The most critical aim of the finance team is to achieve high cost-effectiveness when managing a company’s travel program. Travel managers must balance travel experience, and employee safety, with business travel costs. Employee safety is a crucial aspect for the organization. Advanced travel management tools improve business travel’s effectiveness and cost efficiency by mitigating travel risks and improving the travel experience. These attributes highlight the value of travel management solutions to streamline business travel besides peace of mind for travel managers. The financial checklist for travel helps finance professionals know how automated travel management influences critical aspects of business travel.
Financial checklist for travel
1. Maximizing cost savings through compliance
Automation of travel management helps integrate travel policy into the booking platform to restrict the search results for business travelers. The platform allows self-booking of transportation and hotel stays to enhance travel policy guidelines and travel experience.
The following benefits are available to mitigate risks and manage the costs of business travel:
- A smooth approval process to reduce administrative burden and expedite bookings.
- Helpful insights and access to travel patterns, spending history and booking data
- Facility to create business traveler profiles for preferential bookings without policy deviations
- The customizability of travel policy to support the preference of travel vendors, destinations, and travel routes
The advanced tools for travel management have built-in travel policy guidelines that prevent violations by flagging out-of-policy travel bookings to limit costs. The platform enables the setting up individual policies for different employee levels, departments, or teams for added flexibility. It streamlines and expedites the booking process.
2. Values that boost productivity
Finance professionals should never lose sight of ROI while striving to reduce the cost of business travel. A travel management company should provide access to special rates on car rentals, hotels, and airlines. It should accommodate the present travel suppliers to improve the employee experience.
The following are the main aspects of a financial checklist for travel that enhance the travel program’s value:
- Ensuring the use of airline ticket funds by continuously tracking
- Use of ML technology for rebooking travel as soon as the prices drop
- Access to amenities and discounts on last-minute bookings
SaaS-based travel platforms like Paxes leverage machine learning to recommend travel choices using previous booking data. It reduces the hassles of searching for travel options and creating itineraries and expense reports.
3. Smooth online adoption
Ease of adoption determines the value of a managed travel program, as the returns may only be possible if the employees can use the travel management platform. Asking employees about the difficulties of booking through the company’s TMC will help evaluate the travel management program for ease of adoption. Finance professionals should look for the following attributes while zeroing in on an online travel management solution to ensure seamless adoption:
1. Ensures traveler confidence – Availability of instant and round-the-clock support besides the ability to connect to a travel consultant during emergencies.
2. Individualized search results – Improving search results through ML technology to deliver personalized options that match previous booking preferences.
3. Itinerary modifications on the go – The travel management platform must support the flexibility of making itinerary changes on the go through an app.
4. Automating expense management to save time
The complexity of gathering details of expense reports, collecting and storing receipts, and tracking travel spending can consume considerable time for finance professionals. Built-in payment processes and the seamless transfer of transaction data to an expense management system are helpful features of online travel management programs.
Business travelers, travel managers, and finance teams can access relevant data in one place. The advanced travel management solution merges critical data, including receipts, for ease of tax audits. An ideal travel management tool enables the following:
- Multiple payment gateways for flexibility of options
- Customizable data fields to support reporting
- Creation of profiles for different employees and employee levels
- Single-click submission of expense report for approval from an app
- Reconciliation of expense data
- Seamless support to the present reporting and reconciliation processes
- The flow of data across expenses and travel reporting
5. Innovative technologies
Innovation is the solution for exploring opportunities to save business travel costs. Transitioning to a SaaS-based travel management program improves data access, travel experience, and policy compliance by using innovative technologies. These are a few benefits to managing business travel costs and supporting business travelers besides reducing risks.
- Real-time data visibility of business travel mitigates travel risks
- Maximizing savings by tracking travel trends and identifying preferred vendors to reduce costs without impacting the travel experience
Conclusion
Organizations should perceive business travel as a strategic investment instead of an additional cost burden for maximizing outputs and revenues. The financial checklist for travel helps you appreciate the role of online travel management solutions in reducing travel risks, managing costs, and supporting business travelers.
These five critical aspects of business travel improve online adoption, policy compliance, travel experience, and value. Paxes helps businesses automate bookings and configure travel policies to enhance compliance and increase ROI. Finance teams get real-time access to travel spending besides tracking past data.
Suggested Read: Top Benefits Of Using A Travel And Expense Management Software
Financial Checklist For Travel FAQs
What features drive the adoption of automated travel management tools?
Tailored search results, ease of itinerary modification, and traveler confidence are necessary features to enable the adoption of an online travel management tool.
What are the three factors to save travel costs and improve productivity?
A travel budget, support of a travel management platform, and travel policy management are critical factors for saving travel costs and improving productivity.
What is a travel management solution?
A travel management solution facilitates travel booking besides tracking and analyzing travel expenses.
What is the most crucial factor for implementing an online travel management solution?
Adopting the travel management solution across all employee levels is crucial for implementing online travel management solutions.
What are business travel expenses?
Business travel expenses comprise the cost of transportation, accommodation, and food, besides incidental expenses.
