Stephanie:

Kate loves connecting clients to understand their unique business needs and helps them get the most out of TravelBank’s travel, expense, and card management features. She hosts training sessions to coach, finance and accounting executive on topics including expense policy automation, expense program rollout, FinTech, user adaptation, corporate travel rates and more. Kate’s career and TNE started in business travel sales team of the Hilton Worldwide where she grew a passion not only for business travel, but also for helping clients make the most of their travel budgets with benefits such as negotiated rates. Welcome, Kate. The floor is all yours.

Kate:

Thank you, Stephanie. And hi everyone. Very excited to be chatting with you today about the travel and expense policies. So we will jump right in. We’ll cover a few things today. We want to talk quickly and set the stage as to how spending patterns have shifted and they have been a little bit dramatic of a shift. We’ll talk about the 14 questions. We encourage you to review and have your policy or travel and expense policy answer, and we want to really walk through, don’t sabotage your policy, make it work very well for your company. So when we first start to think about spending patterns, they have really dramatically shifted. We sample travel bookings and expense reports on an annual basis. We want to compare these reports to the previous year’s just so we can see how travel and expense has changed here at TravelBank. What we’ve really noticed is the general merchandisers like Amazon, Walmart, Costco, target, those are being expensed the most, which when people were in office, we didn’t see those being expensed as much. So starting to see that rise up to the top of the list. Food delivery apps are also being expensed a lot more often. And then we’re also on the travel side seeing personal cars and ride sharing really dominate ground travel when in the past we’ve seen maybe some more car rentals. So this has shifted a little bit as well.

These next slides that we are going to look at, the responses in here are from the CFO Leadership Council from previous surveys that we have done. So when we look at this first one, we’re talking about the general merchandisers, so those are going to be Amazon, Walmart, Costco, target like I talked about. And we always want to know does your company have a policy for general merchandisers? We see some people that had it only about 5.6%, but 88.9% of the CFO leadership council companies, we polled do not have that. So this is something we really want to start to consider, especially if you do have a large part of your workforce working remotely. Are they expensing pretty often for supplies at home? Do you have a policy on what they should be expensing for their home supplies or how much they should or how often The delivery apps is always a really big topic too.

These have skyrocketed. It’s always very surprising to me when I look at this chart because we see on the far right there, the restaurant charge for two Turkey sandwiches from, we’re using Subway here 12 eight, but as we see in the other columns, Grub Hub, we see the sandwich itself being cheaper, but then they start to add on the delivery and the service fees and it ends up being more expensive. So, we also see, I’m sure you see it on the personal side with Door Dash, Postmates, Uber Eats, there are surge pricing too when it comes to the meal deliveries. So we really want people to start thinking about and we encourage you to put in a delivery app policy. This really helps too when people are out on the road, maybe they’re staying at a hotel, but then you want them to maybe walk the block to get their sandwich versus getting it delivered just to save a little bit of money. So putting those rules into place of hey, when can, can they expense this? When should they be expected to go to the restaurant directly? It’s always interesting to see the restaurants that are going to be expensed more. We see Starbucks a lot and then we start to see Uber Eats. So all those very popular ones there.

Another piece of the policy that is really important to look at, and another one that we have looked very deeply into is if your employees are taking flights, trains, lifts, are you helping them decide when they should be taking what mode of transportation? The vast majority, about 71% of the people that we pulled do not have a policy or any rules in place of when employees should be driving, flying, taking a train or taking a lift. There’s a lot of times that there is the clear winner of what the cheapest option’s going to be. So just making sure your teams feel very empowered to say, okay, I’m going to Baltimore next week. I’m coming from New York. What’s the train price look like? What’s the flight price look like or should I be driving? So really giving them those, that information to know what option to go with.

As I said at the very top here, we see personal vehicles being used a lot more often. So one thing to really think about here, since we’re seeing personal vehicles 63% of the time, think about what your mileage reimbursement rate is. A lot of companies tend to go off of the IRS rate. Some companies have their own custom rate and then thinking about the gas that’s included for them to expense as well. So personal vehicles can get a little expensive, but then we start to see Ubers and Lyfts being used often and then rental cars as well. So we’ll touch on this in a little bit. So 14 questions that we want to see your travel and expense policy answer. Before I jump into these 14 questions though, I really want to know, do you right now think your current policy addresses your employee’s most pressing questions? So thinking back to the last time, last few times people were submitting expenses or booking a travel request, a flight, hotel car, were you getting a bunch of different questions from people or did you feel like they knew exactly what was expected of ’em? That’s a really good way to gauge it. I’m seeing a pretty good split here of yes and nos.

