7 Top Tips on How to Create a Business Travel Report

What are the essential steps to follow when creating a business travel report?

Those in charge of business travel often find reporting to be a tedious and difficult task. Although it may be a painstaking and time-consuming process, there are ways to gather data, including business trip expenses. Keep reading for some of our best advice on how to simplify and clarify business trip reporting.

  

Company travel reports: what are they?

The purpose of business travel reporting is to enhance the overall strategy and effectiveness of a company's travel program by documenting the corporate travel process. These reports provide a comprehensive picture of business visits by collecting patterns of spending, trip purpose, general learning, and other data. Additionally, they demonstrate the value of travel to your firm, which helps justify the expense.

Who writes up reports on business trips?

Managers of business travel who work in accounting or corporate administration typically compile these reports.

What should a business trip report include?

• Objective formulation. The first section of a business trip report is essentially a high-level summary of the whole thing. You should detail the purpose of the trip, any conferences or trade shows attended, anticipated outcomes, and chances of securing business deals.

• Details that are crucial. To make room for the most important information, organize your business trip report into sections and use bullet points or headlines to summarize each one. This should serve as an introductory paragraph for the report and highlight the primary objective of the journey. Your company's business travelers' names, destinations, and contacts should be included.

• Are there crucial details you should be aware of prior to your journey? Reporting on business trips should start well in advance of the actual trip. Your preparations should include noting important company goals and providing instructions on the paperwork needed to track progress. Maintaining meticulous records during business trips is crucial, not just for tracking expenses. This is also true for customer feedback forms, presentation and seminar tapes, and any other relevant information.
• Details of the journey. The body of a business travel report occupies most of its space. This section serves as a personal reflection on the trip's triumphs, failures, and any unmentioned accomplishments, rather than a summary of the goals themselves. It's beneficial to further explain how these accomplishments will aid the company.

• Key points. The report's conclusion should include final thoughts and a brief overview of the trip's return on investment (ROI). After finishing all meetings and objectives, gather all relevant information in one location, including statistics, photographs, documents, and feedback surveys, and focus on the end advantages to the company.

These are the seven most important guidelines for executive reporting.

1. Implement an automated system

One approach to greatly simplifying your life as a travel manager is to use business travel management software. There is a margin of error and a lot of manual labor involved with entering expenses into spreadsheets. An easy-to-manage one-stop shop for corporate travel booking, modern software solutions like Booking for Corporate let you assemble all your platforms and policies in one place.

Itineraries, hotel and flight bookings, expense monitoring, and the ability to integrate tools like dashboards are all within your reach. You can access data from anywhere, modify trip details with ease, and create travel reports with the help of tools and apps like these.

2. Calculate the ROI

ROI analysis is an intelligent use of data to influence decision-making, potentially ensuring the success of your company's business trip. Return on investment (ROI) can shed light on several facets of business travel, depending on the measures employed.

• The clearest way to measure the benefit of corporate travel to a firm is to calculate the number of successful agreements procured for the organization during a business trip.
• Another measure of business travel's value is money; many visits include fruitful interactions with clients and sales opportunities.
• Meeting industry insiders and promoting your brand are major benefits of business travel.
• While valuing the enhancement of your business relationships through corporate travel may be challenging, a return on investment (ROI) analysis includes monitoring its effectiveness.
• You can optimize these components for future business trips and see if you are saving money on travel arrangements and expenses by doing a return on investment (ROI) analysis.

3. Monitoring environmental impacts

When employees travel for work, it can put a strain on the environment and the company's carbon footprint. Reporting on business travel can help mitigate this effect by keeping tabs on and analyzing data to lower total energy consumption and waste output from business travels. However, how can businesses monitor the damage they do to the environment?

• By keeping tabs on environmental effects, businesses can see how well their employees are following sustainable business travel regulations, provide them with the training they need, and even incentivize them to stay compliant.
• Analyzing carbon emissions data enables the development of a sustainable business travel strategy by identifying the primary causes of emissions.
• If you want to know where your company's travel is wasting the most money and having the biggest negative effect, you can track energy consumption patterns to find out.

4. Compile comments

One way to make business travel more efficient and satisfying for travelers is to compile feedback from employees into easily digestible reports. One effective strategy for improving efficiency is to conduct post-trip surveys to gauge satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.

Building a culture of business travel policy compliance is as simple as listening to employees' thoughts; it's a terrific way to avoid wasting money on unreliable transportation or hotels in inconvenient locations, and it improves engagement and recognition.

Doing so requires you to:

Make use of tools for training and feedback, such as questionnaires and surveys.
Take the initiative to resolve problems.
Keep your travel policy brief and simple to understand.

5. Do audits on a regular basis

A primary method of reducing costs, boosting compliance, and preventing fraud is to run regular audits of expenses or process efficiency. These audits will identify potential areas of overspending and update regulations appropriately. Maintaining successful and efficient business travel requires regular audits to identify patterns over time and implement process improvements.

6. Take advantage of a sample travel report

One simple approach to planning business trips without forgetting anything is to use a template. Here are some essential components of a typical template:

• Your personal information includes your name, job title, and corporate department.
• Travel details include an overview of the schedule for the journey.
• Trip purpose—oobjectives and KPIs.
• The daily budget and instructions for recording and submitting expenses are all part of the expense information.
• Things planned for work include gatherings, excursions, and events.
• The end result is accomplishments in business (such as closed deals or successful pitches), as well as opportunities and obstacles in business.
• Expenses involve spending money on items such as meals, lodging, and transportation, which includes plane or train tickets, airport shuttles, and public transportation.
• Important takeaways include solutions to issues and ideas for enhancing future business travels.

7. Make use of mobile applications

Business travel has benefited greatly from the creation of state-of-the-art solutions and management software. Because business travelers can utilize business travel applications effortlessly on the go, it has allowed for a level of delegation in the process of organizing business travel and lessened the workload of business travel administrators. They're a fantastic tool for streamlining corporate travel, which in turn boosts compliance and satisfaction among passengers.

Plus, there is an extensive library of apps to choose from. Among these apps are expenditure trackers that let you snap pictures of receipts while you're on the move, and there are also multi-purpose ones that let you plan your whole business trip in one place. The apps continue to be useful even after you return from your trip. Some of their additional features include a customer care message system that is available 24 hours a day and a way to compile all of your business travel data into a helpful report.

In conclusion, reporting is an essential aspect of business travel. Keeping up with industry developments will help your company maximize corporate travel. Plus, things are considerably easier now because of how the business travel industry is evolving and how technology has simplified everything.

Photo by RDNE Stock project.