How to Recover Unauthorized Travel Expenses

One of the most overlooked services that collection agencies provide is employment reimbursement collection. If one of your employees, or a prior employee, owes money to your company, you are entitled to compensation. Any time a person or business owes money to your company that you can’t recover, you need to contact our team at Summit A•R as soon as possible.

As in the case of most situations that eventually end up in the hands of a debt resolution specialist, getting money back into the hands of your company can be an enormous challenge. In fact, you could make your situation much worse without the expertise that comes with years of experience and training. That’s why our team of experienced collection professionals is ready to help you recover your money fast.

Are All Businesses Susceptible Unauthorized Travel Expenses? 

While any company can quickly end up in a situation where an employee, or past employee, owes money to that business, large companies stand to lose the most since they tend to operate with larger budgets and employ a larger pool of personnel. Given how many people a larger business employs, it can be easy for someone to spend money. Even if you have an experienced team in your accounting department, unauthorized expenses often stay hidden until the problem becomes more complicated. If you want to be sure you’ll recover employee reimbursement debt of any kind, you need to outsource the task to professionals dedicated to that job.

The Special Case of Travel Expenses

Travelling to remote locations to conduct business can be a fun perk for any job. Such a trip also provides opportunities for your employees to enjoy the local offerings for entertainment or nightlife on their time off. There’s nothing wrong with providing time for some personal enjoyment while your employees are on business trips, but they shouldn’t get to pay for personal expenses on the company dime.

How Do Employees Accrue Unauthorized Travel Expenses?

Whether you provide employees with a company credit card intended for business trips or you have a running expense account with a local hotel chain, you need to trust your employees to stick within authorized spending on the company’s accounts. It’s easy for anyone to take advantage of this situation since those running a hotel or local restaurant will be happy to charge more to your account if told to do so by someone employed by your company.

Why Do Unauthorized Travel Expenses Stay Hidden?

One of the most significant problems regarding unauthorized travel expenses is that they are notoriously challenging to identify, even for a seasoned veteran of your accounts receivable department. For example, you may have meal expenses for your employees on your confidant credit card or hotel account but not authorized alcoholic beverages at the hotel bar.

These extra expenses can be difficult to notice without a point-by-point review of every item on each bill. You should ask yourself how easily one of your employees could get away with billing unauthorized travel expenses to your company. How likely are the chances that one of your accountants will be able to identify such expenses without being specifically prompted to look for them?

How Do Collectors Recover Unauthorized Travel Expenses on Your Behalf

Unfortunately, the answer is often that the best accountants do not notice unauthorized expenses before a suspicion to look for them arrives. Often, such expenses are only identified months later or longer when your accounting department is examining your books meticulously for ways to improve your cash flow, at which time the employee may no longer work for you and could be nearly impossible to track down.

Professional Skip Tracing

The first step that a debt resolution expert from our team will take in recovering your debt is to contact the employee in question. If they prove a challenge to locate or seem to be actively avoiding contact, the account will be turned over to our skip tracing department, which is led by an on-staff licensed private investigator.

Ethical Communication Strategies

The goal at this point in the process is to initiate a dialogue with the debtor, which includes respectful and dignified communication. Establishing a tone of cooperation and respectful negotiations at this point is one of the most vital aspects of our collection strategy, which has proven to be more effective than aggressive tactics time and again. After all, there’s a reason why our team holds one of the best track records in the industry, and you can rest assured that our success story never involves unethical conduct.

Most cases we encounter at Summit A•R never need to progress much further beyond these stages. After all, people facing debt issues are often eager to resolve the problem amicably and are happy to cooperate once they realize that our team is not out to get them but rather to come to a fair resolution for all parties involved. This agenda lies at the heart of our collection strategies and has a lot to do with why ethical collection techniques are so effective when in the hands of experienced professionals.

Litigation Team

On the other hand, there are cases where the individual in question refuses to cooperate or enter into communication, no matter how they are approached. In such cases, our team is prepared with a full-service litigation program to ensure your money is returned to you.

While most companies prefer to avoid litigation, it can be an effective way to resolve the issue. In some cases, this step is an effective way to get the attention of the debtor so that they are willing to begin negotiation, and a lengthy process involving the court of law can be avoided entirely.

The Best Advice You’ll Ever Get on Debt Collection

While the entire process of recovering money that a prior employee owes to your company due to unauthorized travel expenses can seem complicated and lengthy to those who do not work in the collections industry, there’s only one tip that any business owner or manager needs to ensure a successful recovery of their money. When you’re facing a loss of income because anyone owes money to your company, always contact Summit A•R for help as soon as possible.

You can learn more about how our team can help recover your money by contacting us at your earliest convenience.