So, this is one we think about this in a few different ways is the policy accessible to them is one of the biggest ways to make sure it’s addressing their questions. But then two is the policy easy to digest? All right, so we see 45% of you said yes to this, 55% no. So we’re pretty split there. So the ones that did say no, I would really encourage you to go back and think, like I just said, is your policy accessible? Is it digestible or is it 35 pages found somewhere on the intranet and it’s so much easier for them just to send a Teams message or a Slack to you to ask the question, not a great use of your time. So I would really evaluate those two things there.

All right, so let’s get into these questions. I love that there’s this react option here. So as I start to go through these 14, use the reactions, let me know with a thumbs up like yes, this is something that we’re thinking about today. Thumbs down, maybe we haven’t thought about it or any other reaction like if you love the question, there should be a heart in there, but would love to see some reactions popping up here. So the first one, the question that we want to help answer is how do I generate an estimated trip budget? So when we start to think about budget estimates, figures from past trips can really lead to inaccuracies in spend issues. So with that, the prices of travel are constantly changing. So we don’t necessarily want to be looking at 20 21, 20 22 to see what those numbers were. We’re going to want to be comparing them to.

We can look at Q4 of 2024 to start to think about the end of this quarter here. Travel costs fluctuate a lot. If you were looking at a flight before this webinar started and then you’re going to book it after there’s a chance that that flight price is already going to jump up. So they fluctuate often, especially on the flight side of things. So that’s where it can be a little hard to budget and we’ll talk about how to help that budget too. But what we recommend start each trip on a firmer footing by working with an algorithm. So the algorithms that we see that work really well are ones that can scan the market costs and calculate an accurate expected budget. So if you’re using a travel management company today, especially one with an online booking tool, these typically will have those algorithms built in where you would say, I’m going from New York to Chicago, and it’s going to tell you what the average cost is of those trip details, so where you’re going and the dates that you’re going and give you a suggestion on what your budget should be.

So that takes out the guesswork and all the math work on your side by letting a system do that for you. I did see some thumbs up in this one too. So really excited that you all are already starting to think about how should we generate this. When we do think about that algorithm, it typically is looking at that average cost based on usually economy class since that’s what a lot of business travel is. But if you do have some policies that let maybe executives book first class business class, the algorithms can be adjusted to look at the average of the higher fare class as well.

When should I take a plane or a train? This question definitely tends to be very common in the northeast, the Mid-Atlantic as well, especially with Amtrak going up and down there. We definitely see that happening a lot, but a lot of times it’s a really straightforward answer. Sometimes the destination though is you can drive it, you can hop on the train and it might be more convenient than the plane. If we’re looking at those cities that are really close, like if we’re thinking about New York to Baltimore getting on a plane, you can say, oh, that’s a really short time in the air. But then once we start to add in the time to go drive to the airport, pay for parking, wait in the security lines, get on that short flight land at the airport and then have to get in an Uber to go to our destination, that adds up pretty quickly when if we think about doing a train from that shorter distance, it can help one with time, but then two with the cost savings as well.

So, I would recommend looking at your travel trends. If you constantly have people going and traveling between those shorter locations like that through the major cities where Amtrak or another train’s running, just kind of price that out so you have a good guideline of say, New York to Baltimore, always the train, or if the train cost is X, we recommend booking a flight instead. So really diving into those numbers. If you’re using a trial management company or an expense platform today, you can look at some historical information just comparing those costs too to, it’s been very interesting. One of the most dramatic changes since the pandemic is the use of personal vehicles. So also on those shorter locations, I would recommend you do a very similar exercise where you see what the mileage is calculated against your mileage rate and what the typical gas would be and put that into a policy as well. It’s also helpful as you build out your policy. If the duration of the trip based on seniority level makes a difference, put that in writing as well. So maybe you want your executives to always be on the train or the plane so they can work versus some people you might want to be driving.

