A survey of over 200 finance and accounting professionals nationwide found a dichotomy between corporate card usage and expense management software adoption, according to the annual Expense Management Trends Survey from Center, an expense management software provider.

While nearly half of respondents (46%) report increased corporate card usage, only 2% have increased adoption of expense management software, creating compliance and visibility challenges for employees and finance teams.
Other findings show perennial expense management pain points such as laborious month-end closes, minimal user support and policy confusion re-emerging amid a dynamic work landscape and increase in corporate travel.

These findings, according to the report, suggest that without the increased use of software to support rising corporate card usage, employees and finance teams will continue to battle disjointed processes, labor-intensive reporting and manual reconciliation, thwarting productivity and output. Among the findings:

• Use of expense management software has “lingered” between 39% and 47% since 2021.

Respondents report the top three expense management challenges in 2024 are:
• Time spent filling out expense reports (46%)
• Expense policy support/helping users understand and follow expense processes (43%)
• Credit card reconciliation (42%)

•The average number of days reported to close the books was 14 days, up from last year.

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