Everyone has a business travel expenses horror story to tell…
- That time you could only get seats on a 3am flight
- That realisation you’d lost the receipt to the big client dinner
- The agonising wait while you await approval and reimbursement for your many taxi and breakfast claims
But business travel expenses shouldn’t be something employees have to grit their teeth through.
It should be an exciting opportunity to get out of the office, to network, learn and meet clients and colleagues from different branches.
And with embedded finance, perhaps it can be.
To help you picture what the next generation of business travel tech can look like, we’ve imagined a trip taken by two employees from different branches of a business.
One does things the traditional way – booking approvals, receipts, filing expenses claims – while the other uses a business travel app powered by embedded finance – an app that can issue spend controlled cards, allow direct access to an employee’s travel budget and give them autonomy while they’re travelling.
Stage 1: The red eye flight
You’re going to a conference and you’ve found the perfect flight. It’s in the middle of the day, so there’s no need to stay up late or drive to the airport before the crack of dawn. Not only that, it’s the cheapest flight available. It’s a no brainer, right?
Except you can’t just press “Book now”. You have to wait for someone higher up the chain to approve the booking and allocate the budget – and that someone is notorious for not checking their notifications when you need them to. By the time they approve your booking, all the seats on that ideal flight have gone, leaving only the post-midnight flight that no one wants.
And to make matters worse, that flight costs more than the original one you found – so now you have to go back to your manager asking for approval again on the new price.
But what if there didn’t need to be someone in the middle every time, rubber stamping each payment?
If the company has set aside a budget for an employee’s business travel, it has already approved the flight payment in principle.
The employee doesn’t need a second approval, they just need a way to access the allocated company funds when they’re ready to book a seat – and embedded finance offers a controlled way to do just that.
Stage 2: “And how will you be paying for your stay?
After the nightmare of the 1am flight, at least the travelling employee can catch up on some sleep in their hotel room, right?
Except no, when they arrive at the check in desk they find out that their company’s preferred hotel chain doesn’t actually accept the back-office payment they thought they’d made. So before they can get to their double bed and complimentary pillow mint, they have to get their own card out of their wallet and pay for the room out of pocket.
It’s infuriating for them – but equally so for the travel app if it turns out that the hotel booking process doesn’t actually work as advertised.
But if that app had payments embedded into it like the fictional Travl8 does, there wouldn’t be that nasty surprise in the hotel lobby. The payment goes through as easily as if the employee were booking a hotel for a personal holiday, even though the money is still coming from their corporate travel budget.
Not only that, but the app could help them out with hotel deposits, giving them either a physical card or a virtual card they can add to their digital wallet – meaning the card they tap at reception is still linked to their corporate budget, not their personal bank account.
Stage 3: Oh, the business travel expenses you’ll claim…
Sometimes the worst bit about business travel isn’t the headache getting there. It’s what comes after the trip has ended – when you need to file all of your expenses claims for every meal, every coffee, every taxi.
Maybe – like our unhappy traveller – you couldn’t get a receipt for something because the printer gave up the ghost.
Maybe you did get a receipt, but somewhere between the purchase and the following Monday it fell out of your pocket.
Or maybe you do still have the receipts, but now your first day back from the conference is spent submitting and evidencing every one of your dozen individual taxi rides to and from networking events.
Wouldn’t it be easier if that just didn’t have to be the case?
For example, if the business travel app employees used to book their flights and hotels could also give them a card ready loaded with their budget for event expenses, all they need to do is tap the card at the point of sale.
The funds for those meals and taxi rides come directly from a pre-approved budget and can be tracked and understood instantly by the finance team back at the office because there’s a clear digital trail.
Stage 4: Never say never again
Embedded finance can’t solve every problem business travellers have – there will always be delayed connections, cancelled flights and days when the hotel buffet is all out of bacon. But it can give business travel apps the power to help them breeze past those bumps in the road when it comes to claiming business travel expenses.
Even if they do have a 6 hour delay at the airport they can get their insurance compensation credited straight to their travel card – meaning they can use the funds instantly at the airport rather than getting it weeks later.
With financial features under the hood, travel apps can give employees the peace of mind to buy breakfast from the bakery round the corner instead, knowing that they won’t be out of pocket and won’t have to justify that pain au chocolat on their expenses claim next week.
And the less out of pocket employees are when travelling, the more business travel becomes an adventure rather than a chore. Business travel also becomes more accessible to junior employees, who can’t always afford to front the costs themselves – so they can fly out to that big company conference without a second thought.
If you’re looking to embed finance into your business travel platform, set up a meeting with one of our experts in employee benefits use cases or take a look at our solution for employee expenses tech.