How far in advance do I need to book travel and hotels? Very curious. How many people have a rule in place around this with their policy? So this is one where I see some thumbs up coming in. This is one where we can see a lot of savings. Business travel we know happens last minute before this webinar. You could have gotten a message saying, Hey, I need you to go somewhere tomorrow. That happens. We totally understand that if you can get your travelers to book at least two weeks out or more, that’s where you’re going to see the greatest savings for those that are going to conferences. So for any of you that are going to the Fate conference in November, you’ve probably known you, you’re going to that conference for a little while. So book that as soon as you know, just those are the type of situations that we can book a little bit further out. But the general rule is two weeks out or more is when we want people to be booking their travel. So if you were to make one change to your policy, this is the biggest one I would suggest here.

So also, another question here. Do you currently help your employees decide between driving, flying, taking a train or taking a lift? I see some yeses coming in. That’s really awesome. It’s not something that people are commonly working through. Like I said before, a lot of it too depends on your location. So Northeast, a lot of the cities are pretty close together, and then in California, Pacific Northwest, you can get through those cities pretty easily with trains as well or driving. So I had be curious with everybody that’s saying yes if it’s a location-based decision that you’re really working through. And then we do see a group that is saying no here as well. So definitely something to consider here. For those that are unsure, that might be a situation where the policy is not super digestible or not accessible. So that would be something to flag as well, just making sure that we are covering both of those bases.

All right, next up on our questions. When should I use rideshare rental car or taxi? When should I drive myself? This comes down to a couple different things that we’ve touched on briefly, one seniority level. So if there are instances that you want certain seniority levels to be in a rideshare so they can be on the phone if they need to as they’re working on the way to the meetings or if you want people in a rental car because you have a negotiated rate, say with Enterprise or Avis, so you have a discounted rate and that’s the best cost savings for you. And then taxis as well. So we definitely want to think about taxis versus Ubers and Lyft, especially when we think about surge pricing. So I would put in a mileage distance where you should say people should drive themselves versus should they do a rental car if it’s a certain amount of mileage based on is it cheaper versus doing your mileage rate plus gas and then you can say, Hey, take a taxi if they surge pricing on Uber or Lyft is 2x/3x, whatever number you’re comfortable with there.

When we do think about these three options though, we always want to think about safety too. So if it is late at night and people are more comfortable driving their own car, they know they’re going to arrive late or they need to leave for the airport at 4:00 AM and they don’t feel comfortable getting a taxi or a ride share at that hour, definitely we want to put safety very high up there. As you do consider these options, if I drive myself, what kind of insurance do I need? This is going to cover you all. If there were to be anything that anything happened while they are traveling for business, so is the insurance, is there a company insurance that they would tap into? Do they use their own personal insurance if they’re in their own car, if they’re in a rental car, are they getting the insurance based on what’s in a negotiated rate or once again, should they be using their own personal insurance?

So, if you do have people in cars and this is not something you’re looking at today, I really encourage you to always very helpful to look over the insurance policies with legal counsels too, just to make sure you are covering all of your bases. One, to protect everybody and just to keep your employees safe and not have them stress like if they are traveling for business, if they got an offender bender, we don’t want them to be stressed out like, oh my gosh, what’s going to happen with insurance? Does my insurance cover this? Does the company let them know that they are covered and have them be very comfortable with what if people are driving themselves? They often ask, how do I expense gas mileage tickets and tolls? So this is something we also would love to see in your policy because my guess is if you are getting a question, you’re getting a slack sent while people are out on the road, it’s commonly one of these where it’s like, I need gas.

Do you want me to put on the personal card? Should I be putting on the business card? Can I expense the full gas? What does that look like? So when people are driving themselves, these are the most common questions and especially tolls. So, for those that are using ePass for example, how do you want them submitting those receipts? Or do you want them using cash at the tolls? So making sure that they also know if they use cash, they have to get a receipt just covering all of the basis. So even the two, $3 that might be submitted to the toll, that adds up quickly. We want them to know that that’s covered when they’re traveling for business tickets. Two is a big one, similar to the insurance covering the what if. So if they get a speeding ticket, probably on them, but just understanding what all those bases are and if you have any policies at your company around ticketing, around getting a parking ticket or anything like that too.

