Making your Business Travel in Low Cost

Business travel is unavoidable for many firms, and so are the high costs that come along with sending your workers to different parts of the country, or even the world. Expense management software can help managers and other affected individuals to tally up the costs after the fact - but what about businesses that are hoping to preemptively curb travel costs?

The expenses will always pile up after a business trip, but they need not pile too high. Listed below are a number of tips that could aid your firm in keeping its employees travel expenditures - and as such, its overall bottom line - at an acceptable level.

Assess any potential fees ahead of time When considering the total cost of an upcoming business trip, it's very easy to underestimate. One of the reasons for this is fees - they crop up everywhere, unannounced, driving the total expenditure count unreasonably high. Luckily, with a little research, you can protect yourself, and your business, from unexpected costs.

Ensure that you investigate any baggage fees or other additional fees levied by the airline your employee is using for your trip. The information may not be available on your ticket itself, but each individual service provider will have to notify you of their fees upon request. Make similar checks on any other services your employee will be using over the course of the trip, such as with your rental car provider. The best way to combat fees, and as such, to keep costs low, is very simple: be prepared.

Determine the need for travel - and eliminate trips outright when possible With the advent of video conferencing technology, the need for many business trips has been erased. Before each individual trip is booked, you and your team should ask: is the task this trip is aimed at completing something that could be completed via email, conference calls, and/or video conference meetings? If so, you may be able to eliminate the trip altogether - and reroute the expected costs to another area of your company.

Establish expenditure policies Many businesses establish policies about what expenditures their employees can incur while traveling, instituting caps on specific costs, and sometimes even outlining the specific hotels and rental cars the employee can use. This is a great way to achieve consistency in your expenditures - so if your firm sends employees out of the area on assignment on a regular basis, you may want to consider instituting a policy that governs their behavior, and their costs, while they do so.

Consider "extended stay" hotels For longer business trips, you may want to encourage your employee to investigate whether or not they'd be better served at an "extended stay" hotel. These locations are designed for individuals who are staying more than a couple nights, and can offer in-house meals, lower week long rates, and other perks that can help your firm to keep costs low during a particularly long business trip.

Keep an eye on each individual expense with automated expense reporting software All businesses are surely aware of the need for expense reports - to help them analyze and track each individual expenditure, for the sake of optimizing the use of future funds. However, with automated expense reporting software like the programs offered by Certify, employees can report their costs in real time, using only a smartphone and the attached camera. Better yet, managers can track the costs as they occur, and then make alterations to policies or allotted funds as is necessary.