Handing in receipts and putting them in Excel: those days are well and truly over

Hortilux Schréder is a leading supplier of growth light solutions for the international greenhouse horticulture industry. Company employees often travel to trade fairs around the world to showcase their sustainable LED and HPS growth light solutions to the global horticulture industry.

They incur a fair amount of business expenses in the process such as hotel accommodation, business lunches and car hire.

Previously, Hortilux's expense claims were all processed manually. The company used Rabobank credit cards and periodically received account statements. Employees would save up their receipts and then hand them in. The accounting department would input these in an Excel form and process everything by hand.

Marcel van Mourik works as a Senior Financial Employee for Hortilux Schréder. We talked to him about the company's modernisation in this area.

From manually processing expense claims to real-time access

Marcel: "We've been working hard these last few years to modernise the process. We already scanned all our purchase invoices digitally via the ISP accounting program, which then processed them automatically. Processing employees' business expenses was the only thing that was still being done manually. We wanted to get rid of that." "

His co-worker John van Rest, Business Controller at Hortilux, had worked with SRXP before and had seen the many advantages of this expense management system. It was an easy choice then to apply for an ICS Business Mastercard. The ICS credit cards were immediately linked up to SRXP.

Marcel van Mourik: "The advantage now that the credit cards are linked to SRXP is that, as soon as an employee incurs an expense, it instantly shows up in the central system. The receipt can also immediately be scanned with a photo and linked to the expense. So employees will never lose a receipt again."

"I can also see at any time which expense claims have not yet been submitted and whether expenses are in line with ICS's monthly statements. If any expense claims are still outstanding, I can contact the cardholders straight away."

Previously, we had no insight into employee business expenses in between statements. The accounting department now has real-time access. This allows for better planning.

Hours of administrative work done in minutes and no more hassle over receipts

Hortilux Schréder's accounting department used to spend one to one-and-a-half hours a week processing cardholders' expense claims. With SRXP, this is done within minutes.

The cardholders themselves also no longer have to worry about keeping stacks of receipts. They can now process their expense claims in just a few seconds. According to van Mourik, this also saves them a couple of hours work a month.

Hortilux Schréder currently uses about 10 business credit cards via ICS. The company does not rule out using more cards in the future, especially since SRXP has greatly reduced pressure on its accounting staff. Van Mourik does not see the added value of business credit cards disappear any time soon: "They will still be used in 50 years' time."