How much T&E is leaking past your managers?
Six inputs, benchmarked to GBTA data. See recoverable leakage, AP hours lost to rework and your payback period in days.
Your expense program
Defaults reflect a 640-person company with an active sales team.
GBTA benchmark: 19% of submitted reports contain errors or out-of-policy items.
Mid-market analysis puts out-of-policy T&E at 6% to 10% of total spend.
Annual estimate
Leakage recovered
$368,640
of $512,000 out-of-policy spend each year
- AP hours saved
- 759
- 14.6 hrs a week
- AP labor value
- $35,279
- at $46.50 per hour
- Reports corrected
- 2,690
- $131,507 at GBTA $52 each
- Plan cost, annual
- $15,810
- Mid-Market, billed annually
Payback period
14 days
25.5x first-year return on plan cost
Where 8.0% of travel spend is lost
On $6.40M of annual T&E, $512,000 leaves through line items managers never open. Each bar steps down from the total by category.
Hotel folio incidentals
Minibar, spa, in-room dining, premium Wi-Fi, late checkout
$140,800 (2.20%)
Alcohol and entertainment over cap
Per-head dinner limits, bar tabs, non-deductible entertainment
$96,000 (1.50%)
Cabin upgrades and airfare
Premium economy and business upgrades without approval
$76,800 (1.20%)
Personal and weekend spend
Weekend nights, family meals, personal retail on cards
$64,000 (1.00%)
Duplicate submissions
Card and out-of-pocket claims for the same spend
$57,600 (0.90%)
Per diem and mileage overage
Wrong locality rate, home-to-office mileage
$44,800 (0.70%)
Split transactions
Purchases sliced under single-approval limits
$32,000 (0.50%)
Total out of policy
$512,000
The model, line by line
Every number in the calculator traces to a published benchmark or a measured Phyto Nex AI customer median.
| Assumption | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to correct a report with errors | $52 and 18 minutes | GBTA expense management studies |
| Reports containing errors or out-of-policy items | 19% (adjustable) | GBTA benchmark |
| T&E spend outside written policy | 6% to 10% (adjustable) | Mid-market T&E spend analysis |
| Errors resolved by employees without AP | 94% | Phyto Nex AI customer median, Slack and Teams agent |
| Out-of-policy dollars recovered | 72% | Phyto Nex AI customer median: repayments, deductions, reclassification |
| Plan cost | Cheapest published tier for your submitters, annual billing | Phyto Nex AI pricing |
Why leakage hides in plain sight
80%+
Of managers spend under 30 seconds reviewing a report
Industry operational surveys
$58
Average cost to process one expense report
GBTA
14%
Of asset misappropriation cases are expense reimbursement schemes
ACFE Report to the Nations
14 mo
Median duration before a reimbursement scheme is detected
ACFE Report to the Nations
ACFE puts the median loss from an expense reimbursement scheme at $40,000 per organization. Most of it is not one large fraud but hundreds of small line items that clear a manager approval because nobody opened the folio.
Calculator questions
Leakage is any reimbursed or card-paid spend that falls outside your written T&E policy and was approved anyway: hotel minibar and spa charges inside a folio total, alcohol over a dinner cap, unapproved cabin upgrades, weekend nights, duplicate submissions and purchases split to stay under approval limits. Mid-market analysis puts it at 6% to 10% of total T&E.
Not every flagged dollar comes back. Some flags end as documented exceptions a department head approves, and some are reclassified once an employee uploads an itemized receipt. 72% is the median share Phyto Nex AI customers recover through voluntary repayment, AP-approved payroll deductions or correction before reimbursement.
Reports per month times 12, times your error rate, gives errored reports per year. GBTA puts correction time at 18 minutes each. Phyto Nex AI customers see 94% of flags resolved by the employee directly, so the calculator counts 94% of those correction hours as returned to AP, valued at your loaded hourly cost.
Annual billing, which is 15% below the monthly rate. The calculator picks the cheaper of the Mid-Market and Growth plans for your submitter count, including overage. Above 1,500 submitters it uses Growth overage rates as an Enterprise estimate.
Run the free 50-receipt audit. Phyto Nex AI audits 50 of your recent reports at the line-item level and reports the dollars at risk by category, which gives you your actual leakage rate in place of the benchmark.
Swap the benchmark for your real leakage rate.
Run the free 50-receipt audit and see the dollars at risk in your own folios, card feeds and reimbursements in under 10 minutes.
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