Employees are cheating their employers through expense claims, according to survey results released by travel and expense management company, KDS. The company”s research revealed Americans to be the most dishonest, followed by those in France, Germany and Britain.
Of the 400 business travellers questioned in the survey, 21.4% of American respondents admitted to submitting false expense claims, with 20.6% of the French and 16.1% of Germans having done the same. The British faired considerably better, with only 13% having altered their expenses.
American and British respondents revealed taxi charges to be the easiest expense items to falsify, while in France and Germany employees are more likely to give a higher business mileage than was actually accrued.
However, the survey also revealed that an overwhelming 60% of business travellers do not claim on legitimate expenses, largely due to lost receipts or having forgotten that certain costs had been incurred.
”In our experience, most business travellers are honest, but it is vital that companies have robust systems in place to verify expense claims,” said KDS CEO, Yves Weisselberger.
”Nearly half of the respondents in our survey said that their companies did not have an online expense management system, which in itself appears surprising,” he continued.
”The technology is currently available to make the whole process of expense management, verification and payment more efficient and transparent, and we believe that companies and their employees would see significant benefits from implementing these systems.”