This is a very big one. What airline ticket classes can I book? We see this question happening often, especially if you have somebody that’s traveling for your company for the first time on a longer trip. So maybe they’ve just been used to doing shorter trips, domestic trips, and now they’re taking their first maybe international trip or they’re going from Boston to la. That’s typically the group that we will start to see, hey, because I’m going to be on the plane for longer, can I get a higher class ticket just for comfort level so I can arrive well rested? Maybe they’re going from the states to Singapore for a meeting that’s a very long haul. Are they allowed to upgrade? So when we see people putting policies in here, a lot of times it’s around different management levels. So maybe your executives can travel on business or maybe you say people that are traveling six hours or more can do premium economy just to get some extra leg room, but being able to put some rules in place and so everybody, no matter if we’re doing it by level, if we’re doing it by distance, everybody is treated the same with the airline tickets because what we don’t want to see is maybe I message my manager and I ask the question and they’re like, oh yeah, the policy, you’re good, you can upgrade, but somebody else is traveling with me and they don’t know that they can so they don’t upgrade and they’re like, Hey, why did Kate get a better seat than I did?

We’re on the same flight, we’re of the same level. So you just want to make sure everybody knows the answer to this and that they’re being treated the same.

It is hard to keep up with this since airlines roll out more and more ticket levels. It feels like almost daily. I know that’s an exaggeration, but we have basic economy, economy, economy plus premium and all the airlines call them something a little bit different just to add to the complexity. So I have seen some people look at it on a star level where they will line up each of the major airlines in a graph and they will start with one star will be the basic economy all the way up to your five stars, six stars will be the first class business class, and then they’ll have that graph where they can start to say, okay, two stars across the board will be economy for Delta and then it’ll be economy for American Airlines. But then maybe JetBlue calls it something different just to keep it very straightforward.

This is also one that doesn’t always get answered. So I would be curious if anybody today has this question answered in their policy, but what airline extras can I expense? So, when we’re thinking about WIFI, the extra leg room, the luggage, so throw a thumbs up in those reactions if this is something you have thought of, but we really want to think of especially WIFI for example, airlines sometimes are now putting, if you have a certain status, you’re going to get the WIFI for free. So, for those people that don’t have the status, can they expense the more expensive WIFI to work? Can they get the extra leg room for, is there a specific reason they can get it or can they never get it? And luggage too, business travels typically it can be quick couple days. So you usually can just get everything in a carry on, but if you do have people going out for longer stays, can they expense their luggage? This is something you could say if you’re going for five days plus, so maybe they have to travel along the weekend too, then you can expense luggage. Or if you’re traveling for a marketing event and you need to bring an extra bag with all of the giveaways, those might be the instances you’d want people to be allowed to expense their luggage.

Can I expense alcohol, groceries, toiletries, or entertainment? I am sure, especially on the entertainment and the alcohol side, some of you have probably gotten that question. Clients or employees are taking clients out for dinner, they get the receipt, maybe they had a glass of wine with the dinner. Can they expense that? Can they expense it because they were with a client? Or if it’s a team meeting and it’s all internal people, can they expense the alcohol in those situations? That’s what we really need to break down of when it’s allowed and when it’s not allowed. Same thing with groceries and toiletries. When I see the, especially on the grocery side, we see a lot of people that might be expensive groceries if they like to have say snacks and waters in their hotel room just to not have to go get breakfast in the morning or not buy the expensive waters at the front desk.

So, there might be situations that you want people to do, allowed them to expense groceries. Toiletries can be a hit or miss. People typically will bring their own toiletries, but if they forgot something, can they expense it? And then entertainment. So thinking about entertainment can be anywhere from maybe they went to a movie or maybe they went to top golf or a bowling alley while they were out with team members on a trip. Can that type of stuff be expensed because they’re traveling for business or because they’re with other employees or the situations that would never be able to be expensed? So this is definitely something that you want to break down each category a little bit more so everyone knows the exact expectations and the expectations, like I said, are probably going to be a little bit different maybe if they’re with a client and it’s a different answer than if they’re just with internal people.

