According to a 2023 Harvard Business survey, 84% of travel managers agree that business travel offers tangible benefits when travelling to personally meet with customers and prospects. But to calculate that return on investment, you have to track what you’re spending. Travel management reports are a critical tool for keeping track of the Rands and Cents and making the most of your travel budget.
Travel management or expense reports include critical details about your business travel expenses and can be customised to meet your specific business needs. Pre-trip data helps you to track travellers’ purchasing decisions before they travel, while
post-trip data will help understand who’s out of policy and why.
How to get the most from your travel management reports:
What you put in is what you get out
Before you implement travel reporting, make sure you’ve established practical guidelines for your business travel. The protocols and guidelines relating to travel expenses should be clearly stipulated in the business travel policy and include what’s acceptable spending, what the spend limits are, what suppliers to book, and so forth. This enables travellers to adhere to the processes relating to travel spend and ultimately provides you with the right data to identify opportunities for further cost saving or improvement.
Opt for real-time reporting
If you can monitor travel spend in real-time, then do. This speeds up the process of identifying potential issues or deviations from policies. Generate reports and use analytics to examine spending patterns, detect cost-saving opportunities, and measure the effectiveness of your travel portfolio. Conduct audits and review expense reports for accuracy, compliance, and possible fraud. Travel dashboards can be customised to present information in a way that focuses on your top travel program priorities.
Use data to make adjustments and drive savings
If you’re actively monitoring your travel expense reports, areas that require intervention will be clear. This will help you make the necessary adjustments to policies and processes promptly. Implement consequences for violations of policy to entrench accountability. Also, consider positively recognising employees who submit accurate and timely expense reports. Additionally, these reports help finance teams access spending trends for more accurate travel budget forecasting.
Educate travellers to improve traveller behaviour
To improve travel compliance, provide training for travellers on expense policies, what constitutes best practices, and the use of the business reporting tools. This is the opportunity to highlight areas where errors often occur and training will minimise inaccuracies. Encourage feedback from your travellers.
Use travel expense reports to make meaningful business decisions
Having access to accurate travel expense data enables you to make informed choices about travel policies, supplier relationships, and general business strategy. Trends help identify spending patterns and highlight areas for cost reduction or process improvement.
Regardless of how many employees you have, tracking your travel expenses is about so much more than just Rands and Cents. It affords you valuable insight into traveller behaviour, supplier relationships, travel budgets and meaningful trends and patterns. It’s about having information at your fingertips to make informed business decisions. Can you afford to be without it?
