WalkMe Survey Shows 44 Per Cent of Australian Workers Don’t File Expense Reports, Leaving Billions of Dollars on the Table
WalkMe Inc. (NASDAQ: WKME), a leading provider of digital adoption solutions, today announced new survey results that show 44% of Australian workers are not filing an expense report for money due back to them, leaving billions of dollars on the table. Thirty-five percent of workers say that work expenses create job stress with another 19% claiming unreimbursed expenses are negatively impacting their financial situation this holiday season.
A vast majority (63%) of Australian workers experienced challenges when filing work-related expenses, the top issues being time-consuming paperwork and the length of time to get reimbursed. Adding to the obstacles, 24% of Australian workers blamed their company’s cumbersome expense reimbursement process as a reason for not filing.
Creating a frictionless experience for employees to reduce paperwork and time spent on expense reporting is a key part of the reimbursement process. While many may believe employees are the sole beneficiary of accurate and timely expense reporting, it is an imperative for employers for:
Compliance: organisations have policies in place to ensure compliance with tax laws. and regulations, including keeping track of company spending. Proper expense reporting is part of these policies.
Budgeting: expense reports provide valuable insight to make informed budget decisions.
Accountability: reporting promotes transparency and accountability to ensure that employees –and the company –are spending money responsibly.
Employee experience: companies must provide ideal means for employees to file accurate and timely expense reports to make the employee “whole,” thus driving positive employee experience.
“When expense reporting is so cumbersome or the process doesn’t feel worth the effort, employees will feel dissatisfaction with their jobs and more work stress, and that’s a problem for business,” said Chelsea Pyrzenski, Chief People Officer at WalkMe. “Enterprises can experience compliance and end-of-year fiscal reporting issues as a result of the expense reporting mess, which makes them vulnerable. It’s in everyone’s interest to ensure the process is very easy, efficient and seamless, to eliminate the time-wasting shuffling of receipts and the guesswork around software and policies. When used with leading expense management systems, Digital Adoption Platforms like WalkMe have proven to ease expense report frustration and radically improve both the employee and employer experience.”
Additional data points
32% of Australian workers are still submitting paper receipts to finance.
45% of Australians don’t submit for expenses worth less than $5 and 21% won’t submit for expenses less than $10.
35% of Australian workers say that claiming work expenses adds stress to their job while 19% say that unreimbursed expenses has negatively impacted their financial situation during the 2023 holiday period.
Globally, the survey found that respondents in the 35-44-year-old age group were most likely to leave money on the table (58%), while the majority (63%) of those 55+ always filed an expense report for money due back to them.
Globally, the survey found that 18-35-year-olds were most likely (31.6%) to have unreimbursed expenses negatively impact their financial situation during the 2023 holiday season, more than twice as likely as 55+ (15.2%)
Australia is the most forgetful about filing expense reports (45.2%), 7% more than the next most forgetful region, U.K.
44% of Australian workers agreed or strongly agreed that AI and productivity tools have made expensing easier.
About the Survey
Conducted in November 2023 in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Singapore, and Australia, the multinational survey polled more than 2,400 workers, including 212 in Australia, across a wide array of industries and working ages. The research, conducted by Propeller Insights and sponsored by WalkMe, surveyed those who incur reimbursable work-related expenses as part of their job and all worked full-time with three-quarters in a self-identified managerial or supervisory role. Access the report here and infographic/summary here.
About WalkMe
WalkMe's cloud-based digital adoption platform enables organisations to measure, drive and act to ultimately accelerate their digital transformations and better realize the value of their software investments. Our platform leverages proprietary technology to provide visibility to an organisation's Chief Information Officer and business leaders, while improving user experience, productivity and efficiency for employees and customers. Alongside walkthroughs and third-party integration capabilities, our platform can be customised to fit an organisation's needs.
