Tuesday 9th April, 2013

Friends Life, which provides pensions, investments and insurance for over five million customers, is investing in an intelligent online expenses management solution. This solution (developed by Software Europe) is being provided by Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced)* and is due to go live in June 2013.  

Friends Life will be using the online expenses management solution, linked with its e5 finance system from Advanced, to replace its existing manually-intensive software solution. The new solution is expected to significantly reduce expenditure by improving claim accuracy and more effectively enforcing the company’s expenses policy.

Will James, Head of Finance Systems from Friends Life Group, said: "Our current expenses solution does not have any in-built controls and so we are heavily reliant on line managers to effectively enforce our expenses policy. The new solution will automatically ask questions of staff at the point in which they enter their claims, cutting inaccuracies and inflated claims."

Staff will be asked a range of questions as they enter their claims, such as whether the cost of a meal was for more than one person and if so, were they eating with a colleague or a guest? For mileage claims, the system will automatically suggest the correct mileage and if the mileage claim is more than the suggested figure, the member of staff will have to justify the difference.

Employees will be able to clearly see what they can claim for and the limits in each case and approvers will be provided with visible prompts for items that exceed limits or appear to be duplicates. This will more effectively support company policy.

James said: "We anticipate greater control over expense claims, reducing risk and allowing us to be smarter about our expenditure."

*Advanced and Software Europe signed a partnership agreement in December 2009.