This one I definitely, we see this with our internal finance team too. How quickly do I need to submit expense reports? I love this question. People that have to submit expense reports very often might not love it at as much the excessive lag time on submitting the expenses expense reports makes it so the paperwork can have multiple problems. So the longer you wait to do it, you might forget the exact details of it or you grab the wrong category as you’re submitting it because you’re trying to do it so fast because you’re late. So the sooner you get it done, the less errors and problems we’re going to see your travelers. When we start to think about expense reports are really going to need to know, do they have to provide physical receipts or can they just submit a photo? Typically we see people that they can just submit photos, they take a picture on their phone.

If you’re using an expense app, submit it that way. Or maybe they just forward you an email with it all and then, or do you actually want them to give you the physical receipt? So people will need to know the expectations there. Can business travelers, finance and accounting staff access and share their reports easily? So once again, is it pretty manual today how you’re doing it? Are you tracking this on Excel? They’re emailing you just pictures of the receipts. What does that time look like to then reconcile and get all the information for the report? Are you using a program that is simplifying this, that is making it easy to submit and for you all to get the information? That’s definitely something we want to take a look at as well.

Think back, is there confusion surrounding what’s allowed with the expenses? So we’ve talked about these are the 14 questions we really want to answer to make it so there’s not as much confusion. I am sure finance teams, you’re closing the books, it’s the second of the month and you people are late on their expense reports. You’re pinging everybody saying submit your expense report. And as they’re submitting, they’re asking you a ton of questions of what is allowed. You’re trying to close the books, you’re trying to answer these questions, you just want to log off, go home and have dinner. So make it really easy for people to know what is allowed to reimbursing employees for their expenses is also very important just for morale. So we don’t want to see a delay here where if people are submitting their expenses too late, if they’re paying out of pocket, they typically expense, they submit it a little bit sooner than if it’s a corporate card, but we just don’t want to see delays here in the payment.

That’s then going back to them. So just making sure, yes, we need to know how quickly the traveler and the employee needs to submit their expense reports, but having an expectation on how fast they will be reimbursed once that’s submitted to this is something that you can put in a couple different places. You can put it of course in your policy. I’ve also seen finance teams, they put it in their email signature. So just as a reminder saying expenses need to be submitted by X day of the month. Have that very, very clear. And then also just making sure if you are using, you’re using an expense app or expense software, you can also put that in there saying like, okay, you need to submit this by x date. A lot of times it’s usually within the month of the expense. I see people doing it. So we would want to see all of October expenses in one report that’s submitted by the 31st.

All right, so now here’s the big question. After that conversation, do your employees file expense reports in a timely manner? So we want to know, yes, it’s automated and easy so they can file throughout the month. Yes, they’re all submitted at the end of the month or know you’re chasing down expense reports and you’re missing the receipts in there. We’re pretty even with our answers here, which is what we typically see. So there’s definitely the groups that it’s automated, they have it. You’re using an expense app probably where they go out, they’re on their business trip, they’re taking a picture of that receipt right away. They’re getting all the information in real time. And then you might have those that are just at the end of the month. They’re setting aside time on their calendar, they’re taking all the pictures, they’re submitting everything, selecting their category, their custom fields, all of that good stuff.

And then you’re going to have that group where you are chasing the expense reports down. So if you are in that group that is chasing them down, which it looks like 49% of you are, and if you are missing receipts, that would be one of the biggest takeaways I would love to see you all walk away from today. How can we change this? How can I stop chasing people down? Is it do a monthly email that needs to go out to all staff saying it has to be submitted this day? Is it really starting to put those tighter rules in? Do not submit it by this day, then you would need to, you don’t submit it by this day and it’s reimbursed, then you might not get reimbursed. So there are some options in there. So just making sure that you know exactly what’s expected and they know what’s expected.

What receipt information do I need to include in expense reports? Think about this. When you’re doing your month end close, what is super important? Do you need to see at a minimum the amount, the date, the merchant? And then do you also need to know what department this was spent on? Or is knowing just the employee enough? Do you need to know the category at this time? Or is the accounting team going to select the category for them? If they are selecting a category, is that being tied to your GL properly? So maybe on the front end, the category is airfare, but then you have your GL string on the backend. Should your team, the people submitting the expense know that GL, or is it okay for them just to know airfare? So really understanding how this information’s being collected and what everyone should know. And when they do go into select the category and the information, is it straightforward for what they’re selecting for the receipt information as well? Do you need to see a receipt for a certain dollar amount? Do you want to say everything $75 and over requires receipt. Is it $25 and over? Do you want a receipt for absolutely everything? Do you want a receipt for nothing? So that’s something else to think about. Do we want to put a dollar amount there?

