Case Study

Case Study: University of Essex

The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. It was established in 1963 and welcomed its first students in 1964 and delivers transformational education to more than 17,800 students at three campuses. University of Essex is a truly international institution with a long history of welcoming students from around the world.

Time consuming manual expense forms

The University of Essex has a duty of care to ensure its staff and students are safe and well prepared when undertaking University related trips and activities, and the associated spend for these international trips. Travel and accommodation is booked via the University designated travel providers, however travelling overseas often incurs additional sundry expenditure which in the past would have been facilitated by a currency cash advance. This proved difficult to manage and quite stressful for the staff member assigned the advance and was time consuming when filling in the expense forms at the end of the trip with their receipts, together with converting the currency underspend.

Reducing the cash burden

Depending on the location of the trip there can be expenses that can’t be prepaid. Meals out, excursion entry, local transport, and other spending. It’s unreasonable and inconvenient to expect staff and students to carry cash and to fully reconcile their cash advance using a manual process.

The University of Essex uses the Caxton expense management system, including expense cards module. The Payments team now manages 17 currency expense cards and 10 GBP expense cards.

When staff are allocated an expense card they can now spend anywhere where they see the Mastercard logo, and it makes paying for meals and general expenses a lot easier. Staff can use the Caxton app to scan and categorise receipts and the Payments team can review expenditure, set individual limits and top up approved funds anytime.

The fully integrated dashboard gives the Payments team a single place to get real-time view of spending, report by category and reconcile expenses online, directly into their own accounts package, saving valuable time and money