Managing business travel and related expenses can be a massive exercise, depending on your organization’s size and your executives’ travel frequency. Further, it is critically important to collect and report all work related travel expenses accurately. However, this can prove challenging, especially if you have to handle huge volumes of booking data emanating from hundreds of invoices, bills, and documents. Here is when travel expense tracking apps come into the picture.
Fortunately, the increasing number of travel-related documents and invoices is not a hassle anymore for the management. Modern software applications and platforms help business managers remain in control of the processes. Business travel expense tracking apps are now available to help organizations manage their travel expenses more efficiently. It also eliminates the need for paper reports, manual checking, reimbursement, and going back and forth approvals.
What is a business travel expense tracker app?
A budgeting technique known as expense tracking allows you to keep track of all of your outlays over time and stay on track with your spending plan. An expense tracker app is an automated and easy solution to manage all the expenses in one place for a smooth reporting and reimbursement process. Business travelers should have an expense tracker app to be mindful of their expenses and report to the organization accordingly.
Benefits of streamlined business travel expense tracker
- A technologically advanced travel expense tracker offers real time visibility into the traveling employees expenses, helping in managing travel costs
- Eliminates the need and associated errors with manual data tracking and entry; thereby, frees up the time of employees
- Assists in managing expenses and ensures travel policy compliance
- As these applications require logins from individual IDs, they removes the risk of unauthorized payments
Things to Look For in a Travel Expense Tracker
- While taking the demo of the apps, ensure to choose the one that is powerful and easy to understand
- Travel expense tracker should easily be integrated with other softwares such as booking software, HRMSs, etc.
- The tracker should be accessible through mobile and has essential feature to manage the expense
Top corporate travel expense tracking app and platforms
1. Expensify
Expensify offers unlimited receipt scanning, mileage tracking, quick reimbursement, and many other features. An important aspect is its one-click receipt scanning. Travel managers can create approval workflows to match the company’s expense policy. It is among the best app for tracking travel expenses with the following features.
Key Features
- Expense reporting
- Mileage tracking
- Importing of credit card
- Auditor access
- Automatic approvals
- Expensify is compatible with all operating systems
- Supports multiple languages, such as English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese
2. Rydoo
Rydoo’s business travel budget app is a bit different from other expense apps. The corporate travel management app ensures your travel executives remain compliant with the changing business travel policies of the company. The app runs an automated check on everything from timestamps to duplicate receipts. Companies can start right away as they offer a 14-day free trial.
Key Features
- Can be quickly integrated with Enterprise Resource Planning packages
- Mileage tracker
- Supports multiple currencies
- Uploading of digital receipt
- Makes reimbursement easy
- Offers credit card statement analysis
- Rydoo is compatible with both iOS and Android
- Supports English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
3. Xero Expense
Xero Expense is a cloud-based business trip expense app. It works best for small and growing businesses and has one of the best expense management tools. Claims can be submitted on the go with a photo of the receipts. It also reviews and approves expenses in one click. With its powerful analytics, Xero helps travel managers closely monitor employee spending.
Key Features
- Processes payroll
- Provides financial reporting
- Supports multiple currencies
- Accurate reporting of expenses
- Offers digitized billing
- Zero Expense is compatible with iOS and Android operating systems
- It supports only the English
4. Webexpenses Travel
This user-friendly business management tool is best suited for business travel management and booking. It makes use of industry-leading AI to save time and costs. It is designed to remember executive preferences and limits and automatically applies the same to new bookings. The set pre-approvals help streamline travel requests and bookings. The company’s updated travel policy can be integrated into the corporate travel management app easily.
Key Features
- Comes with optical character recognition (OCR) technology
- Drag-and-drop reporting in real-time
- Digital receipt capture
- Corporate card management
- Mileage tracking and verification
- Webexpenses Travel is compatible with iOS and Android mobile apps
- It supports English, Spanish, and Portuguese
5. Fyle
Fyle is one of the most accessible travel expense tracker apps with automatic business rules check system and one-click expense reporting. Travel managers can use this corporate travel management app to track business expenses from commonly used software systems. It offers an effortless expense management system that provides real-time visibility and control.
Key Features
- Automated credit card reconciliation
- Real-time expense analytics
- Mileage tracker
- Automated reminders
- Fraud detection
- Fyle supports English
6. ExpenseIn
ExpenseIn is a low-cost but feature-rich business travel expenses tracking app. It is the best choice for small businesses as the app has everything needed to create, approve and report on costs in one place. It has some robust features that can work well for medium and large companies.
