Inefficient approval workflows can reduce travel policy compliance. Discover how to streamline processes for a smoother approval process.
According to our recent survey, 76% of business travellers reported awareness of their company’s travel policy. Yet many were unaware of the policy’s finer details when compared to company decision makers, reducing overall compliance. The reasons for this gap between awareness and compliance range from poorly communicated policies to overly restrictive booking guidelines and the need for multiple approvals.
An inefficient approval process can prove frustrating to travelling employees and management. It’s often costly and time-consuming as well. A 2023 GBTA Business Travel Outlook Poll reported that manual pre-trip approval was required for 27% of domestic travel and 34% of international travel. While stricter approval processes may help a business keep on top of unauthorised spending, this could have the unwanted side effect of additional challenges including delays and non-compliance.
One of the best ways to make your employee travel policy more user-friendly and effective is by streamlining travel approval workflows. Below, we’ll cover common challenges and solutions associated with travel requests, so you can provide a more seamless approval process.
An employee travel policy is a set of rules, guidelines and processes drafted by an organisation to better manage its business travel. While one of the primary goals of a travel policy is to establish a budget and control business travel expenses, it goes beyond this to include aspects of risk management, employee wellbeing, and approval processes.
A good travel policy for employees provides structure for the full journey. This document will cover a business trip’s stages from pre-approval to debriefing, along with all the steps between.
Without a defined company travel policy, costs can quickly spiral out of control. Business travel policy guidelines set expense limits, reimbursement procedures, and preferred vendors.
A set of guidelines also provides consistency for employees, who can save time by following established, efficient procedures for gaining travel approvals, booking trips and submitting expense reports.
From a human resources perspective, company travel policies protect the organisation by ensuring compliance with legal requirements surrounding duty of care and risk management.
The first stage of business travel is submitting a travel request for approval. Travel requests are submitted by employees to the relevant party for approval. This might be the finance department, a company travel coordinator, or a direct management team. Requests will include all relevant details of travel, including expected dates, destinations, purpose, and estimated costs.
The request and approval process should be clearly spelled out in your company travel policy. Specific rules will vary depending on your organisation’s size, budget, and frequency of business travel.
For large corporations, you can expect to follow most of the steps below, while SMEs will typically require fewer steps and approval levels.
The employee initiates the approval workflow by submitting a travel request form filled out with all relevant trip details.
The employee’s manager reviews the travel request form to ensure the trip is necessary, within budget, and follows the guidelines of the company travel policy.
In some cases, the travel request is passed on to additional stakeholders for higher approvals. The finance team may verify costs to ensure they fit with approved departmental budgets. Senior management may need to perform additional compliance and legal checks, consulting travel policies for guidance.
If there are any issues with the travel request, it will be sent back to the employee for amendment. Otherwise, it’s officially approved and can proceed to the next stage.
Once approved, the travel coordinator or employee has clearance for booking flights, hotels, car rentals, and other arrangements. These bookings must match the cost estimates and details specified in the initial request.
The travel request, booking confirmations, receipts, invoices, and any other related documents should be stored away for record-keeping.
Once the trip is completed, the employee will submit an expense report to the finance department with all receipts. This is another area where it’s important to consult the company travel policy for reporting and reimbursement compliance.
Business travel is typically a company’s second largest operating expense, with employee overspending taking over anywhere from a fifth to a third of the budget. Therefore, the cost of non-compliance can be huge, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Requiring manager approval for business trips ensures that travel is both essential to the company goals and stays within budget.
While manager approval keeps costs in line with the employee travel policy guidelines, the travel approval process presents its own challenges.
Travel requests must meet all company policy guidelines, including those related to budget, security and booking procedures. If these aren’t stored in a centralised system and clearly communicated to all relevant parties, there could be costly errors.
Even if your workplace has gone paperless, a manual approval process could involve a lengthy email trail. Sending travel requests back and forth between inboxes comes with an increased risk of error, miscommunication, and delays.
Some workflows require approval from multiple stakeholders, including direct managers, travel coordinators and finance administrators. With each request passing through multiple tiers of bureaucracy, any lag in the approval process leads to delay.
