5 Tips To Create a Travel Expense Policy for Small Business
Over 90% of business travel managers believe corporate travel is essential to a company’s growth. But when you own a small business, you don’t typically have as much financial flexibility as a larger, more established business. Developing a smart travel policy can help you make wise financial decisions and hang onto as much of your hard-earned money as possible in the formative beginning years. A good travel expense policy for small business should set clear expectations for employees and be straightforward.
Create Your Travel Expense Policy for Small Business
As a small business owner, you and your team may need to travel frequently to build your business. Here are five tips for creating a travel expense policy to help you send your employees where they need to go without breaking the bank.
1. Keep Things Simple
One common mistake small businesses make is creating travel expense policies that are much too complicated and specific. If you want to ensure that your employees follow your rules, it’s best to keep them simple and easy to understand. No one wants to feel like they need to jump through hoops and fill out loads of paperwork before they can get pre-approved for an upcoming business trip.
An effective way to keep things simple with airfare is to use one main travel provider. Rocketrip is a great option because you can save up to 20% on average corporate travel costs through our 3S initiative, which stands for Savings, Sustainability and Safety. When you’re building your travel expense policy for small business, your corporate travel provider is an important consideration to keep in mind.
2. Enforce Travel Expense Policies
You can have the most reasonable travel expense policy in the world, but unless you enforce it, your employees may not follow it. To confirm everyone respects the rules, you need to make sure travel expenses are reviewed and approved or rejected as appropriate.
With Rocketrip, we incentivize savings, so everyone booking travel is encouraged to pick the best option for the bottom line. Spend less than the ‘Price to Beat,’ and earn back a portion of the savings in Rocketrip points. The Price to Beat is based on real-time market prices and your company’s travel policy, taking the friction out of enforcement by incentivizing smart business travel choices.
3. Collect the Correct Information for Tax Season
When it comes time to submit business expenses during tax season, you need to confirm you have all the right paperwork and information. Make sure your employees submit the correct receipts for their corporate travel reimbursements. If you report any entertainment expenses as a corporate deduction, you’ll need to check that you have all the names of your corporate attendees.
4. Reimburse Expenses Promptly
When your employees front their own money to take care of business expenses on trips, it’s important to reimburse them promptly. This will help you establish a culture of trust. When you respect your employees, they are more likely to respect you in return.
5. Periodically Evaluate Your Policy
It’s wise to periodically evaluate any travel expense policy for small business. As you grow, you may find that you can afford to take care of even more expenses. Regularly assessing how well your policy works and what changes need to be made can ensure that employee business trips run smoothly.
Book Eco-Friendly Trips That Fit Into Your Travel Expense Policy for Small Business
Get started with Rocketrip today to find the best travel options for your company. We can help you create eco-friendly packages for your travel expense policy for small business.
