Visuals to Keep Your Budget on Track

Most people are visual learners. And research has proven that visuals make a big difference when you are trying to communicate. By using visual aids you can get people to receive your message faster, understand your message better and remember your message longer. Faster, better, longer. Who doesn’t want that?

Given this information, it’s no wonder that using visual aids to help you achieve a goal produces better results.

Today your company probably isn’t saving much in terms of T&E. And that’s if you’re lucky. Most companies are stuck in a cycle of overspend – because most companies review expenses after they are spent.

But what if you could start saving 15% today? We start every expense report with a budget providing you better insight into your company’s spend, and we incorporate visual elements to help employees keep their budget on track. Because remember: visuals communicate faster, better and longer.

Whether it’s for a trip or a project, our budget bars update to track spend as expenses are added, and change color to indicate the status of budget goals. Employees can see how much they’ve spent and how much they have left to spend in a single glance. When an employee’s spend comes within 15% of their budget total, the tracker changes from green to yellow, alerting the employee that it’s time to slow spend.

On a trip budget, subcategories are also tracked with budget bars. So say your schedule is really tight and you only find one viable flight option. It’s slightly over budget so when you expense it to that category the flight budget bar turns red. This immediately indicates that you are going to have to save in other areas, maybe on lodging or meals, to stay under the total budget.

The budget bar shapes user behavior by redefining the decision process of spend in a visual way. The goal is clearly defined and employees can instantly see up-to-date progress against that goal every time they track a new expense, making them more inclined to beat their budget.