We talked about the general retailers at the top of the call, but this is one to really consider too. Can I expense supplies from retailers like Amazon or do I need procurement approval in advance? This is not a super straightforward answer since Amazon has everything. I just got my daughter’s Halloween costume off Amazon, but then I also got a whiteboard for work. There’s everything on Amazon. So what can be expensed, what cannot be expensed? Or do you truly just never want to see Amazon come through on an expense report because your company might partner with a certain company that provides all of all the business supplies that you could possibly need. Or maybe the marketing team is allowed to expense Amazon because they get stuff off Amazon for different events, but maybe people on the sales team cannot use Amazon. So you can break it down into, of course, just the yes no, but there’s usually a, okay, what about in this situation? So those are the ones you really want to think about. What I would recommend, go back to historical data, see what has been expensed through Amazon or where Amazon’s coming up on your corporate card feed and see what was charged. And then you can kind of create the policy around that way. So maybe there was times that it came through and you’re like, well, what on earth is this? Why was this expense? And then other times you’re like, okay, that makes sense. So just jotting those down too.

So, does your company have a clear policy for this? So whether it’s Amazon, target, Costco, I think Costco has a Costco for business accounts now, if I’m not mistaken. So this is starting to become very popular. So it seems like most people do not have one. We definitely have some people with this, but once again, since this is just a different group of stores and charges that are starting to become even more popular, I really do recommend having a look into this and make a clear policy. As we all know, you can get basically anything from these retailers. So are they getting things that are necessary for work? So when we think about the receipt question too, do you always want to get a receipt from Amazon, from Costco, from Target? Maybe that would be your rule in play because you want to make sure that everything that they ordered is an actual business expense. So for those that said no or unsure, I definitely recommend having this be part of your homework. Go in and see what that policy should look like. Chances are, you can probably reign in some costs by looking at it. And it’s also very possible when you look at your expenses, Amazon, Costco, target, Walmart may never come up and that’s totally fine too, but start there. See if they are coming up in your expenses first.

What supplies can remote or hybrid employees expense? So for example, internet or if they have to get at those mesh routers to make their internet stronger from where their home office is, is that okay to expense? Is there a certain dollar amount that they can expense it at or are there only certain things that they can expense it for? So definitely curious with the thumbs up and thumbs down. Is this one that if you have employees working from home, is this something that you are thinking about today? Or there are some companies out there too that everyone’s in office, so this just might not even apply to you as well.

Seeing some thumbs downs. Wow, a lot of thumbs down. So this is one. If you have employees working from home, look at this. Chances are that they might not be buying the best quality of things too for maybe if they are getting their remote stuff and they have to replace cables every six months, you really can start to look into as much detail as you want, but just letting them know. Internet’s a big one. When we think about the mesh routers, that’s also a big one. Can they expense a desk, a good chair? Start to think about those things. Look around your own desk and see what you would need. And if you could expense that and put that in there.

All right, so number 14 here. Can I select an airline or hotel based on my personal loyalty points? This is one where we’re teetering on the line of the bottom line and employee satisfaction. So if you tell everybody they just need to book the cheapest airline or hotel, it doesn’t matter what one it is, but maybe they’re really loyal in their personal life to a specific brand, it’s really important for them to get those loyalty points. If you start to say, Hey, you can’t do that, employee satisfaction does start to go down a little bit. There are some reasons when you would want to say, no, you can’t. We have a negotiated rate at the Hilton. You cannot stay at the Marriott because of this. Definitely makes sense to do, but I would just think about on the employee satisfaction side. If people are able to book their preferred vendors, it usually makes their business travel a little bit better. It makes them a little bit happier when they’re out on the road knowing that while they’re away from their house, their family, their pets, that they are getting some loyalty points for them to use on a personal trip as well.

We couldn’t quite stop at 14 because there are some bonus ones that come through. The first one being, can I extend a business trip for personal travel? So this is something that will get asked pretty often, especially if your company has really good negotiated rates with say, enterprise or a hotel chain. Maybe your company has a negotiated rate with an airline where all of your employees just get the upgraded seats into premium economy. Once people know about that, if they’re traveling for business, they’re like, wait, I want this in my personal life. So start to think can they, can they extend a business trip for their personal travel so they’re getting those perks, especially if people are going to San Diego in the winter and they live in somewhere that it’s cold, maybe they want to spend the weekend. So just letting them know exactly the rules around that.

