Business travels should be a mixture of both work and play so that the entire experience can be both fun and productive as it eases away much anxiety on the part of the traveler. The idea of meeting new people, making new friends and finding new opportunities is what makes every business travel truly exciting. Unfortunately, that’s not all that an individual can experience during business travels. An entrepreneur may also be subjected to anxiety and stress especially when he has to deal with financial stuff incurred during travel. Below are some tips on how you can ease your worries about spending while traveling.
Make sure to keep a record of all your expenses.
Keeping a record of all your expenses during travel will help you better manage your travel spending. Every transaction that entails financial obligation must be recorded. Do not forget as well to keep all the receipts because these will serve as your back up and proof should there be any lapses in your records. Each receipt must be well-kept and all the expenses must be categorized accurately. It is not necessary that you do this alone or on your own but you may always enlist the help of your company’s CPA to ensure that everything from air fees to bus fares, luggage fees, meal costs, hotel and cell phone expenses, etc. is well accounted for. Keeping a record of all your expenses while on travel will also help you become more conscious about how much you have spent and see to it that not a single cent is being wasted especially if you are spending the company’s money.
Go for a travel per diem policy.
A travel per diem policy can greatly spare anyone from the hassle of record keeping. Just make sure to abide by the government’s mandated allowance for employees although this may vary from one state to another. If you give your employees a travel per diem it is now up to them where to allocate the given allowance. Another thing that needs to be tracked when traveling on a per diem basis is the number of days spent for business travel. A “travel per diem” policy can also be a real saver in terms of time, paper works, and hassle. This would also help encourage every employee to make sure that the money is being spent on its intended purpose. Of course, corresponding receipts will still be necessary for record keeping. As the business owner, you also need to see to it that every employee is aware about the company’s policy on business travel expenses in order to avoid “surprises” during auditing and financial liquidation procedures.
Personal and business-related activities must be separated.
This may seem difficult to do especially if you are mixing business and personal transactions on the same travel. This is when you need to carefully asses the number of hours and the amount spent on purely business transactions. If your employees decide to tack some mini-vacations simply because they wanted to de stress, which may usually happen when they have to travel as a team or as a group then see to it that they are responsible for their own personal expenses. The number of days that will be spent on travel should not exceed beyond what was agreed between the employees and the company so that certain tasks will not be delayed and company goals will not be compromised by unexpected yet unnecessary extending of travel days. This may take a lot of discipline on the part of the employees who are traveling for company’s sake. On the other hand, this may also serve as a great challenge on the part of the employers to carefully choose people to send for business travels.
Business travels can help reap huge income generating opportunities for the company if the money allocated for such travel is well spent and well accounted for. Otherwise, it would only mean loss of income and waste of time.
