If you have any empathy for your accounts department (don’t be so mean), today is perhaps one on which you should feel sorry for them most, because a company has actually gone to the trouble of working out which is the busiest day for the submission of expenses claims. Yes, it’s today. Today.
Perhaps we should have a minute’s silence as we consider just how stressful today must be for those poor folk with their calculators and red pens.
There is actually a serious point to be made though, at least there is according to travel and expense management company Concur, which did the mini study.
Isabel Montesdeoca, SVP and GM of EMEA at Concur, said, "Due to the volume, accountants often have a very tough job getting everything processed before the Christmas break. It’s essential that businesses support their finance staff by looking at ways of making expense systems quicker and easier to reduce the need for staff to put in late nights in the run up to Christmas."
Why is today the busiest day for expense claims? One theory is that it’s all those boozy Christmassy client lunches, or the backlog of expenses staff are trying to get paid before Chrimbo. People need the extra cash to buy presents, food, and sherry of course.
Either way there will be 139% more claims submitted today than on an average day for expense submissions. It’s all based on Concur’s analysis of the trends experienced by thousands of its customers, dontcha know.
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"As wallets feel the strain of the festive period, claiming expenses suddenly springs to the forefront of minds," Montesdeoca said. From your wallet straight to your mind eh – yet more proof that many of us think with our [that’s enough – Ed].
So there you have it. Staff aren’t thinking about what to buy their loved ones today, they’re thinking about getting their expenses into accounts before the rest of the darned company. So remember next year, you wanna get them in before today.
According to Concur, you are also 67% more likely to get them paid before Christmas if you post your expenses to accounts inside a Christmas card with a picture of a robin on it. Or a snowman. Actually they didn’t say that. They said it was only 12% more likely. Actually they didn’t say that either, but I bet it’s true. The 12%, I mean.
Ps. I thought for a moment this whole thing was an April fool, except surely they would have issued it, you know, in April? I’ve done my own analysis and there are 99.9993% more April Fools jokes submitted on April 1st than there are on December 13th. [You’re an idiot – Ed] It’s just that Montesdeoca is Spanish for ‘hills of goose’ or ‘mounts of goose’; and the other spokesperson quoted in the news release is a certain John Dickens, European shared service centre manager at NEC Europe. A Christmas Expenses Carol it is then. Sorry John. And Isabel.
Please follow this author on twitter if you are not too busy doing your expenses: www.twitter.com/jasonstamper. Comments below most welcome, unless you’re in our accounts department, in which case can you sort my expenses out first and then come back to me? Thanks a bunch. Hope you liked the snowman?
