Business travel is part of daily life for a company’s employees. Depending on their position and their work needs, it might involve one-off trips or more regular business travel.

Managing and optimizing business travel has become a real issue for companies. The global pandemic, in particular, has had a strong impact on business travel.

Of course, the first lockdown brought business travel to a halt. But it quickly resumed, even if it was slower at times. Covid-19 nonetheless convinced companies of the need to review their travel management rules.

Many employers have realized the importance of having tools to simplify business travel.

What are travel expenses?

The term “travel expenses” refers to any expense incurred by an employee (colleague, manager) while traveling for work purposes. Business travel may include:

  • Business trips
  • Customer visits
  • Trips to construction sites
  • Participating in trade shows
  • Etc.

Business travel expenses generally include:

  • Transport (tolls, gas, train or plane tickets) and accommodation
  • Visits to clients or suppliers
  • Meal expenses

How can you simplify your business travel management?

As you know, digitalizing your company is essential if you want to improve your agility and limit the risk of error. But as we said in a previous article, digitalizing your company is not as simple as just creating a Facebook page!

Digitalizing a company involves digitalizing internal processes: expense report management, accounting, and the management of vacations and business travel.

Why should you implement a corporate travel solution?

Your employees don’t want to waste time booking their travel anymore, going backwards and forwards with their managers. They now want a seamless experience, where all of their information is centralized so that they can focus on their work and their key tasks rather than worrying about booking their travel.

A corporate travel platform can also free up valuable time for managers by automating certain tasks.

Finally, for the employer, although a travel management platform may seem expensive at first, the time savings, cost savings, and significant drop in the risk of fraud and error will quickly make it worthwhile.

💡 Did you know that automation can produce overall cost savings of 40-75%, with an ROI ranging from several months to several years? (Source: Forbes)

But above all, by choosing the right administrative tools, you limit time-consuming tasks while significantly reducing the risk of error.

What is the purpose of travel management software?

A corporate travel management system is used to book, track, and analyze your company’s business travel.

It should allow you to centralize bookings and fully manage your travel. If you are hesitating between several travel booking software packages, we suggest that you choose one with the following options:

  • A fully customizable travel policy
  • A fully customizable validation workflow and an at-a-glance view of travel statuses
  • A complete inventory of the options available for particular trips, in France or abroad (transport, duration, rental, etc.)
  • A centralized process with centralized invoices (with the possibility of regrouping all your monthly invoices on a single statement)
  • 24-hour toll-free assistance for the manager and travelers in France or abroad
  • Travel reports (expenses by period, by team, by event, by location, etc.)
  • Integration with an expense report solution

This last point, in particular, is crucial. Integration with an expense report management solution will give the manager or accountant a single view of all the expenses relating to a trip: travel, accommodation, meals, etc.

Employees also benefit from easy, ergonomic, and fast tools, allowing them to manage their trip or declare their expenses in a single click.

Simplify travel and business travel expenses

To simplify the work of managers and employees on business trips, we have collaborated with TravelPerk to create a connector.

Creator of an all-in-one platform for business travel bookings, TravelPerk offers a tool with numerous features that make life easier for managers and employees on business trips.

The N2F-TravelPerk connector’s numerous features will simplify the administrative and financial department’s work:

  • Connection to the travel agency and processing of supplier invoices
  • Legal compliance archiving
  • Accounting exports
  • Bank reconciliation
  • Automatic calculation of recoverable VAT
  • Management of daily allowances (per diem)
  • Conditional validation process (workflow)
  • Rules and limits that can be tailored to individual users
  • Prompt reimbursement of employees

More specifically, the integration between N2F and TravelPerk means that when you generate a trip, you will receive all the costs relating to hotels, flights, trains, and other bookings – as well as the associated receipts – directly in N2F.