Half of all staff around the world entitled to business expenses are reportedly not claiming them. The amount unclaimed amounts to billions.
With employees leaving an average of £30,000 behind, 48 per cent of them say that work expenses create job stress with another 28 per cent claiming the deficit is negatively impacting their financial situation.
The reasons vary across regions and age; most told researchers they “experienced challenges” making claims, the top issue being time-consuming paperwork. A third blamed their company’s cumbersome expense reimbursement process as a reason for not doing it.
The survey from, San Francisco-based digital adoption experts WalkMe, found that 32 per cent are still submitting paper receipts to their finance departments. In terms of nationalites, Germans claim the most stress from doing it, Americans leaves the most money on the table at an average of £24,000 while Singapore leaves the least with £16,500.
When expense reporting is so cumbersome or the process doesn’t feel worth the effort, employees will feel dissatisfaction with their jobs and more work stress
Australians are most likely to simply forget about filing expense reports with the British following suit.
Those in the 35-44-year-old age group were most likely to leave money on the table, while the majority of those 55+ always filed an expense claim and six in ten agreed or strongly agreed that AI and productivity tools have made expensing easier.
“When expense reporting is so cumbersome or the process doesn’t feel worth the effort, employees will feel dissatisfaction with their jobs and more work stress, and that’s a problem for business,” said Chelsea Pyrzenski, Chief People Officer at WalkMe.
“Enterprises can experience compliance and end-of-year fiscal reporting issues as a result of the expense reporting mess, which makes them vulnerable. It’s in everyone’s interest to ensure the process is very easy, efficient and seamless, to eliminate the time-wasting shuffling of receipts and the guesswork around software and policies.
“When used with leading expense management systems, Digital Adoption Platforms like WalkMe have proven to ease expense report frustration and radically improve both the employee and employer experience.”
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