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Optimizing Workforce Travel Invoicing

Oct 25, 2022

LodgeLink Billing and Payables Manager Meagan Edwards on the evolution of invoicing

“For me, a lot of what we do here is focused on finding best practices,” says Meagan, who began her career in billing 15 years ago. Since then, she has become well-versed in all things invoicing and, by doing so, helped LodgeLink transform travel for workforces around the world.

As a result of her efforts, Meagan has helped bring about the sort of change that has seen LodgeLink become a fast growing ecosystem of hotels and lodges in North America.

She’s been a big part of what LodgeLink can do for clients' finance departments across North America in a variety of industries.

Consolidation

As an internal team dealing with hundreds of properties, with even more crew members on the go, Meagan says companies can easily become bogged down in processing all those folios on their own. By condensing all those numbers into one easy-to-read document, LodgeLink can help save time, effort and money.

“Consolidated invoicing is something that we take pride in here. It's something that really allows our customers to understand when they're getting [invoices], manage their cash flow really tightly, and not be inundated with all that paperwork,” says Meagan.

She highlights LodgeLink’s ability to give clients one invoice as a huge win in terms of saving everyone time and effort.

Relationships

Aside from the sheer effort involved in consolidating thousands of invoices, developing the relationships that precede them can be a daunting task on its own. By serving as a matchmaker of sorts for crews seeking accommodations, LodgeLink can eliminate much of the getting-to-know-you process that can result in varying rates and budget uncertainty.

“One of the challenges that any company goes through when they're dealing with large scale crew travel or even medium size crew travel is really just all the supplier relationships, managing all those different credit terms, the different finances," says Meagan.

"If you have large scale crew travel, you oftentimes are kind of remiss to going out and dealing with maybe 800 different different direct bills [to customers]."

Service

In addition to offering dedicated customer service, developments like Reporting 2.0 and Duty of Care allow organizations to rest assured that the best interests of both its crews and the company are always front of mind.

“Workforce and crew travel is what we do,” says Meagan.

“We’re here to help, around-the-clock. Adding Duty of Care means we can manage risk and care for your team. Teams can receive up-to-date itineraries, access destination information, locate and track travellers and, if need be, initiate emergency communications.”