Automating Travel Reimbursement
About this course
This course provides step-by-step instructions on how to build fully-automated travel reimbursement workflows. You’ll learn how to make your expense management more transparent, simplify budget controls and travel planning, and improve collaboration between employees and managers.
By the end of the course, you will be able to create, visualize, and automate travel reimbursement processes and similar use cases to ensure more effective document routing and streamlined payment processing.
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How to eliminate bottlenecks in your travel reimbursement process
The travel reimbursement process can be tricky because its sole purpose is to compensate or even cover an employee’s business travel expenses. How is it tricky? Well, to start, anything that involves money is going to be sensitive.
Employees don’t want to lose out where they think their employer should pay and employers don’t want to pay more than they absolutely have to. It’s essential that the procedure your team has to go through to complete a travel reimbursement application is one that promotes clarity, consciousness, and accurate data.
Any type of error on either side leads to delay, the potential for over/underpaying, and frustration on both sides. Get your workflow up to par by exploring the airSlate Academy. Take its courses and configure a cost-effective, automated workflow.
The travel reimbursement process consists of three steps: filling out a form, approval, and transferring funds to the employee. It seems simple enough, but for those who work with these forms daily, know the processes are littered with bottlenecks.
Simply going paperless isn’t going to help much. Even once paper is eliminated, you still need to deal with:
Lost emails. An email can accidentally end up in the spam folder, making it so that no one will notice it. Lost emails create delays and damage communication.
Multiple forms. Instead of a well-organized travel reimbursement form template, employees have to fill out three or more applications, making the process difficult to manage and scale.
Manual data entry. Handling multiple requests manually is an error-prone process. If anything gets mistyped, there’s a high possibility that someone is losing money.
Human factor. Last but not least, the process is slow because of a million distractions. People aren’t robots. Employees can forget to add a ticket to the travel consent form, the finance department can miss emails, and so on. The human factor leads to many delays and a lot of the times failed trips.
How does the Academy help create an errorless workflow starting with a simple travel authorization form template
Getting rid of the stumbling blocks isn’t easy. The airSlate Academy’s Travel Reimbursement Course comes in handy offering a free 3-part training program — theoretical, practical, and quiz. The program aims to analyze each drawback of your process in detail and provide ways to fix it.
The theoretical part is intended for a deeper understanding of business processes and how to automate them. This is done by evaluating common use cases.
The practical part provides an opportunity to quickly and conveniently learn how to work with airSlate and automate routine work, saving more resources for other more important tasks. airSlate is an end-to-end solution that helps you turn obsolete processes into a smooth workflow. Say goodbye to error-prone, time-consuming, and costly processes.
The quiz puts the record straight and helps you consolidate the knowledge received from the course. After passing the exam, you’ll receive a certificate confirming your skills.
While taking this course, you’ll learn how to:- Automate the Travel Reimbursement Workflow
- Create a reusable travel reimbursement form template
- Configure no-code automation Bots to pre-fill and export data between different CRM systems
- Set transparent budget limits
- Generate invoices automatically
- Route documents between recipients and separate systems of record
Everything you need to know about travel reimbursement automation is in this course. Besides, the course gives a step-by-step guide on how to implement innovations into your business using airSlate.
The travel reimbursement form and what it consists of
Let’s dig a little deeper into the travel reimbursement form and find out what’s needed to properly fill one out.
Every travel reimbursement form template should include:- Personal Information. Use pre-fill Bots to transfer employees names, emails, and numbers from the general database, and avoid typos.
- Date. Configurable field access permissions help eliminate future misunderstandings.
- Purpose of the trip. Make sure applicants have clear blocks for adding the purpose of the trip and a clear description of what is funded by the company and what is not.
- Additional requests. For booking a hotel or transferring from the airport, money is also needed. Ask workers in advance what they might need.
- Estimated trip cost. Using the e-form, you can set a limit for each person.
Moreover, airSlate provides your form with required fields meaning employees can’t submit the form to the manager without first satisfying those fields, e.g., attaching tickets. A comprehensive form is key to a successful workflow.
Master all airSlate’s automation tools and implement them into each of your business processes. Enroll and get your complete guide to building a fast, reliable, and effortless workflow in any industry.
Questions & answers
Why do you need a travel reimbursement form?
A travel reimbursement form allows a company to track business travel expenses and control how employees are sent on business trips. Travel policies vary from company to company. The only thing that should be common in all workflows is transparency. When it comes to money, there’s no room for glossing over the facts. Make sure the expenses the company has to cover and what the employee has to pay for is clear and written out.
What is travel reimbursement?
Travel reimbursement is compensation paid for employee out-of-pocket expenses during a business trip. For example, if an employee paid for their taxi, tickets, or hotel, they should fill out a travel reimbursement form to get their money back. Some companies pay in advance, while others reimburse expenses after the trip.
What is a travel reimbursement form?
Before any business trip, an employee has to complete a travel reimbursement form. They indicate all the information regarding the trip in their form, including dates, car rental, accommodation, and so on. Approvers can adjust this form to reduce costs. This approach helps your company control expenses.
How can you ask for reimbursement of travel expenses?
Filling out a travel reimbursement form depends on your company's policy. Maybe all you have to do is write the total amount you spent on a piece of paper and hand it in. In other cases, you might need to specify every expense that incurred during the trip. Don't forget to attach all receipts to confirm your expenses.
How can you fill out a travel advance request form?
Filling out a trip advance request form is much more difficult than just putting together all the expenses after the trip. But if you need it then be meticulous and include all expenses. Count everything from buying tickets to the price of services. Your goal is not to cut costs but minimize unforeseen expenses.
How do I write an application for reimbursement of travel expenses?
Just fill out the travel reimbursement form. Provide your full name and state your position in the company. Start listing expenses and add receipts. Send out your email to your manager or other approver.
What is a travel request management system?
A travel request management system is a system that handles work-related trips. The system manages travel reimbursement, ticket and hotel reservation, and so on. Also, the solution can generate invoices and payroll automatically.
What are the main stages in request management?
The process consists of 4 stages (submitting a request, requesting approval, creating an invoice, and compensating). Each of these stages can be automated and optimized with airSlate. For example, you can create a reusable form for your company, create a Flow for form sequential routing, and automatically generate an invoice. Sounds too complicated? Then take the airSlate Academy’s course for step-by-step help.
What is the purpose of business travel software?
Business trips are an integral part of any company's development. No matter how convenient it is to do business online and sign contracts electronically, some cases require face-to-face meetings. Business travel software such as airSlate helps you keep such trips under control by simplifying your administrative tasks and allowing you to focus on goals.
How can you attach your travel reimbursement form to third-party software?
Using a no-code solution for integration like airSlate, you can attach a travel reimbursement form to any third-party service. Set up a Bot to export data from travel reimbursement form to Salesforce, NetSuite, etc. After the form is complete, your records are updated automatically.
