Corporate travel management

Constantin Macri 20/03/2023 | 14:29

After the covid pandemic, the business travel sector enjoys a rise. Businesses need to travel throughout the world for business purposes. Employees need to travel on the behalf of organization and experience expenses. Some employees pay expenses from their pocket and they are reimbursed by organizations. Corporate travel management is the process of tracking employees’ traveling expenses and processing reimbursement claims.

What is corporate travel management? Why it is significant 

Businesses have many things to manage but one crucial thing that businesses should not compromise is their corporate travel management. It is a process of tracking and controlling employees traveling on the behalf of their organization. Businesses need this to manage for balancing their cost control and traveller safety.

It is important because it ensures businesses get the most benefit out of their travel expense. It is important to analyze how much amount business spends on their traveling. It highlighted how employees spend on their business travel and it ensures that all the traveling expenditures went in the company’s interest.

What is the corporate travel management process? 

The Corporate travel management process included the following tasks:

  • Submitting travel request 

First, employees need to submit a travel request to the manager and the finance team. Travel requests include detail about travel like traveling date, destination, traveling purposes, and stay duration. It is also important for employees to mention the estimated cost of travel, advance amount, and accommodation needs.

Then manager reviews the request and he approved it if the request follows the traveling policies of the organization.

  • Planning Travel 

Planning travel starts after the travel request gets approval. Business travelers, traveling admins, traveling agencies, and traveling managers execute this step. Everything related to traveling plans the travel like flight timing, hotel timing, budget needed for the day, transportation, meeting with a customer, cost needed for a meal with customer and gift for the customer, and much more related travel.

  • Travel expense 

In business travel, employees need pre-trip, post-trip, and on-trip expenses. In travel expense management, employees need to mention every expense that they experience during their travel.

Create and submit a travel expense report

After business travel, employees need to create and submit an expense report to be reimbursed for the expenses that they pay from their pocket on behalf of their organization. If employees want to be reimbursed then they need to mention every aspect of travel expenses. They also need to attach the receipts with the expense report.

  • Travel expense approval 

After submitting the travel expense report, employees need to wait for the approval. The manager and the finance team review the report and check if all the expenses obey the company’s travel and expense policy then they approve the request.

  • Reimbursement 

After approving the traveling expense report, the report is forwarded to the finance team. Then the employees are reimbursed. This may take some time and can be discomforting for employees but an automated system may accelerate the reimbursement process.

What challenges that organizations faced in corporate travel management? 

Following are some of the basic challenges that organizations faced in corporate travel management:

  • Misreporting of finance 

A major challenge that organizations faced is expense fraud. Employees can misreport the expense. It depends on the honesty and loyalty of the employee. If the expense verification is weak, it cannot properly detect expense fraud and the company will get a loss.

  • Disobey traveling policy 

All companies have travel and expense policies but the challenging part is to implement and ensure compliance with these policies.

  • Time-consuming process 

If the company does not have a proper system for travel management then it can be wastage of time and resources as well. Employees need to record all the transactions and collect the receipts.

  • Corrupted data 

The travel and expense management process depends on the data supplied by the employee and managers. The data can be corrupted. The corrupted data is hard to detect without a good corporate travel management system.

What are the benefits of automated corporate travel management? 

By automating the corporate travel management system, organizations can get the following advantages:

  • Save time and resources 

By automating the system, organizations can save time and resources. It increases employee productivity and organization efficiency.

  • Reduce errors 

An automated system eliminates all human errors. It gives correct data and accurate insights.

  • Implement travel policy 

Automated travel management software ensures the implementation of a travel management policy.

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