Yes, if they can do it. If they’re getting a rental car for work, can they keep that rental car for the week? Do they have to return that rental car on Friday when their trip would be expected to end? Should they have different receipts if they use corporate rate for their car rental while on the business trip? Can they still use that rate on the weekend? So really just understanding exactly what would be allowed and not allowed. Biggest thing to remember, combining business and personal travel. It can interfere with tax deductibility and it may be taxable to the employees. So understanding if your organization is eligible for any tax breaks. If you can be your hotel rate, maybe you don’t have to pay the taxes. Understanding how that could also impact personal travel. If people do extend our second bonus here, what do I do when I miss my flight or if my flight gets delayed or canceled?

This, we really start to think about one, employee satisfaction and of course employee safety here. So if they are at home, they haven’t left for their trip and the flight is canceled, what do you want them to do? Do you want them to rebook? So they are getting out on that trip the next day? If it’s canceled, do you just want them to not rebook and just take the trip later on? Is there a certain dollar amount that you would want to say, okay, rebook if it’s under this amount? Really start to think about what to do in those situations. One if they’re already at home, but the biggest one if they’re already on the road. So we really think about employee safety there. If they’re out on the road, they’re coming home from Chicago, there’s a snow storm, their flight is canceled, what do you want them to do?

Should they one first? See if the airline is going to give them a complimentary hotel. Sometimes they don’t. If they don’t, are they allowed to book a hotel? What do those rules look like? Do they just need to get on the soonest flight possible, even if it’s maybe more expensive? So really thinking through how to keep the employees safe, how to get them home as quickly as possible. And the answer to this question really might be it’s case by case. So you might have somebody that is answers these questions each time where people reach out saying, I got stuck. What do you want me to do? And they can give the scenario like airline’s not giving me a hotel. I cannot get on a flight for two days because of this storm. What can I do? So it really might be case by case, and that’s okay too.

So now that we’ve gone through the 14 questions and two bonus ones, what does your current policy address? Most of these questions, do you think we’re seeing more nos than yeses? So I really, really encourage you take a look at your TE policy. Go through these questions, think about each one of them and see, okay, maybe you don’t need to address all these. Maybe you have no remote or hybrid employees. We don’t even need to think about what we need to do for their expenses. And maybe you never have people that are close enough to take a train. We don’t need to think about what that looks like, but think about the things. Have we gone or do we people know when they’re expected to book by. So starting to think about those questions and answering as many as you can so people know exactly what is expected of them. Yeah, looking at those final results, we’re seeing 65% of you don’t feel like the current policy addresses most of these questions. We as we coach through the travel and expense policies with a lot of our clients, they definitely start to see savings once we can answer those 16 questions.

So, this really what to think about. There’s kind of three types of policies. It’s thinking about it on the Goldilocks way. Two hot strict policies are typically going to make travelers feel unsupported. They’re going to be locked into systems that are not fitting their needs. So thinking of they love Hilton, but you’re making them stay at Marriott, really making sure that people feel comfortable. Two cold are going to be your very loose travel policies. People can book whatever they want. You all will see that impacting the bottom line, your travel expenses will be very high. So we want to really set something in the middle where we are thinking of the bottom line, making sure people are spending the company money wisely when they’re traveling and expensing, but not making it so strict that they really have no wiggle room because, and that will just impact employee satisfaction as well. So what questions do we all have today? I know that was a lot of information. I threw a lot of questions at you, but definitely want to answer anything that may be lingering.

Stephanie:

I think you’ve explained that last anecdote with the Goldilocks amazingly, but we do have a couple questions. So let’s start with what’s a mission and approval timelines are considered best practice each month by the 25th or 31st. What if they’re in the middle of a trip upon the deadline?

Kate:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. It’s funny, that said the 25th, we typically see credit card statements ending right then. So that’s when a lot of people do choose the date. If people are on a trip when that date does hit, I usually see them just submitting it on the next expense report and just putting in, usually there’ll be a description or if they can tag a note for you just saying was on a trip when the last deadline hit. So there will be those situations where it’s not always possible to get that expense report submitted with all of the details, and some of them might go into the next month, which as long as you’re not December 31st, it’s usually okay, we just at least want to keep it within your fiscal year.

