Expense management is one of the primary activities travel managers need to address when managing their company’s trips.
According to a recent study, companies will allocate 28% of their travel budget to trips for attending sales meetings, 19% to internal company meetings with colleagues, and 18% to trips for attending events.
However, good travel & expense management is much more than allocating a budget per type of business travel and tracking expenses. It’s also about evaluating the best alternatives, monitoring the trips with quality metrics, and incorporating the feedback of your travellers to ensure they always have a great time while travelling.
Fortunately, companies can increasingly rely on new digital technologies like TruTrip to enhance their travel & expense management. Here’s how.
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The invoicing process happens manually when using traditional self-serve booking tools or resorting to online travel agents. This can be both time-consuming and prone to errors.
In contrast, when you are booking trips and other services with TruTrip, your invoice will be emailed to you alongside your booking confirmation. Moreover, you’ll be able to download your invoice at any time from the trips page in case you need it.
To enable automatic invoices, you must set up your invoice profile by entering all the required information, such as your company name, address, and tax numbers.
By leveraging automatic invoicing, you can significantly cut the time and effort spent on dealing with paperwork and ensure that all your business trips are accounted for properly.
Budget control is another way TruTip can help you reduce travel costs and streamline your T&E process. Administrators and travel managers can preset budgets for different types of trips and services. Once these limits are set, travellers can only book their trips within the predefined budget.
Having online booking tools and budget controls in the same platform makes TruTrip a far more effective travel expense management tool than combining traditional self-serve booking tools with manual budget control measures.
TruTrip will both make it easier to control how much your travellers spend and reduce the time managers need to devote to budget monitoring.
TruTrip also offers an integrated payment processing system for companies to use when booking trips or activities. This gives you the flexibility to pay for your trips online, including via credit card or another payment method.
What’s more, payments are securely processed through the TruTrip software, with full data security and privacy. This gives you peace of mind that your payment information is safe while allowing you to manage all of your business trip payments from one centralized platform.
While traditional self-serve booking tools can help you find great individual deals, they are not designed to take into account the need of businesses and organizations aiming for cost-effectiveness and sustainability over the long term.
In contrast, using a specialized travel management system like TruTrip will give you access to some of the best prices in the industry when it comes to booking flights. Over a typical basket of flights, we’re without 0.5% pricing. Consistently using TruTip to plan your trips will allow you to obtain significant savings in the long run.
Another way to keep the cost of your travel management programme down is to contain the negative impact of booking cancellations. When using traditional self-serve booking tools, cancelling trips is usually an annoying task that involves dealing with delays, unresponsive customer service and disappointing reimbursements.
You can leave all of that behind by subscribing to our add-on TruFlex and getting at least 80% of your money back when cancelling a trip for any reason. Refunds are not tied to any provider or route, and they’re free to use how and where the user wants.
Customers don’t need to ask any questions when cancelling their flights. All they are required to do is provide 24 hours’ notice, and TruFlex will take care of the rest. With a single click, any refund requests are processed without any fuss.
What’s more, is that the credit for these refunds is available for use immediately on TruFlex’s platform.
Being able to access an insightful post-travel report is another great advantage when managing your travel expenses.
These reports provide a thorough breakdown of how much has been spent on certain items, such as flights and accommodation, making it easier for businesses to analyze all their costs related to the trip. This precious information can be used to identify opportunities for further savings and come up with a more productive travel management strategy.
Moreover, by being able to access timely snapshots of all their expenses, travel managers can have greater control over where money is being allocated to better manage any unexpected outlays or use beyond what was initially intended.
In short, insightful travel expense reports give businesses and travel managers the data they need to remain within budget while still benefiting from cost savings wherever possible.
While handling corporate travel management programmes effectively requires the right skills and experience, using integrated corporate travel platforms like TruTrip can make managers’ jobs a lot easier.
By leveraging these tools your company will be able to achieve significant savings on ticket prices, minimize the cost of cancellations and easily access insightful travel reports that help you better understand your travel expenses. The combined effect of these factors can have a remarkable effect on your company’s overall profitability.Test the power of these solutions yourself by booking a demo or signing up for a free trial.
TruTrip streamlines booking, management, and reporting for hassle-free business trips.