Managing a business travel expense, let alone being in charge of taking care of all your company’s business travel budget isn’t an easy task. You have the responsibility of making sure your travelers are happy but at the same time your company doesn’t break the bank. It’s like a balancing game where you have to be willing to compromise. This is where having the right expense management software to help you do the job well comes in handy.
We will look at what is travel expense meaning, how expense management software can help solve your spend management challenges, and some tricks of the trade to ensure you keep travelers and road warriors satisfied.
What is travel and expense
So, before we dive in, you may be wondering what is travel and expense? Travel and expense or T&E as it is popularly called, refers to all the different costs associated with traveling on business. This includes airfare, hotel stays, meals, and/or entertainment.
What you decide to include in your permissible T&E budget will dictate your travel policy, and also help travelers better understand how to book their trips. For example, if they have $250 available for a hotel room, maybe they will book a hotel with less stars but closer to the city center to be nearby meetings and conference activities.
Pro tip
Properly managing T&E is key in order to operate within budget and to operate efficiently, and the ability to automate these processes through expense management software is fundamental to maintaining your company’s budget.
Travel expense meaning
What does T&E mean? If you’re looking for the travel expense meaning it refers to the operational costs associated with travel. An average of 10% of most company’s budgets are allocated to T&E.
GetGoing travel & expense solves spend-management challenges
Understanding how to better allocate your expenses when it comes to travel is key to unlocking budget control. But how can you do this?
It’s all about finding travel management software that allows you to automate finance systems and track your expenses, travel costs, upload invoices and say goodbye to lost receipts.
Common challenge: lost receipts and slow approval process
How many times have travelers come back to you and told you they lost a receipt and can’t make a claim, or how many times have they asked you when their expense reports would be approved?
Answer: GetGoing Expense Management
Say hello to GetGoing Expense Management. GetGoing allows you to easily store and scan receipts right from your mobile device. This means you can scan receipts while you’re on-the-go reducing the chance that the receipts will get lost. Once all your receipts are scanned and travelers have submitted their expenses, the expense report gets automatically sent to the right approver. Approvers can approve with just a few clicks.
Common challenge: Having too many tools
There’s nothing more frustrating than having too many different choices of software in your toolkit, and not knowing where to turn to get the job done. You might have one tool for project management. One tool to look for flights, one to look for hotels, another one for expenses, and yet another one for travel management. How’s that for a headache
Answer: GetGoing Travel
This is where GetGoing Travel management and expense comes in. You can have one all-in-one tool to handle all your travel and expense needs. You no longer need to shuffle among a million different tools, it’s that easy.
Common challenge: keeping track of business expenses and staying on budget
There are so many moving parts when it comes to managing a T&E budget that sometimes it feels impossible to stay on budget.
Answer: GetGoing automated travel policy
In order to stay on budget, especially considering that 10% of your budget is going to T&E, it’s important to consider setting up an automated travel policy that works in the background within your travel management platform This way you set up your price caps, your approval flows, what types of expenses are permitted, and allowing you to customize policies according to job function or seniority, and the platform does the rest.
What is an expense policy template and will it help me?
An expense policy template is a tool that many companies use to formally lay out and detail the process and the basis for expense reimbursement. It’s helpful for both employees and employers to be clear on what is covered in the expense policy, especially as related to T&E. The policy template may be a tool you set up one time and then can use for people to guide their booking decisions.
Generally the policy template should cover employee expenses, business expenses and travel expenses. By clearly defining the different categories that can be claimed, you can find your staff has greater autonomy and it will be easier to comply with your budgeting needs.
What are the rules for deducting business travel expenses?
In some places, like the US, there are federal per diem rates for lodging, meals and incidentals. Expenses when relating to business travel must be ordinary and necessary, meaning they may not be lavish, extravagant or for personal purposes. This is why when adding on a bleisure portion of business trips, it’s important not to include this in your business travel expenses.
Business travel deductions are deductible according to the IRS “when employees must travel away from their tax home or main place of work for business reasons. A taxpayer is traveling away from home if they are away for longer than an ordinary day’s work and they need to sleep to meet the demands of their work while away.”
Furthermore, it states that “travel expenses for conventions are deductible if attendance benefits the business. There are special rules for conventions held outside North America.”
A business travel expense doesn’t have to be a headache
With the right expense management tool in place, you can assure that a business travel expense is just like any other expense, and can be handled quickly and easily thanks to the right tools.
Want to find the right T&E software for your business.