The Storm Is Over, but Costs Keep Coming: How Utilities Can Strengthen Financial Oversight Throughout a Storm Response

When a major storm threatens a utility's service territory, the financial response begins before the first outage. Hotel rooms are reserved, contractor crews are committed, staging sites are activated — and costs start accumulating across corporate cards, travel bookings, supplier invoices, and emergency purchases. Managing that spend in real time, and maintaining the documentation to support it, requires more than an after-the-fact expense report.

This white paper explores how utility organizations can strengthen financial oversight across the full storm mobilization lifecycle. From the first crew booking to the final regulatory review, connected travel and expense management helps finance teams track costs by storm event and work order, simplify post-storm reconciliation, and preserve the documentation needed for mutual-assistance settlements, audit, and potential FEMA Public Assistance reimbursement.

SAP Concur research found that 48% of companies without integrated travel and expense software cite poor system integration as their primary challenge — a gap that becomes especially costly during emergency operations. By aligning data across travel, expense, card, and procurement systems, utilities can reduce spend fragmentation, support field crews without slowing restoration, and enter the post-storm financial review with a clearer, more defensible record.

Key takeaways:

• 48% of companies without integrated T&E software cite poor integration as their top challenge
• 55% of finance leaders identify inaccurate data as a top cost-control challenge — up from 6% in prior years
• 67% of travel managers feel undervalued, underscoring the need for organizational support during complex mobilizations
• A connected approach ties spend to storm event codes, work orders, cost centers, and supplier agreements in real time
• Documentation best practices that support FEMA reimbursement claims, regulatory reporting, and audit readiness
• Five questions every utility organization should answer before the next storm event

Download this white paper to learn how a connected travel and expense strategy can help your organization maintain financial control — from first mobilization to final reconciliation.