Navigating travel and expense management

Business travel can provide a lot of value to a business and its employees. According to American Express, more than four in five decision-makers in the US say it leads to higher profit and revenue, and many business travellers see it as a job perk. But it also comes at a high cost. The Global Business Travel Association reports that global business travel spending is expected to reach $1.4 trillion in 2024.

To get the benefits of business travel without blowing through your budget, it's crucial to create solid processes and procedures for travel and expense (T&E) management.

The basics of travel and expense management

Travel and expense management is the process of tracking and optimising business travel expenses in order to keep costs under control and maintain accurate records. T&E management typically involves developing a policy that sets clear guidelines for employee travel booking, expense record-keeping and reimbursement processes.

Challenges faced in T&E management

To effectively manage travel expenses in a corporate setting, you should be prepared to address some of the main issues that arise:

Inaccurate expense reports

Many employees struggle with keeping accurate expense records and submitting them in a timely manner. Businesses need to consider the best procedures for handling expense reports that have errors, are incomplete, or aren't submitted promptly.

Receipt and travel documentation management

Requiring receipts and other travel documentation can potentially help with expense report accuracy issues, but it creates a different challenge: how to manage the piles of paper. Think through what types of documentation to require and how to organise and store the documents you receive.

Unauthorised bookings

When employees book their own travel without following established guidelines, there's a risk they'll make choices that don't align with your business goals. Unauthorised bookings give you less control over travel costs, make it harder to access employee travel information, and can work against your sustainability goals.

Ineffective cost management

Travel can quickly get expensive. Keeping costs under control is essential to staying within your business budget. But, with inflation and seasonal changes, travel prices are often hard to predict, making effective cost management a constant challenge.

Limited data visibility

Travel expense data has the potential to help you track spending trends and make better decisions about your travel budget. To get that benefit, though, you need a good way to collect and review your T&E data. If you can't effectively assess where your travel budget goes now, you'll struggle to predict and manage costs over time.

Absence of comprehensive travel expense policies

Employees can't intuitively know what your business expects and allows for their business travel. They need to be told. Travel expense policies can guide employees toward the most cost-effective options for their business trips and help you keep travel expenses under control.

Creating effective T&E processes

The best solution to all these challenges is establishing T&E processes that reflect best practices for travel expense management.

Five tips for more effective T&E processes

1. Define clear travel and expense management guidelines

One of the most important steps to better travel expense management is clarifying what rules and processes you want employees to follow and putting them in writing. When drafting your guidelines, good information to cover includes:

Who should be in charge of travel bookings? Should employees book their own flights or ask an admin in their department, or should all bookings go through one main department?
How should payment work? Will business travellers be assigned a company card, expected to use existing company accounts, or pay out of pocket and get reimbursed?
How much can employees spend on food and ground transportation while travelling? Should you set a per-diem or provide vouchers, have them submit receipts up to an allowed amount, or let them set up rides and food deliveries through a company account?
What is the process for reimbursement? How long does an employee have to submit expense reports or receipts? What are they expected to submit to be reimbursed?
How will you keep track of business expenses? What documentation and/or tools will you use to record and track expenses?

Once your guidelines are documented, work out how best to communicate them to all your employees. Publish them somewhere where employees can easily access them when needed, and update your training process for new hires to include them.

2. Establish streamlined booking procedures

Booking flights, lodging and cars can be a lot of work. An overwhelmed employee who chooses the easiest option won't necessarily choose the best one. A streamlined booking process will make the work of booking travel easier on them, while also helping them stay within your guidelines. Your booking procedures can:

Define how they should make the booking, including any business accounts they should use (for example, if you have a business account with a travel agency, particular airline or rideshare company)
Set price limits for each type of booking, along with steps to take if an option isn't available at the prices allowed (as with last-minute travel or visits to an expensive city)
Clarify any preferred airlines, hotel chains or ground-transportation brands you have a relationship with, so employees know to check them first

3. Make use of automated expense reporting

Expecting every business traveller at your company to dutifully hang on to all their receipts and submit them promptly is probably unrealistic. Automated expense reporting can remove a common business travel stressor, while also improving the accuracy and efficiency of travel expense tracking. Some travel brands offer tools for this if you set up a centralised business account and direct employees to use it for all purchases they make with the brand. Having dedicated company credit cards for travel purchases can help too.

4. Monitor and enforce your T&E policies

Creating guidelines will only take you so far. You also have to make sure people follow them. Pay attention to how well employees adopt the guidelines, and determine how you'll handle it when employees don't follow the procedures. If an employee makes a booking that exceeds the allowed amounts without approval, for instance, will the business still reimburse them in full or only up to the price outlined in your guidelines?

5. Regularly review and improve your processes

Your T&E processes don't need to be set in stone. Be open to feedback from your business travellers and any employees involved in the administrative side of managing business travel. If a guideline is causing them extra work or creating a negative travel experience, for instance, or if your T&E data reveals areas where costs are higher than expected or cost-cutting is causing problems, make changes. Does your preferred airline have frequent cancellations? The savings from using them may not be worth the cost in the negative impact to your travellers.

Benefits of implementing efficient T&E procedures

Cost savings: When you set clear standards for the amount employees can spend on travel expenses, you take back control over travel costs. That can lead to significant savings.

More satisfied employees: By establishing clear booking procedures and introducing automated expense tracking, you reduce the amount of work and stress employees have to deal with. Instead, they can focus on enjoying their trip and doing their job more effectively while there.

Better data: By implementing better processes for tracking expenses, you also gain better data. T&E data can help you identify trends in how you're spending your budget and which trips and travel brands have the highest costs. You can use that knowledge to make better decisions moving forward.

Improved productivity: Introducing automation to some of the more tedious aspects of business travel doesn't just make employees' lives easier; it also gives them back time and energy to spend on more important work. That can lead to an overall increase in productivity, while simplifying and speeding up the reimbursement process.

Streamline transportation expenses with Uber for Business

Simplifying business travel benefits everyone. Companies reap the value that business trips offer, while controlling costs and seeing productivity boosts. Employees enjoy a better travel experience with less stress before, during and after. Working with the right travel brands – that provide tools and options to help you reach your goals – makes achieving those results easier.

Uber for Business provides a central dashboard you can use to manage ground transportation and offer easy access to meals for employees while travelling. Once you get them set up, they can use their Uber account to conveniently book rides right when they need them and order food from the restaurants of their choice.

Uber's platform not only helps track expenses automatically, but also makes it easy for you to access travel spending data and glean insights from it. And you can set spending limits within the platform that keep employees from exceeding the amount allotted to them – making it simpler for them to remember and follow the rules, and for you to keep costs under control.

Products and features mentioned in this article may not be available in your region. Please reach out to Uber for Business customer support if you've got questions.

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