Client stories
Notes from finance leads who asked Think Online to examine travel expense applications under real close deadlines.
They flagged duplicate taxi claims across two cost centres that our own checklist had missed for three quarters. The memo named the claim IDs, so our AP team could reverse them before close.
Min-ji Park, Finance Controller — manufacturing firm, Gyeonggi
The sampling plan was tighter than I expected. We still had to chase a few travellers for missing boarding passes, which slowed the first week. Once the files arrived, the exception list was usable in our audit-committee pack.
Hyeon-woo Lee, Shared Services Manager — Seoul HQ
We only asked for a policy exception review after lodging caps were raised. Think Online showed how old “one-time” approvals were being copied into later applications without fresh sign-off.
Sora Kim, Internal Control Lead — professional services partnership
Pre-close screening held seventeen meal claims that exceeded the daily limit and lacked attendee lists. Not dramatic, but enough to keep the ledger clean for March.
Joon Park, Accounting Manager — logistics company, Incheon corridor
Extended story: overseas lodging before year-end
A Seoul headquarters with heavy Q4 overseas travel asked for a full travel expense audit covering July–November applications. The population included roughly 1,400 claims across sales and engineering. We sampled 120 applications, weighting overnight stays in Tokyo, Singapore, and Frankfurt.
Findings centred on hotel folios that listed room rates above the published cap without an attached exception form, and on itineraries where the return flight date did not match the final lodging night. Finance reversed or reclassified the affected amounts before the December close. The mild friction: several travellers were already on year-end leave, so evidence collection stretched five extra days beyond the original plan — a constraint we now flag explicitly in engagement letters for Q4 work.
Extended story: new policy, first quarter sample
After a revised meal and entertainment annex took effect in January, a shared-service centre commissioned sample testing of February applications only. Exception rates for missing attendee names fell after the first feedback loop with approvers. The engagement stayed short — ten business days — and fed a wider internal-audit plan scheduled for summer.