Managing travel can come as an unexpected challenge. That's because you can't think of every possible one-off situation. Even the most experienced, most creative travel policy writer in the universe can't foresee the crazy things that business travelers might encounter or come up with.
It's a good thing that there are resources out there for creating and managing a travel policy that actually works. Beyond that, you need a policy that your employees and managers will actually stick with.
It wouldn't be helpful or practical to provide advice for your specific organization in a general post like this. That's because your organization is unique, even within its industry.
Instead, we'll walk through two topics:
1) how to begin the process of creating useful, practical travel policy
and
2) how partnering with a third-party expense reporting solution that integrates directly with MS Dynamics NAV (and the whole suite of MS Dynamics solutions) will give you access to workflow tools that automate the process.
Here are some general tips and resources to point you in the right direction for specifics. As expense reporting experts, we've helped to configure and automate policy management software for companies of all sizes and industries, so we've seen it all. We've developed a specific step-by-step guide to help you through this complex process, but here are the big takeaways:
How To Create Practical Travel Policy
Step 1: Set Up Policies
Firstly, it sounds basic, but many companies have just made do with accepting whatever receipts their travelers produce. They do this without much thought about the rules behind them.
Our recommendation is to create policies for the most common types of expenses. Those will probably include:
- Business meals
- Airfare
- Vehicle rentals
- Hotels & lodging
- Mileage
- Internet
- Cell phones
If you'd like recommendations for policy language and best practices, read more in our detailed auditing and policy guide. You can find it here: .
Step 2: Set up your approval workflows
Second, you need to set up your approval processes. This sounds like a no-brainer. However, if you're at this stage, you're ahead of many others.
The goal of this stage is to make decisions about how to approve the expense reports. Therefore, we recommend that you think about your specific organization. Consider what kind of managers need what kind of authority, how to escalate, and whether you have exceptions for particular roles. For example, an exception might be that one person in the company only needs approval from the CEO rather than making their report go through the entire process. These are reasonable, configurable accommodations.
Step 3: Start reporting
Reporting is the reason for going through all of these steps. It's good to be organized. Beyond that, you need data. Data is power. For that reason, here are the reports we recommend that will help open your eyes to actionable insights:
- Monthly, quarterly, yearly expense reimbursement tracking by:
- user
- expense or GL account,
- department, and
- project.
- reconciliation, and usage tracking
- Approval duration
- By approver
- By shortest and longest duration
- ... and many more!
Get all of these reporting recommendations AND steps 4-6 here in our free PDF:
.
In the end, we're looking for partners who are ready to take the next step. If you're tired of old processes that don't work and you're ready to finally make a difference to your bottom line, reach out. As a third-party MS Dynamics NAV-integrated expense reporting solution, we're proud of our policy expertise and our expense reporting experience. If you need to implement a smoother expense reporting and travel policy system, spend a few minutes in our thorough guide and let us know if you have questions.
By Amanda Canupp Mendoza at DATABASICS, a timesheet and expense reporting solution with MS Dynamics NAV integration, .
Read more about DATABASICS and MS Dynamics on our blog at or
