6 Tips for Managing and Tracking Work From Home Expenses

As more teams are moving to remote work to keep their people healthy, TravelBank can help by reducing the work involved in managing and tracking work from home expenses so your finance team has visibility into company spend during this time.

Use the following tips to set up and communicate new work from home expense policies, and automate expense tracking to reduce the burden on your remote workforce.

1. Design an expense policy specifically for remote work

Tracking business expenses, and ensuring they are submitted, reviewed, and approved on time is challenging enough as is. Often this is attributed to confusion and frustration stemming from unclear expense policies and manual processes.

Now add on the fact that many workers are working from home for the first time, and it’s no wonder expense management feels even more challenging. Fortunately, all you need to do to set your company up for success is create an expense policy that specifically addresses work from home expenses. Unsure where to start? Use our sample WFH Policy to get started.

As you think through what expenses your business will allow for remote workers, be sure to understand the difference between outlining an expense policy and offering a stipend, which would qualify as a fringe benefit and is generally subject to withholding and employment taxes.

2. Communicate your policy to your employees in-app

After you’ve created a WFH Policy for your company, fill out our custom policy request form and our team will help you create a notification of the policy that appears in the TravelBank desktop app for your employees.

Once we publish your policy, your employees will get a notification for it when they go to track their expenses.

3. Set up customizable expense categories that sync with your general ledger

Creating a custom expense category will allow your team to easily review and analyze work from home-related expenses. Setting up a custom category with TravelBank is simple.

Log in to the TravelBank app and find “Company Settings” in the main menu. Select “Expense Categories,” then click the plus icon in the bottom right corner to add a new category. Assign your new category a name and fill in the details using the drop down fields.

The new category is immediately available for your employees to use and will automatically sync to appear in your integrated general ledger. Now, when employees expense with this category, you can track all items expensed while they work remotely.

4. Find Work From Home Resources in Marketplace

To help your employees find the resources they need to power their remote work and feel healthy at home, we’re adding dozens of exclusive deals and new partners like Aaptiv, Acer, Krisp, Sonos, and UrbanStems to the TravelBank Marketplace in the Work From Home category.

5. Sync a credit card for fast expense tracking

TravelBank allows your employees to sync their credit cards with the app to pull in work from home expenses. Once synced they can either assign credit card transactions to an expense report or snap a photo of their receipt and allow the app to pair the transaction details with the receipt photos they’ve taken.

Paired credit card transactions are automatically categorized based on your company’s general ledger, and gets smarter as more expenses are tracked.

6. Offer employees next day reimbursement

In these uncertain times, your employees will greatly appreciate speedy reimbursements so they don’t have to float the cost of work from home expenses. TravelBank allows your company to process reimbursements submitted through the app in as little as 24 hours.

Many teams are learning how to operate in a remote environment for the first time ever. A work from home expense policy will allow your finance team track and control remote work expenses, while empowering your remote employees to stay productive and healthy.

Do you already use TravelBank to manage expenses? Get in touch with our support team to request a custom expense policy for your company.

New to TravelBank? Getting set up on TravelBank takes minutes.