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Expensify Travel |
Expensify Travel is a comprehensive travel management platform integrated directly into Expensify, providing businesses with an easy way to book, manage, and approve corporate travel while automatically handling the associated expenses. Whether you're booking flights, hotels, or car rentals, Expensify Travel simplifies the process from start to finish, ensuring all travel expenses are automatically captured, categorized, and ready for approval.
Expensify Travel is perfect for any situation involving corporate or personal travel, including:
- Booking business travel - Book flights, hotels, car rentals, and train travel in a few presses, all within the Expensify platform.
- Tracking travel expenses - Automatically capture travel-related expenses such as airfare, lodging, and meals, ensuring everything is logged without manual input.
- Managing employee travel - Empower managers to oversee travel bookings, set travel policies, and approve expenses in real time.
- Ensuring compliance with travel policies - Use travel policies to enforce company rules around budgets, preferred vendors, and travel categories.
- Streamlining travel approvals - Ensure travel requests are reviewed and approved in a structured workflow before any money is spent.
Expensify Travel is used by individuals and organizations to streamline corporate travel management. Key user groups include:
- Employees - Book business trips quickly and track all travel-related expenses automatically.
- Managers - Approve or reject travel requests and ensure employees are adhering to company travel policies.
- Travel managers - Oversee company-wide travel bookings, manage itineraries, and ensure compliance with corporate travel policies.
- Finance teams - Gain full visibility into travel expenses to help manage budgets, ensure compliance, and approve travel-related costs.
- Frequent travelers - Keep all your travel information in one place, with automatic receipt tracking and expense categorization.
Expensify Travel provides a full-service corporate travel management experience with several key advantages:
- Fully integrated with Expensify Expense - All travel-related expenses are automatically logged, categorized, and ready for reimbursement through Expensify Expense.
- Corporate policy enforcement - Ensure employees follow travel policies by setting budgets, preferred vendors, and travel categories.
- Streamlined approval process - Set up travel request workflows so that managers can review and approve travel plans before booking.
- Travel savings - Take advantage of corporate discounts and negotiated rates through Expensify’s preferred travel partners.
- Real-time visibility - Managers can track employee travel, see expenses as they happen, and ensure employees stay within budget.
- Automated expense tracking - Travel expenses such as airfare, hotel stays, and meals are automatically captured and categorized for easy reporting and reimbursement.
Expensify Travel operates on a few core concepts that make business travel easy to manage and oversee.
Expensify Travel integrates a seamless booking experience directly into the app:
- Flights - Search for and book flights, choosing from corporate-approved airlines or vendors.
- Hotels - Book hotels using preferred vendor rates or select your own accommodations, with policy checks to ensure compliance.
- Car rentals - Rent vehicles from top providers, with automatic receipt tracking and expense capture.
- Trains - Book train travel alongside other modes of transportation.
- All in one place - View and manage your full itinerary (flights, hotels, cars, trains) from a single interface.
Corporate travel policies can be configured in Expensify Travel to ensure compliance:
- Budgets - Set maximum budgets for flights, hotels, and other travel-related expenses.
- Preferred vendors - Require employees to book through specific airlines, hotel chains, or rental agencies to take advantage of corporate rates.
- Approval workflows - Ensure all travel plans are reviewed and approved by the appropriate managers before booking.
- Expense categories - Automatically categorize travel expenses in line with company accounting policies.
Expensify Travel offers three approval methods to accommodate different organizational needs: Soft Approval, Hard Approval, and Passive Approval.
- Soft Approval: Bookings are automatically approved unless a manager declines them within 24 hours. If not declined, the arrangements proceed even if they are out of policy.
- Hard Approval: Bookings are automatically canceled if not approved within 24 hours.
- Passive Approval: Managers are notified of out-of-policy travel, but no action is required.
Assign roles to manage travel permissions within Expensify Travel:
- Traveler - Can only book travel for themselves.
- Travel Arranger - Can book travel for themselves and for other workspace members. Arrangers can be set to arrange travel for everyone in the workspace or for specific individuals only.
- Company Admin - Can book travel for themselves as well as any other workspace members. They can also access administrative features to define travel policies, add or remove users, configure corporate cards as payment methods, view analytics and metrics, and use the Safety feature.
To book travel from the Expensify app, follow these steps:
- Press the Travel tab.
- Press Book or manage travel.
- Use the icons at the top to select the type of travel arrangement you want to book: flights, hotels, cars, or trains.
- Enter the travel information relevant to the selected arrangement (destination, dates of travel, etc.).
- Select all the details for the arrangement you wish to book.
