ShopFully brings three solutions into one to simplify travel and expense

ShopFully uses technology and artificial intelligence to connect millions of people around the globe to local shops. With offices in 10 countries, it has a demanding global travel programme. Previously, ShopFully used three separate solutions for travel, expenses, and reimbursements, leading to inefficiencies and highlighting each solution’s shortcomings. The company went shopping for a unified solution and found Navan to be the perfect choice.

Before Navan

In 2022, ShopFully signed up with a travel management company (TMC), but soon after, the provider changed its pricing structure and became less cost-effective.

The TMC also lacked a sufficient rail inventory, which was an issue as a sizeable chunk of ShopFully’s travel activity is within Italy.

For expenses, ShopFully used a prepaid card provider with rigid limits. If the account ran out of funds, transactions would bounce.

The accounting team lacked visibility over many purchases. Larger purchases would sometimes use up the funds in the account without the team knowing in advance. When this occurred, it took two days for newly transferred funds to land in the account — a problematic lag.

Employees who spent company money were expected to submit expenses each month, with receipts for every transaction. They often delayed doing this, leading the finance team to spend valuable time requesting receipts and information from employees.

“

"At the end of each month, the finance team had to follow up with everyone who hadn’t submitted their receipts. For example, a salesperson who spent three euros on their card sometimes didn’t submit that receipt and needed to be nudged, which was really time-consuming for us."

Giacomo Quaglia

Group P&C Procurement & Cost Control Manager

Why ShopFully chose Navan

Streamlined approvals, more travel options

When ShopFully’s previous TMC changed its pricing structure, Giacomo Quaglia, Group Procurement & Cost Control Manager, began searching for a new, all-in-one travel and expense solution.

In Navan, he found a great fit. With the previous travel provider, a ShopFully manager had to manually approve each trip before a booking could be confirmed, adding a delay. With Navan, all compliant bookings are processed and the traveller’s manager is given a window to reject the booking if they see fit, streamlining the process.

Navan also gives ShopFully a much broader travel inventory. Now, ShopFully employees choose from leading car providers and over 30 rail carriers — including multiple carriers in Italy where employees often travel. Users can also manage their own self-serve bookings, changes, and cancellations directly in the platform.

In-depth expense data, fast reimbursements

On the expense side, Giacomo was impressed by Navan’s real-time spend data, a world away from ShopFully’s previous payment solution that used prepaid cards and provided limited insights.

The receipt collection process, which took up a lot of the finance team’s time in the past, was also a big factor. The Navan app makes it easy for travellers to quickly scan and upload a photo of each receipt while on the move.

Previously, it took a long time for out-of-pocket expenses to be reimbursed to employees. Navan’s reimbursement process is much faster — employees receive the money in their local currency within days.

Navan Rewards

Another feature that caught Giacomo’s eye was Navan Rewards, which incentivises ShopFully employees to spend less on hotels and save the company money. “When we heard about this feature,” Giacomo says, “we thought it’s an amazing incentive to offer our people.”

The Navan effect

Huge time savings

In addition to saving time on travel booking and approvals, ShopFully’s expense process has been improved.

Whereas physical receipts were required previously, employees now simply snap a photo of the receipt and upload it to Navan. The reconciliation process is automated on Navan, with data fields populated automatically, even when a receipt is in Italian or another non-English language.

“Being able to scan a receipt that populates all the information for me is hugely beneficial. In terms of time savings, Navan is fantastic,” says Giacomo.

Smart dynamic policies

Before Navan, ShopFully set a fixed nationwide price limit for a one-night hotel per country, but Giacomo says this rigid approach was counterproductive: “Manually setting policies for each country didn’t provide a very accurate reading of pricing in each city. The price of a hotel in Milan would be very different to a hotel in a small Italian town, for example. It resulted in so many issues.”

Now, when a traveller searches for a hotel, Navan calculates a fair local market price in real time for each hotel, adjusted for the location and date, so the company can be sure its travellers are booking at a reasonable price.

Three, two, one

The consolidation of three separate solutions into one has made managing travel a breeze. First and foremost, ShopFully no longer has to pay for and maintain three separate solutions.

Giacomo’s team now has just one point of contact in charge of travel, expense, and reimbursements, creating huge time savings and simplifying the entire travel and expense management process for not only his team, but the finance and accounting teams too.

Employees also have a far better travel experience with Navan, with all their travel and expense needs met on one easy-to-use platform.

Giacomo says “onboarding new employees is easier. They only need to learn how to use the one tool, and because it’s so user-friendly, the whole process is very easy and straightforward.”

The benefits ShopFully is seeing

Since onboarding Navan, ShopFully employees no longer see travel and expense management as a burden, with benefits across the company.

Finance and accounting teams:

• Get all company travel and expense data in real time in one centralised platform
• Can forecast easily and accurately
• No longer waste time chasing receipts 

Travellers:

• Book and manage trips quickly and easily
• Choose from a big travel inventory, including trains and cars
• Don’t have to complete manual expense reports
• Earn rewards when booking cheaper hotels

Looking ahead

ShopFully’s travel, expense and reimbursement processes have improved since the company partnered with Navan. Time savings, cost savings, and happier employees are just three of the benefits the company has seen.

Moving forward, Giacomo and his team want to dive deeper into the data provided by Navan to better understand employee travel habits. They plan to do this by studying data on individual travellers and departments to identify areas of overspend and ways to tweak the travel policy to improve the traveller experience.

This spend analysis will also help them forecast better and increase the value the company gets from its travel activities.