Business Spend Insights: How will last year make 2023 better?

Optimizing business spend

Every spending moment is a potential risk: where’s the money going? What’s it being used for? And most importantly, will this spend move the business forward? 

Employees who can answer these questions in the moment turn spending risks into opportunities. But to make that possible, we must first look at spending trends from last year to see how their trajectories will impact this year. 

SAP Concur partnered with Oversight – an industry leading provider of AI-based risk mitigation and spend monitoring solutions - to analyze customer data and share findings and recommendations in this report. Some key findings include:  

  • Spending is getting back to pre-pandemic levels: Overall spend in 2022 increased 73% and transactional volume was up 51% over 2021. 
  • Travel and Expense spending is driving the increase: Between Q1 and Q4 2022, travel-specific spend increased 178%, based in part on increased in business meetings, conferences trade shows and general business travel. 
  • Top six spend categories changed: Hotels and motels continues to reign on the top-six spend list while automobiles and vehicles declined from 2021. 
  • The number of violations and costs to companies increased: The number of violations went up 7.9% and violation costs to companies up 9.83% from 2021. 

Knowing where employees spend most money and where violations are found are valuable when determining which spend area to focus on for improvement. And knowing what violations happened – as well as why they happened – can help you prevent them.

Download the report to learn detailed 2022 business spend trends, and then use the recommendations provided in the report to improve your compliance and business spend management.