7 reasons commuting allowances slow down HR
.svg)
Why does managing commuting allowances without budget software take so much time?
A commuting allowance looks simple on paper: someone commutes, you reimburse a fixed amount per kilometer. In practice, that simplicity turns into a recurring monthly workload for HR and payroll, especially when everything still runs through spreadsheets, emails, and manual entry into the payroll software. At an organization with a few hundred employees, that adds up to hours of work every month.
Here are the seven reasons why, and where automation makes the difference.
1. Every commuter needs a separate calculation
Home address, number of commuting days, mode of transport, and mid-year changes all feed into the right amount, and each mode of transport has its own rules. For bikes, the 2026 tax and social security exemption runs up to €0.37 per kilometer, capped at €3,700 a year, but that's an exemption ceiling, not automatically what you owe. Absent a more favorable sectoral or company agreement, CBA No. 164 sets a bike allowance of €0.30 per kilometer cycled, capped at 20 km one-way, for employees who cycle regularly, for example at least once a week. For personal car use, the exemption ceiling is €500 a year, with no obligation to pay it. With a hundred employees, that quickly becomes a hundred individual calculations that need to add up every month.
2. Address changes don't flow through automatically
An employee moves, and the commuting allowance should change with it. Without a link to the HR system, that change sometimes reaches payroll late, risking an incorrect payout.
3. Part-time and variable schedules require recalculation
A shift from full-time to 80%, or a variable schedule with remote days, changes the number of actual commuting days. Without automatic syncing, that recalculation has to happen by hand, and it's easy to miss.
4. Proof of expenses arrives separately from the payout
Train passes, bike allowance proof, and carpool confirmations arrive through different channels: email, paper, a shared folder. HR has to collect, check, and match each one before the payout is correct.
5. Wrong pay codes slip through on the way to the social secretary
Commuting allowances, bike allowances, and public transport subscriptions are usually processed under different pay codes, which also vary by payroll provider. A manual handoff to a social secretary such as SD Worx, Partena, Attentia, or Securex can introduce an error, with an incorrect payslip as a possible result.
6. Reimbursements fall behind reality
When processing happens after the payroll deadline, the payout can slip to the next payroll run, triggering the same questions at the HR help desk.
7. There's no central overview
Without a central dashboard, it becomes harder to see at any given moment how much has actually been paid out and whether it matches policy. Course-correcting during the year gets harder as a result, especially heading into an audit.
Where automation makes the difference
All seven issues come from the same root cause: data that has to travel manually from one system to another. Software that centralizes commuting data, calculates allowances per your own rules, and prepares payroll data catches most of these manual steps.
Mbrella Commute does exactly that. Employees log their commuting trips in the app, and the allowance is calculated based on mode of transport, distance, and the employer's rules: amount per kilometer, submission deadlines, kilometer limits, and exceptions for vacation or remote days. That data then either lands as payroll-ready output or flows through an available integration, depending on your payroll provider and setup. Public transport also runs through one platform: subscriptions with NMBS/SNCB, De Lijn, TEC, and MIVB/STIB can be centrally ordered and invoiced, saving up to 26% through group orders. CO2 emissions are tracked automatically based on logged trips.
Mbrella itself reports more than 1,500 Belgian companies and 45,000 active users, and more than 11 hours of saved HR admin per month. Mbrella's Trust Center lists ISO 27001 compliance and certification for its information security management system. With the right setup for your payroll provider, that's the difference between putting out the same fires every month and a process that mostly runs itself.