Key Features
- Digital scanning of receipts
- Real-time reporting
- Currency converter
- Automatic mileage calculations
- Compliance with corporate travel policies
- ExpenseIn is compatible with Android, iOS, and Windows
- It supports the English
7. TripLog
TripLog is a leading business travel expense management solution that calculates mileage and time, among other things. It is best suited for mid-sized businesses and enterprises. TripLog tracks mileage automatically and makes reimbursement and mileage log management easy. The mileage reports are tax compliant.
Key Features
- Offers real-time location monitoring
- Digital receipt capture
- Bank and credit card integration
- Tracks established trip rules
- Tax-compliant mileage reports
- TripLog supports the English
8. Shoeboxed
Shoeboxed offers regular travel expense features that can be found in many other similar apps. What makes it stand apart is the ‘Magic Envelope’ feature. It allows organizations to mail their business-related travel receipts in prepaid envelopes. The same is digitalized. Organizations can extract the relevant data from the receipts. The travel management team can organize and report the data as needed.
Key Features
- Digital receipt capture
- Optical character recognition (OCR) and human data verification
- Automatic archiving of receipts from Gmail
- Receipt and mileage tracker
- Employee expense reporting
- Supports the maximum number of languages
9. Paxes
Paxes is a SaaS-based platform serving the corporate travel needs of companies of all types and sizes. It also helps travel management companies efficiently manage their global corporate travel management processes of various clients. Paxes allows corporate administrators to create multiple invoices, manage budgets, and analyze expenses in micro detail. Further, the corporate travel management app assists in the easy self-booking of flights and hotels.
Key Features
- Self-booking tools
- Hybrid inventory engine
- Implementation in a few clicks with a SaaS-based platform
- Single solution for multiple forms
- Concierge services
- Paxes supports multiple languages
Must Read: Top Benefits Of Using Travel And Expense Management Software
Conclusion
With user-friendly, feature-rich, role-specific, and powerful software to manage your corporate travel expenses, you won’t have to deal with the negatives associated with travel management tasks. The best travel budget app provides complete visibility into all the core aspects of business travel.
Business travelers prefer to choose their trip options but don’t want to stray beyond travel policies. Business travel expense tracking apps and platforms such as Paxes make it easy for your executives to stick to their style of staying and traveling and ensure it happens within your budget. It also saves the travel management team and the executives a lot of manual work.
Business Travel Expense Tracking Apps FAQs
What are the top apps and platforms for expense tracking for corporate travel?
There are many applications and platforms that can be used by TMCs for expense tracking for corporate travel. Some of the top apps that one can use for a seamless tracking experience are Paxes, Rydoo, and Expensify.
How can corporates personalize their bookings by themselves?
Many apps and platforms offer a self-booking tool like Paxes, where the corporate traveler can book their travel necessities at their convenience.
How can corporates track their expenses during business travel?
Certain travel expense platforms and applications provide features such as real-time expense analysis, where the corporate traveler can access, report, and track all the expenses that are incurred during the trip. Fyle is an expense tracker app that offers such a feature for a hassle-free experience.
What travel expense apps support all major currencies during corporate travel?
There are many travel expense applications and platforms that support major currencies, such as Rydoo and Xero Expense.
How can TMCs and corporations track or monitor the location of the business traveler?
Certain applications and platforms provide location tracking for managers to monitor the location of the traveler while on a business trip. This helps in preventing any major risk or threat that might occur. Triplog offers such a tracking feature in their application.
How to choose the best business travel expense tracking app?
Different apps offer different benefits; hence, corporates should choose the most suited app as per their individual requirements.
How does an expense tracker app work?
Expense tracker app generates reports, invoices, and tax details and more that is helpful in managing the finance of a business.
Why should you use expense tracker app?
Expense tracker app help in budgeting, tax calculations and deduction and more; hence, you should use these apps.
What types of expenses can I track with a dedicated travel expense tracker?
Transportation costs (flights, trains, rental cars), accommodation expenses, meals and entertainment expenses, and incidentals (parking fees, tolls, tips).
Is my data secure with a dedicated travel expense tracker?
Yes, most of the trackers use highly secure techniques to provide reliable services. However, you should be vigilant while selecting the best tracker.
How do expense tracking apps benefit businesses?
These apps helps in automating data entry, improving accuracy, enforcing policy compliance, and providing insights for better financial decision making.
How do I choose the right expense tracking app for my business?
Consider factors like cost, features, user interface, integrations with accounting software, mobile accessibility, customer support, and scalability to find the best fit.
