What are the 10 travel policies best practices?

It’s time to design a travel policy but you’re not sure where to get started? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Setting up the right travel policy starts with knowing your own organization’s budgeting requirements. Because you can’t set up a travel policy without being clear on how much you can spend and how you want to spend it. 

We will look at ten of the travel policy best practices so that you know what it is, why you need it and how to be sure to craft the right travel policy to transform your business travel management in the best way possible. 

What is a travel policy?

A travel policy is a document that is designed to help companies who have employees travel for business define the rules and regulations surrounding business travel so that they can control their travel spend, keep employees compliant and ensure they fulfill their duty of care. It also outlines the procedures around booking, approving and expensing travel costs.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at the ten travel policies best practices.

1. Make sure you have a clear budget in mind when setting up your travel policies

Having a clear budget in mind when setting up your travel policy is essential. The more budget you allot to travel, the less strict and the more flexibility you will be able to allow employees, whereas tighter budgets will require tighter controls. This is definitely the first place where you want to start when setting up your travel policy.

3. Set up automatic controls

Setting up automated approvals and workflows is another key aspect of effective travel management and having travel policies that work for you. Once you define what is allowed and not allowed within your travel policy, you can have automatic approvals set up so that the travel booking goes directly to the approver, and if everything is within policy, then it’s easy for them to approve, saving the hassle of the approver having to look up the travel policy to know if what’s being booked is within policy or not.

4. Find a balance between flexibility and control 

A corporate travel policy is meant to provide control of your travel budget, but at the same time it’s important to define how much control you want to have. Some travel policies will need to be strict, especially for those companies who have very tight budgets, whereas other policies might give the chance for a certain level of approvers to override the policy based on different criteria. 

Flexibility can also be good to keep travelers happy, meaning that perhaps you have some higher level hotels within policy that may cost a bit more for your company, but you know your workers will get added value from the hotel by having more comforts, a better location, or more luxurious amenities allowed. It’s important to control your costs but at the same time, keep up the company morale by giving a good experience.

5. Consider remote work policies

Nowadays with many people working from home, or many companies having work from anywhere policies, you may find that employees will make different requests that would have never been made several years ago. This could be employees asking to extend their stay a few days after their work meetings to work from the hotel on the company dollar. 

Depending on your budget and how much control you want to have over travel spend, you may add into your travel policy, remote work policies, allowing those traveling for work to extend a few days or even a few weeks if they work from another office, allowing them to stay at the hotel for X amount of days on the company dime. It’s important to have clear limits so that employees know what is and isn’t allowed.

6. Set up clear reimbursement guidelines

Having clear reimbursement guidelines is also important to lay out in your travel policy. Are employees meant to book with virtual company cards? Or should they book on their own dime and then get reimbursed? What is the time frame for reimbursement for expenses? How do employees submit an expense report? 

All of these things should be laid out in your travel policy. The best choice is for sure to have a travel and expense management solution like GetGoing that allows you to set up a travel policy and manage expenses all in one place so that you can ensure this process is as smooth as possible.

7. Set permissions based on roles

Another best practice is setting permissions based on an employee’s role. A manager, for example, might be allowed to book business class flight tickets or stay at a four star hotel, whereas a sales staff member might not be entitled to the same permissions. Executives, managers and those who are more likely to travel more for business should be able to have more permissions and leeway when it comes to travel to keep them happy and from burnout.

8. Track expenses, insights and analytics

Tracking expenses, as well as having insights and analytics is another best practice for your travel policy. Knowing where your travel spend is going will help you better refine your budget. 

For example, say the Finance Department is traveling frequently, in this case it would make sense for you to allocate more budget to avoid burnout. It will also help to get an idea of where the budget is going. Are flights, trains, hotels or rental cars where most of your budget is going? Knowing this will help you take the most advantage of your budget and optimize it accordingly. 

9. Review and refine regularly

By tracking expenses and regularly reviewing insights and analytics, you can then review and refine your travel policy so that you are sure to get the most out of your budget and travel program. Modifying regularly will also help you adjust your travel budget based on your yearly budget or if you make it to the second half of the year and are able to unlock more budget, this way you can adjust policies to match this updated budget.

10. Choose a travel and expense management solution

One of the best practices to manage your travel policy is to have a travel and expense solution that works for you in the background. This means you set up your travel policy and approval workflow once and then the tool does the work for you. No more manual processes like manually approving trips or manually checking a huge document with tons of rules and procedures to follow. One platform can do it all for you. 

If you’re interested in learning what an all-in-one travel management solution can do for you, schedule a demo to learn more.