Stephanie:

Okay. How should companies structure, policy language to make clear that access to a company credit card for T&E? Depends on judicious usage.

Kate:

Exactly how you just said it. No, just making that very, very clear. Put that at the top of your policy. It is a privilege to get the corporate card. We trust you. You’re getting the corporate card. Please spend wisely. If you are not following these policy items, your corporate card could be revoked. Be very, very straightforward with that. And honestly, don’t mess around with it. If people are spent, if every single month their expense report is going outside your policy, give them a warning. But don’t be afraid to pull the corporate card because you really do not want people just spending however they want. Believe in your policy. You built it for a reason, make sure people follow it.

Stephanie:

Third question is, what are the risks of relying on per diems instead of traditional T&E policy?

Kate:

Yeah, so I guess what I’m thinking about per diems, we hear about them like the government per diems, is that, I don’t know Stephanie if that had follow-up information.

Stephanie:

There was no follow-up information, but I think that’s what they were going for.

Kate:

Okay, perfect. Yeah, so that’s completely dependent on your industry where when we do start to think about the government per diems too, if that is how you need to, what you are required for travel, especially if you are submitting for a contract, a lot of times your contracts could not be fulfilled or reimbursed if you’re not following the per diems. So I would just make sure you’re understanding the exact rules for it. When I worked at Hilton, I was in the DC area, so we saw a lot of government contractors that had to follow those per diem rates, and if our clients didn’t follow them, a lot of the times there were at risk to not get reimbursed at the end of the year for it. So it can a pretty big deal if you don’t.

Stephanie:

How should organizations handle situations where card holders use their TNE cards for P card type purchases and what systems or approval should be in place to manage that?

Kate:

So key card personal, I would assume?

Stephanie:

Yes.

Kate:

Yeah, so there are some platforms. We’ll let you do a refund to company for these exact situations. Like you’re out to dinner, maybe your corporate card, your personal card are the same exact color you grab the wrong one where they then need to submit for a refund to the company where they owe you all money. Those are really easy situations to deal with if they’re also submitting for reimbursement. So say they’re submitting for a hundred dollars reimbursement, they use the wrong card, they owe you all $50 now, and then you would only reimburse them $50. So we see that happening a lot. If they’re not submitting for reimbursement, I typically see companies handling this just through the payroll system where it will be deducted from their next paycheck too. There’s a few different ways that you can do it. Unfortunately, that is common to happen. People just moving a little bit too fast and grabbing the corporate card when they shouldn’t.

Stephanie:

I’m sure everyone has those days. We have one.

Kate:

Last question.

Stephanie:

Is it okay to split a trip before slash after the deadline date or is it better to keep the trip intact on a single report that’s submitted after the deadline?

Kate:

Yeah, that’s a good question. This would be completely dependent on your organization. So my best guidance is if the trip then would end up being, if it’s split between financial year or by quarter, you might want to say, okay, the before have after. We need to have the transaction dates within each quarter, but if we’re switching just between months, you typically can just keep the full trip intact and just do it after the deadline. So you might want to just think about what it looks like when you’re closing the books. Is that transaction date really, really important for you when you are hitting quarter end, when you are hitting year end, if it’s also important to you when you’re hitting month, then have them split the trip then and make sure that the transaction dates are the ones that you’re looking at.

Stephanie:

Thank you, Kate. I think this has been so insightful and I’d love to give you a four to have any closing thoughts for our audience.

Kate:

It was great to talk to you all today. Definitely. We’ll get these slides out to you. Make sure that you go through those 16 questions, see what you already answered today and what you don’t answer. And once again, once we lock in our TE policies a little bit more, we do start to see a lot of savings. So that’s about it from me.

Stephanie:

Thank you all. Hopefully you’re all putting these wonderful TE insights as you book travel plans for Fate, a special not to Kate, and of course the entire TravelBank team. This is just the start, a first handshake if something piqued your interest, connect with Kate, like she mentioned. Look for a post-event email, which will give you a link to the full recording. More information on TravelBank and the slides. This does conclude today’s program. Until next time, stay well and stay connected.