An ineffective travel policy could increase the cost of corporate travel, whether it’s due to non-compliance or time-wasting paperwork. If you haven’t updated your policies in some time, use generic templates, or rely on a lengthy, manual approval process, travelling employees are less likely to remain compliant.
If the answer to any of these questions is no, it may be time to reformulate your travel policy for employees.
In business, streamlining a process means eliminating any unnecessary steps that could impede efficiency. The goal of streamlining is to increase productivity, reduce waste, and minimise uncertainty.
Today’s digital tools have transformed corporate travel, streamlining your approval workflow while making travel policies easier to understand. Team digital solutions with efficiency initiatives to simplify the approval process, and you’ll reduce the workload for business travellers, travel managers and finance departments.
Streamlining your travel management system begins with digital automation. From travel request generation to document storage, automation software helps ensure that every step of the travel approvals process runs smoothly.
Platforms like Traxo automatically detect confirmation emails and pull out relevant traveller data for display with your travel management system. Spend management software like Expensify automates the expense reporting and documentation side of approvals, reducing the chance of error for better travel policy compliance.
Not every type of business trip will require the same approval level. For example, day trips and domestic flights might require approval from an employee’s direct manager. Longer international journeys might require approval from more than one department. These approval workflows should be clearly stated in the company travel policy, ensuring requests are fulfilled in a timely manner.
When there’s a single manager tasked with all travel approvals, their absence causes unnecessary delays. Travel management platforms like Booking.com for Business allows you to appoint multiple administrators to streamline your workflow. Administrative assistants, travel managers, HR and finance teams can all log into the platform to view traveller information from a central dashboard.
Inconsistent formatting may mean that some travel requests take longer for approval, as administrators will need extra time for review. It’s best to use standardised forms across departments, whether you’re approving travel requests for full-time employees or external contractors. If you’re using travel management software, this will automatically generate consistent request forms.
While complex travel requests will require detailed review, many common travel requests can be pre-approved in the system to save time. In your business trip policy, differentiate between high-cost and low-cost approvals, each with their own approach.
The best workflow management software includes data analysis tools to identify travel trends, track expenses, and strategize cost-saving solutions tailored to your own business needs. For example, Monday.com offers custom dashboards to display your workflow using Gantt charts and real-time user data. With these business traveller insights, you can adjust your travel policy to reflect the realistic needs of your team.
One of the best ways to streamline your approvals is by integrating travel requests and policies with existing technology. Asking employees to refer to a PDF or Word document is outdated and time-consuming. By integrating your travel policy with your booking technology, you can set guidelines and limits.
For example, Booking.com for Business allows administrators to set up recommended hotel budgets. This helps ensure that employee travel requests comply with travel policies. Using a business travel management solution like Booking.com for Business also streamlines your approvals by enabling bookings without using separate account managers or IT support.
If your business is experiencing a high volume of non-compliant travel bookings, consider whether your policy’s language is the culprit. Clunky, cumbersome travel policies are more likely to be ignored by business travellers, costing time and money.
To maximise compliance with your corporate travel policy, it must be communicated simply and effectively. To begin with, the document should be easily accessible to all relevant stakeholders, typically within an employee or HR portal. It can also be integrated directly into booking software.
Write your policy with step-by-step instructions for travel requests, approvals, and reimbursements. Avoid using business or legal jargon, and consider breaking up the policy into sections for each role.
It’s helpful to include a business travel checklist that employees can follow to ensure they’re meeting all requirements of the approvals process, as well as an FAQ section that’s frequently updated according to business traveller feedback.
Apart from updating your travel policy, one of the best ways to improve the approval workflow process is by using an SME travel management platform like Booking.com for Business.
Booking.com for Business keeps everything in one place, with efficient tools for booking, managing and monitoring your team’s work trips. You can invite employees to the platform, assigning a role to each profile to streamline the approvals process. For common, frequent travel needs, travellers can book their own flights, hotels and car rentals according to travel policy and budget. A real-time spend tracker gives you full visibility over travel spend, which can be exported into detailed reports.
Integrate your business travel policy into digital platforms like these for better visibility, reduced stress, and a higher compliance rate.
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