly.

Ask to see how the proposed system handles both simple and complex real-world scenarios—such as maintaining mileage reimbursement rates across regions like France or Costa Rica, applying tax rules for mileage in Canada and the U.K., or managing Northern European per diem and fringe benefit taxation rules. A true solution should prove its capability in a live, functioning environment, not just in documentation.

A currency solution that facilitates for control of exchange rates, accurate reimbursements, invoice payments and expense postings is just scratching the surface of true multi-currency functionality.

A global expense reporting solution’s ability to provide currency and amount detail with integrity across individual reporting companies, projects, activities, and credit card relationships as well as in enterprise rollups is key to visibility in management reporting and reconciliation. The global solution should also allow for exceptions to the standard currency feed where this is a local statutory requirement.

Consumption tax, sales tax, corporate tax, and personal fringe benefit tax requirements vary across countries, states, and provinces. A robust global expense reporting framework must accommodate these differences while allowing for process and policy exceptions where necessary.

Accurately capturing relevant tax information with minimal user effort should be a foundational feature. Beyond data capture, the solution must support posting, reporting, and tax recovery workflows seamlessly. Finally, managing these processes should be straightforward and intuitive for administrators, ensuring compliance and efficiency at every level of the organization.

You probably have global as well as multiple local systems that are tangential to expense reporting. In addition to ERP/Accounting systems, data is likely to be required to flow bi-directionally between payroll system(s), HR system(s), banks and credit card provider(s), travel and booking systems, and other systems that support your accounting, billing, and reimbursement process. This may also include feeds from direct bill providers, tax recovery services, and other service providers, as well as outputs to business intelligence solutions.

• How will your interface requirements be met in your global roll-out? Do you have requirements related to intercompany transaction handling.
• Will you require tight integration with some or all of the systems, or are you happy to accept a data-dump that you will manipulate to satisfy posting requirements in the individual systems?

Any expense reporting rollout may include some custom elements, but a mature, globally experienced expense reporting provider should be able to meet most requirements through configuration of standard functionality rather than costly customizations.

Customizations add complexity, increase costs, and require ongoing maintenance.  A knowledgeable expense reporting partner should challenge your assumptions, suggest alternatives, and propose more efficient ways to achieve your goals while maintaining full compliance with statutory requirements. If a particular requirement is critical to your organization, ask detailed questions throughout the procurement process—and don’t rely solely on a polished presentation or demo. Ensure the provider can demonstrate real, working examples that meet your needs in practice, not just in theory.