Business trips and trips are a standard expense item for companies of various levels and sizes. It seems that there is nothing complicated in planning, but, nevertheless, there are a number of mistakes that can cost you dearly. More often they are typical for small businesses in which the processes are not fully developed and described or are not sufficiently controlled. But sometimes similar errors occur in large companies.
Check to see if your company has any of these: maybe spending 10 minutes reading can save you up to 30% on your travel budget.
Your company does not have a travel policy
Travel Policy is a business travel management system. Some organizations refer to this as a travel policy or business travel policy. Essentially, this is a document that answers all questions regarding business trips. A properly drawn up travel policy makes business processes related to business trips clear and helps save your budget.
What should be included in the travel policy? Deadlines for submitting an application for a business trip, visa processing times, when to buy tickets and book hotel rooms. What documents and receipts should an employee returning from a business trip have? What to write in a trip report, as well as when and where to submit it. It is also worth specifying restrictions on the cost of tickets and rooms for various categories of employees.
In creating a travel policy, it is advisable to involve not only managers responsible for business trips, but also a lawyer, accountant, HR specialist, and most importantly, employees who often travel on business trips. It is also worth remembering that travel policy is a living document that changes with the development of the company.
Of course, it makes no sense for a small business to develop a complex multi-page travel policy. Often it is enough to write down the main points and set all restrictions in the business travel service – it is useful for companies of any size. In it you can set default restrictions on the price of hotel rooms or the category of air tickets.
Your company does not have tools to control travel expenses
If you have no control over travel expenses, there may be employees willing to take advantage of it. According to Vedomosti, on average, 20% of seconded workers reflect in expense reports at least one expense item that exceeds established limits or goes to the employee’s personal needs. Due to such abuses, the organization can incur significant losses.
For example, employees often do not pay enough attention to the cost of a ticket. Moreover, this is not necessarily malicious intent: sometimes an employee purchases a more expensive ticket because he has an airline loyalty card and wants to accumulate bonus miles for his vacation. But even a price difference of a couple of thousand rubles across the entire business over the course of a year can result in a large sum.
More unscrupulous employees issue tickets for retired colleagues, hand them over through agencies or at the station ticket office and take the cash for themselves.
You can also “make money” at hotels: an employee just needs to book the cheapest room, and when checking in, ask to upgrade it to a suite. Accounting knows that the business trip was approved by management, but does not know which hotel room was allowed. As a result, according to the documents, everything is clear, but in fact the employee stole several tens of thousands of rubles from the company.
Travel agencies also carry out fraud: some unscrupulous market participants make changes to electronic tickets, adding non-existent taxes and large service fees to the price, which they put in their pockets. The final ticket price may increase by one or two thousand rubles, which over the course of a year adds up to a very significant overpayment.
These losses can be avoided if all purchases and payments go through the electronic reservation system to which the company is connected. It comes with tools by default to help you control your travel and hotel expenses. For example, the system reflects all offers available on the market with real prices without commissions or markups. The manager can see at any time how much the employee has spent and set limits, and the accountant can quickly check all the data if he has any doubts.
You book tickets and hotels in one travel agency
If you’ve been booking flights and hotels through one agency or buying directly from suppliers for the last few years, it’s time to see what other options are on the market. There’s nothing wrong with offline travel agencies, but sometimes they offer limited options and don’t let you see the full price picture.
Try working with an online travel agency like OneTwoTrip for Business. This and similar services provide access to all flights and flights on the desired dates, and also allow you to immediately book a hotel or buy a train ticket. In fact, this is a search engine for tickets and hotels familiar to many, but it works taking into account the needs of legal entities.
An online agency is convenient because it allows you to independently compare prices and choose the most profitable options. You can also check the cost of tickets for neighboring dates, and if the difference is significant, and your business trip can be moved, save even more.
Another saving is the service fee: with the online agency it is fixed and transparent, and you don’t have to pay extra for issuing each ticket.
In addition, you can structure your trip more flexibly, for example, an employee flies in one day: in the morning he will fly with Aeroflot, and in the evening he will return with S7. This is possible because the online agency can combine tickets from different airlines in one order.
Traveling is not automated
In many companies, organizing a business trip involves a lot of correspondence. First, you need to contact the agent by sending him a request via email to search for tickets and a hotel. After getting options. Send them in a separate letter to the manager and wait for approval. At the same time, it’s easy to get confused, miss an email, or spend extra time organizing work. And if not one person is flying, but a group of employees from different departments, the number of letters can increase proportionally.
There is also a more significant disadvantage: during correspondence, the price of tickets or hotels may change (and, unfortunately, most often upward).
Online travel agencies make this process easy. In fact, there will be no correspondence to coordinate tickets and hotels: the purchase can only be made by an employee who has the right to do so, within a predetermined limit.
Thus, the process is completely automated. It is enough to spend some time at the very beginning choosing responsible employees and setting limits on the cost of the order and the star rating of the hotel (if they are already specified in the travel policy, there will be no difficulties), so that you can then buy tickets and book hotels without clogging up anyone’s mail with unnecessary chains of letters. Prices in your personal account are always up to date; they do not need to be confirmed or checked. And the manager will see in the report what the best price was for a given direction at the time of purchase.
Your employees buy tickets and hotels as individuals
This error occurs more often in small companies where an employee can buy a ticket by paying with the card of the manager or business owner. There is only one downside: you pay extra money. The fact is that when purchasing from a legal entity, you can return VAT for the ticket, but if the payment was made from a personal card, there will be no refund.
Online agencies make it easy to return VAT: all documentation for accounting is generated automatically after the purchase. This is convenient and saves employees time – and, of course, money.
You do not plan business trips in advance
Of course, this is not always possible – but if you can create a business trip schedule and buy tickets and book hotels in advance, the savings will be significant. According to OneTwoTrip, spontaneity can be expensive: an airline ticket purchased a couple of days before your trip can cost 50% more than the same ticket purchased 2-3 months in advance. Hotel statistics are similar: many give a discount of up to 20% just for the fact that you booked a room earlier than a month before check-in. Russian Railways and other railway carriers are not far behind: tickets purchased on the opening day of sales (60 days before the trip or more), cheaper on average by 20%.
So, if you have the ability to plan your business travel schedules in advance, do so by purchasing your tickets and booking your hotels right away. If plans change, your hotel reservation can be canceled (and in most cases it will be free of charge), and for tickets – return at least part of the money (which one depends on the tariff).
In our experience, it is most profitable to plan business trips at the end of winter and beginning of spring: at this time, many airlines offer various promotions with discounts. Moreover, discounts often apply to tickets with a departure date before the end of the year.
