How to minimize the costs associated with business travel

Alinakra
SoldoutNight
Published in
4 min readApr 28, 2021

If you haven’t got a corporate travel system in place, it’s time to get one. Manage and reduce corporate travel expenses with ease.🕶

Unmanaged business travel has an impact on a company’s bottom line. It’s one of those expenses that isn’t overtly obvious, having a much bigger dent than initially anticipated. Typically, companies that lack effective business travel policies, thorough planning and accurate tracking are most affected by the cost of business travel. This is because there are a lot of grey areas that can vary the budget of a trip greatly.

To address this problem, many companies are turning to business travel solutions like SoldoutNight to manage and monitor these expenses. These types of software are often free. Some advanced plans may come with a subscription fee. Fees you’ll pay for a business travel management solution will be nothing when compared to the money your company loses in unmanaged business travel. It will save your employees time, and we all know that time is money.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s a list of benefits for implementing a business travel solution.

1. It’s easier to organise itineraries

Business trip itineraries are usually made up of a lot of components. There are travel dates, hotel reservations, flight bookings, and more. A business travel management system allows you to store all of these details easily so they can be found quickly when required. No more hunting through emails and searching through files!

2. Employees will be more compliant

A business travel solution will help increase the compliancy of your staff. It makes the whole process more transparent, meaning expectations are a lot clearer. Employees will understand what they can claim (and what they cannot), and the clarity of information will encourage them to stick to the rules rather than push the boundaries.

3. Overspending will be minimised

A proper business travel system will allow you to accurately collect and analyse data associated with business travel. This will provide you with greater insight into the spending habits of your employees, making it clear where your money is going. When you don’t manage business travel, how do you know how your money is being spent? Knowing this information can help you to minimise areas of overspending.

4. Employees will be more productive

Effective business travel solutions make expense tracking easy. Rather than a tedious process where employees have to invest serious time simply to sort receipts and report their expenses, a software makes it simple. They can track their expenses while on the go, which means they won’t have to allocate time to do it when they return to the office. Your employees will be happier and they’ll also get time back to use on something else — we don’t know what’s not to love!

5. All data will be stored in one place

If you’ve ever had to implement a data storage system, you’ll know it’s no easy task. It’s difficult to find a system that is easy to navigate, but also easy enough to input information so all employees actually use it. Then there’s the question of accuracy, but we won’t even go there. A business travel software makes data collection easy and stores it all in one place, ready to be used whenever necessary. You’ll be able to refer to details if you need to, keep track of individual expenses and analyse the data on a larger scale to help with budgeting.

6. It will make it easier to adhere to your duty of care

While a business travel system does increase compliance, it’s not so much about control as it is about care! Organisations have a duty of care to employees to keep them safe while they are at work. This extends to business trips, so it is important that a certain level of comfort is maintained while employees are away from the office. Employee wellbeing is the top priority and transparent tracking systems helps to monitor their trips to ensure all is conducted at a reasonable standard. It is also helpful if there is an emergency or pandemic related travel restrictions and you need to quickly access their travel details.

7. Expense reporting drama will be eliminated

Ask any business traveller their least favourite part of business trips and they’ll probably say expense reporting. This process has historically been boring and time-consuming, consisting of various spreadsheets and outdated documents. Business travel management systems make this entire process so much easier. Data can be entered on the go meaning it is available in real-time, and everything is completely transparent. The administration time is reduced significantly for both the employee and the organisation, so everybody wins!

If you haven’t got a corporate travel system in place, it’s time to get one. Not only does it make it easier for employees to track their expenses, but it also makes it easier for you to monitor them and understand the costs of business travel to your organization. Your employees will be happier and you’ll save money in the long run — we’re not sure why you wouldn’t invest in this solution!

https://soldoutnight.com/how-to-minimize-the-costs-associated-with-business-travel/

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