How New York State Departments Reduced Travel & Expense Costs by up to 30% with ExpenseAnywhere

Government agencies operate under some of the most rigorous T&E requirements in the U.S. Every reimbursement request, travel authorization, and corporate card transaction must comply with detailed policy requirements while maintaining transparency and accountability for public funds.

ExpenseAnywhere's relationship with New York State began in 2008, when the Department of Transportation contracted Virtual Communications Inc. – ExpenseAnywhere's parent company – for P-Card system installation and setup. The Office of General Services followed shortly after, signing a statewide software contract later that same year. By 2010, the Public Service Commission had also come on board. 

Over the years that followed, the DOT relationship deepened into a core operational dependency. Annual licence renewals are documented continuously from 2015 through at least 2021, covering ExpenseAnywhere's full expense management and P-Card system. The deployment eventually expanded across multiple New York State agencies — including the Department of Health, the Attorney General's Office, and the Office of General Services — as well as several US Department of Energy national laboratories.

Results & Impact

Initial Outcomes

Across participating New York State departments and U.S. federal agencies, ExpenseAnywhere delivered measurable operational and financial improvements:

• 15–30% reduction in overall T&E costs through improved visibility, policy enforcement, and process efficiency.
• 40–60% reduction in manual processing effort, freeing finance and administrative teams from routine data entry and compliance review activities.
• Reimbursement cycles reduced from weeks to days, significantly improving employee experience and reducing administrative backlogs.
• 90–95% policy compliance rates achieved through automated enforcement of agency T&E policies.
• 85–95% user adoption rates across deployed organizations.

The durability of these results is reflected in the procurement record itself. The Department of Transportation renewed its ExpenseAnywhere licence every year for at least six consecutive years as an actively maintained operational platform, as opposed to a legacy system kept on life support.

Operational Outcomes

• Automated travel authorization and approval workflows reduced delays before travel occurred.
• Integrated corporate card reconciliation streamlined transaction matching and reduced administrative review requirements.
• Real-time analytics improved visibility into travel spending, budgets, and compliance performance across departments.
• Seamless ERP integration enabled agencies to modernize expense management without replacing existing financial systems.

The Challenge: Government Travel Management at Scale

Public sector organizations must balance operational efficiency with strict financial accountability. T&E processes often involve multiple approvals, complex reimbursement rules, audit requirements, and detailed policy controls.

For many New York State agencies in the mid-2000s, these processes remained heavily manual. Employees spent significant time preparing reports, managers reviewed submissions manually, and finance teams were responsible for policy verification, reimbursement processing, and reconciliation activities.

The result was administrative overhead, slow reimbursement timelines, and increased compliance risk. Manual reviews created opportunities for policy exceptions to be missed, while fragmented systems limited visibility into agency-wide travel spending.

As travel volumes increased and reporting requirements became more stringent, agencies needed a solution capable of automating the entire T&E lifecycle while maintaining full policy control and auditability.

The Solution

In 2008, ExpenseAnywhere implemented an end-to-end T&E automation platform purpose-built for the requirements of government organisations. Beginning with P-Card system installation at the Department of Transportation, the platform was progressively configured to automate every stage of the T&E process.

‍Over the years, the platform has evolved in step with emerging technologies, incorporating AI-powered receipt processing, real-time spend analytics, and touchless expense reporting capabilities while continuing to integrate with the financial systems agencies already had in place.

The platform automates every stage of the T&E process, including:

• Pre-travel authorization and approval workflows.
• Automated policy enforcement aligned with federal and New York State travel regulations.
• Expense reporting and reimbursement processing.
• Corporate card transaction capture and reconciliation.
• Real-time spend analytics and budget reporting.
• Integration with existing ERP and financial management systems.

By applying consistent controls across the full T&E lifecycle, agencies gained greater visibility into spending activity while reducing the manual effort required to maintain compliance.

Replicability for Other Agencies

The outcomes achieved across New York State departments and U.S. federal agencies demonstrate the broader applicability of T&E automation across government.

Any organization managing high volumes of employee travel, reimbursements, procurement card transactions, and policy compliance obligations faces the same operational challenges addressed by ExpenseAnywhere. 

By automating the full T&E lifecycle, agencies can reduce administrative burden, improve employee experience, strengthen compliance performance, and achieve measurable cost savings without replacing existing financial infrastructure.