- Review the booking details and press Book Flight / Book Hotel / Book Car / Book Rail to complete the booking.
The traveler is emailed an itinerary of the booking. Additionally,
- Their travel details are added to a Trip chat room under their primary workspace.
- An expense report for the trip is created.
- If booked with an Expensify Card, the trip is automatically reconciled.
To submit a travel request:
- Go to Create > Travel Request.
- Enter the details of your trip, including flights, hotels, and rental cars.
- Review your travel options and ensure they are within policy.
- Submit the request to your manager for approval.
To approve a travel request:
- Go to your Inbox and find the travel request awaiting approval.
- Review the trip details, including any out-of-policy flags.
- Press Approve or Reject as appropriate.
If you need to edit or cancel your travel arrangements, you can do so through the Expensify app:
- Open the Trip chat in your inbox to review your travel arrangements.
- Press your profile image or icon in the bottom left menu.
- Scroll down and press Workspaces in the left menu.
- Select the workspace the travel is booked under.
- Tap into the booking to see more details.
- Press Trip Support for assistance.
If there are unexpected changes to your itinerary, such as a flight cancellation, Expensify’s travel partner Spotnana will reach out to provide updates. Note that any modifications, exchanges, or cancellations made through support will incur a $25 booking change fee.
Workspace admins can create and update travel policies to establish travel rules for different groups of travelers. To configure a travel policy:
- Press the Travel tab and select Book or manage travel.
- Select the Program tab and choose Policies.
- Under Employee or Non-employee, press Add new to create a new policy.
- In the Edit members section, select the group of employees for the policy.
- Choose travel preferences to modify: General, flight, hotel, car, or rail.
- Press the paperclip icon next to each setting to de-couple it from the default policy.
- Update the desired settings and save changes.
To see how Expensify Travel works, watch the demo video:
- The video provides a comprehensive overview of using Expensify Travel for booking and managing travel.
To configure the approval method for travel expenses in Expensify:
- Press the Travel tab and choose Book or manage travel.
- Navigate to the Program tab and select Policies.
- Under the General section, select the approval methods for Flights, Hotels, Cars, and Rail, choosing between Soft Approval, Hard Approval, or Passive Approval.
To manage travel member roles within Expensify:
- Press the Travel tab and select Book or manage travel.
- Select the Program tab and choose Users.
- Press the name of the member whose role you wish to update.
- Press the Roles tab and select the desired role.
- Press Save to confirm the changes.
To manage travel booking approvals effectively:
- Once an employee books a trip, you will receive an email notification with booking details.
- For Soft Approval, no action is required to approve, but to decline, follow the email prompt within 24 hours and press Decline booking, then Deny Booking.
- For Hard Approval, press Approve booking to confirm or Decline booking to reject, then follow the respective prompts.
Yes, Expensify Travel can be used to book personal trips, and personal travel expenses can be separated from business expenses during the booking process.
If your travel expenses exceed your company’s budget, Expensify Travel will automatically flag them during the approval process, giving your manager the option to reject the request or approve it with exceptions.
Yes, you can use a personal credit card for travel bookings if preferred, but Expensify recommends using the Expensify Card for easy expense tracking and reimbursement.
Yes, Expensify Travel supports international bookings and expense tracking in multiple currencies.
You can configure travel policies directly in Expensify by setting budgets, preferred vendors, and approval workflows. These policies will automatically be enforced whenever employees book travel.
No, the approval window is fixed at 24 hours from when the trip is booked.
It is recommended to have multiple approvers set up for travel, as there is no delegated approval for out-of-office scenarios.
Travelers cannot upload a document at the time of trip submission, but companies can use a 'reason code' in the Out of Policy rules, which travelers complete at checkout. Documents can then be added to the expense report during submission in Expensify.
Expensify Travel works seamlessly with Expensify Expense to automate the handling of travel expenses:
- Automatic expense capture - Travel-related expenses (flights, hotels, meals) are automatically imported into Expensify Expense for easy tracking and reimbursement.
- Real-time tracking - Travel expenses appear in your expense report as soon as they are incurred, providing real-time visibility into costs.
- One-click submission - Employees can submit all travel expenses in a single report, and managers can approve them in bulk.
Yes, Expensify Travel integrates with Expensify Cards:
- Automatic e-receipts - Travel purchases made with an Expensify Card automatically generate e-receipts, eliminating the need for paper receipts.
- Real-time expense tracking - Expenses made with the Expensify Card are logged in real time and categorized according to your travel policies.
- Spend controls - Set card limits and track spend in real time to ensure that employees stay within budget.