Expenses for IT equipment increase by 18% during lockdown

Across the UK millions of office workers have been told to stay at home to help stop the spread of Covid-19, and seemingly overnight the world of business travel and expenses was a distant memory.

Life working from our kitchen tables, via Zoom calls and wifi, has meant businesses are now seeing a change in expense categories from their teams, as IT equipment replaces office lunches.

Rydoo, a travel booking and expenses app, studied the expenses of 850 companies in the UK, including over 12,000 expenses, and found:

• Expense for software has seen the biggest rise during lockdown with a 28% increase as work teams sign up to Slack, Zoom, Skype and Dropbox
• Expenses for remote working IT equipment has risen by 18% including working from home accessories
• Office equipment expenses has seen a drop by nearly half (45%) as workers set up at home

Overall, the UK has seen a 20% reduction of expenses being logged, with the biggest category drop affecting food delivery services such as UberEats and Deliveroo, as lunchtime treats, client meetings and dinners are no more.

With social distancing measures expected to continue throughout the summer, companies across the UK must ensure the processes they use remotely are no longer paper based but digitised as our ways of working change forever.

“The new working reality changes not only what is billed as expenses, but the process involved,” commented Rydoo CEO Sébastien Marchon. “Employees who work from home must be able to submit expenses digitally to ensure the processes are efficient and error-free. Digital billing ensures prompt reimbursement and supports the finance team with automatic category assignment, the implementation of company-wide accounting guidelines and agile adaptation to new working environments.”

Rydoo reinvents travel and expense management with no more manual input. The streamlined app and desktop system lets you scan your receipts and submit with just a few clicks, as well as verify your flight information, and check-in and check-out in seconds. Designed to let finance teams approve expenses in real-time with its central billing system, a single invoice made up of all business travel-related expenses is also shared at the end of each month.