3 Major Benefits to Using a Mobile App for Mileage Reporting in Higher Education

SAP Concur Team |

Just as rapidly changing technology has facilitated employees to meet their business needs, it has created ways to empower recruiters, advancement officers, and staff within a higher education institution.

Institutions depend on student enrollment and retention. By 2023, enrollment is projected to increase by 20% for college students older than 25 and only 12% for traditional students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. As campuses continue to innovate their recruiting strategies, admission recruiters, athletic recruiters, and even advancement officers and alumni relations staff will likely be driving their personal cars to recruit students and meet with potential donors over wider and wider territories.

You don’t hire these staff to report mileage – you hire them to recruit and fundraise.  But these important individuals need to track and report their mileage, which often results in inaccurate reporting. By having to manually track mileage or making an estimated guess, you get inaccurate mileage data, fraud can happen, and inaccurate expense amounts can be entered. Inaccurate and fraudulent mileage expenses are one of the top ways organizations lose millions per year.

With the rise of technology, it is possible today to gain clear visibility into your mileage expenses and ensure accurate reporting with the convenience and efficiencies of mobile apps. Your organization needs a solution or tool that can track mileage with accurate GPS capabilities, all at the touch of a mobile app. Here are the three benefits gained by moving away from manual tracking to leveraging an automated mobile application:

 

Save money with accurate distance tracking

When mileage is self-reported, inaccuracy and unnecessary spend increases. Accurate distance tracking means you pay only for actual distance driven. This can reduce fraud and reporting errors. A GPS-powered mobile application can also segment out routes from any part of the trip that should not be reported. 

 

Save time with automated tracking

Automated tracking is also available with a GPS-powered mobile application. Users can set their work hours in the app, and during these hours, automated tracking uses smart sensors to begin and end distance tracking when the vehicle starts and stops to create a distance log. Staff save time by not having to record every “from here to there” segment they drive carrying out their duties.

 

 

Drive policy compliance

A GPS-powered mobile application can capture information to help customers with their compliance for mileage reimbursement. It can also allow a real-time view into employee spend in every single expense category.

Higher education is looking to save money, time and easily stay in compliance in every way they can, and Concur Drive delivers the solution that has the benefits of solving those business challenges. Learn more about Concur Drive and how it can simplify work for your admissions, athletics and advancement staff today on our website.