Many employees these days engage in business travel regularly. While engaging in domestic or international business travel, an employee spends money on air travel, accommodations, ground transportation, and meals. Also, he incurs various ancillary expenses to accomplish business travel goals.
Employers cover and repay travel expenses incurred by employees in several ways. Some organizations cover business travel expenses by providing per diem allowances to employees in advance. At the same time, some organizations repay travel expenses by supporting post-trip reimbursements.
If your company or startup supports post-trip reimbursements, you should streamline and accelerate the process by defining a set of rules and guidelines. A well-drafted travel reimbursement policy will help your business streamline a complex process like travel expense management.
Also, it will create opportunities to ensure policy compliance and automate expense reports. If your business finds it challenging to increase the ROI of business travel, you should understand the importance of a well-crafted travel expense reimbursement policy.
9 Reasons Why Your Business Must Implement a Well-Crafted Travel Reimbursement Policy
1. Keep Employees Happy and Motivated
Employers these days make business trips successful by helping employees minimize and manage stress. Work travelers often experience stress after business trips when their travel expense claims are not processed and reimbursed quickly.
The stress further makes them feel unmotivated and impacts their productivity. A well-defined policy will help your company speed up travel expense reimbursements. Hence, your employees will focus on their professional responsibilities after business trips.
2. Reduce Employee Financial Burden
When a company supports post-trip expense reimbursements, employees have to pay for various expenses using personal funds. Many employees find it convenient to use credit cards while booking travel products and incurring ancillary expenses.
Their financial burden increases when there is a delay in travel expense reimbursements. A robust policy will help your organization reduce the financial burden of employees by accelerating travel expense reimbursements. Also, it will improve your company culture by building employee trust.
3. Automate Travel Expense Reporting
Automation is one of the key elements in a modern travel reimbursement process. While making the policy, you should boost travel expense management by automating expense reports and abandoning paper-based expense reports.
The automated expense reports submitted by employees will help your finance team reduce the time required to review and reimburse expense claims. Also, automation will help your company store travel and expense (T&E) data digitally in a centralized location.
At the same time, the travel reimbursement policy will help employees generate automated expense reports by implementing integrated T&E software. Employees can use the software to produce digital expense reports by scanning various invoices and receipts.
4. Record and Track Travel Expenses
You cannot increase the ROI of business travel without tracking travel expenses in real-time. The expense reimbursement policy creates opportunities for you to facilitate real-time travel expense tracking by implementing expense management tools.
The dashboard provided by the software will help you make informed financial decisions by getting real-time spending visibility. Also, you can use the dashboard to compare and analyze travel expenses by generating custom reports.
5. Ensure T&E Policy Compliance
Your company must complement the travel reimbursement policy with a well-crafted T&E policy. The policy will control average business trip costs by making employees understand what travel products they can book and what travel expenses are non-reimbursable.
However, you can ensure T&E policy compliance only by reviewing the expense claims submitted by employees regularly. The travel reimbursement policy will help you prevent policy violations by making employees submit expenses early and reviewing travel expenses regularly.
6. Prevent Travel Expense Fraud
As noted earlier, your travel reimbursement policy will automate the travel expense management process. Your employees can use the software to generate expense reports early and accurately. Also, you can track travel expenses incurred by them in real time.
The expense report automation and expense tracking will help you control costs by detecting and preventing various expense report fraud on time. Also, you can detect travel expense frauds instantly based on the automated notification sent by the business travel software.
7. Claim Tax Deductions
Expenses incurred by employees on business trips are tax-deductible expenses. However, your company can claim tax deductions only by recording and reimbursing travel expenses according to tax laws. A well-defined travel reimbursement policy always focuses on recording travel expenses early and accurately.
Also, the policy will help your business claim tax deductions by accelerating expense reimbursements. Your finance team can calculate tax and claim deductions by accessing real-time travel expense data seamlessly.
8. Control Travel Costs
While projecting cash flow and preparing budgets, you must consider employee-initiated expenses. Travel expenses are one of the major components of various business expenses incurred by employees. A clear travel reimbursement policy will help you track, review, and analyze travel expenses incurred by employees regularly.
Also, you can generate custom reports to make sense of the travel expense data using parameters like project, business travel goal, and business travel destinations. Hence, it becomes easier for you to make informed financial decisions and find cost-saving opportunities by leveraging real-time data.
9. Comply with Legal Requirements
In several countries, government agencies have set laws and regulations for reimbursement of employee-initiated expenses. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service makes it mandatory for American companies to keep in place accountable reimbursement plans.
Accountable reimbursement plan is essential for your company to meet legal requirements. Your business can avoid paying fines and safeguard its reputation by implementing a well-crafted travel reimbursement policy.
Conclusion
Your organization cannot boost employees’ business travel experience without reimbursing travel expenses quickly. Likewise, it cannot increase the ROI of business travel without streamlining the travel expense reimbursement process.
A well-crafted travel reimbursement policy helps you track travel expenses and motivate employees simultaneously. However, you can make the policy more effective by facilitating the travel expense reimbursement process.
For instance, your policy should encourage and help employees to automate expense reports. Likewise, it should streamline the travel reimbursement process through the automation of expense tracking, audit, and review activities.
