Conferma unveils reconciliation tool for TMCs

A reconciliation tool is being launched that provides travel management companies with ready-matched transaction and booking data.

Smart New Accounts Payable (SNAP), from travel and expense booking, settlement and reconciliation technology firm Conferma, claims to provide a comprehensive overview of business travel spend.

It automatically captures billing data from a global network of banking partners, such as all charges relating to a hotel stay, which are billed to the single-use virtual cards generated by Conferma for business travellers to use when paying for travel transactions.

The billing data is then automatically matched to the booking data held by the TMC to streamline the accounts payable process that has traditionally been labour intensive and time consuming.

The Global Business Travel Association recently estimated the time spent manually reconciling and cleaning data at 442,000 man-hours annually, which equates to $22.7 million.

SNAP is being made available to UK TMCs from this month followed by a multi-lingual version in the rest of Europe from early 2013.

TMCs can use the tool to review all automatically reconciled payments and bookings and create a variety of reports which can be organised by cost centre, individual business traveller or hotel.

SNAP assigns hotel invoices to transactions either by importing electronic copies or allowing users to enter invoice details into an online template. This enables the TMC to provide corporate clients with a clear audit trail of business travel spend and rich management information to help drive corporate governance, adherence to policies and enhanced supplier management.

Conferma account management director Gill Collier said: “TMCs commit significant resources to undertake the manual matching and reconciliation of transactions.

“SNAP collates all booking, payment and transaction data in one portal giving them a matching accuracy rate of 99.95%, enhanced management information and an audit trail on all client spend.

“Not only can they provide their clients with a clear snapshot of their corporate spend but the increased efficiencies will help TMCs reduce their operating costs.”