Optimizing your business travel for growth and savings

Business travel is bouncing back, expected to reach or surpass 2019 levels. But as companies embrace the real-world growth business travel makes possible, they’re also navigating increased costs. 

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For Greggy Boone Garsuta, Corporate Controller at Gregory’s Coffee, and Andrew Clarke, VP of Finance at Studs, this increased spending isn’t cause for alarm. Rather than restricting spend at all costs, these finance leaders use flexible travel policies to support company growth. 

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As brick-and-mortar service businesses, travel spend is a prerequisite to growth for Studs and Gregory’s Coffee. To maintain brand standards as they open locations in new markets, both brands run on-site training programs that require travel. “Right now Studs has 25 locations across the country, and our apprenticeship program generates the piercing talent twe need to open new stores,” shares Andrew.

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To get the most return on their investment, careful management of travel spend is crucial. “Travel is 75% of our training budget, so optimizing this spend is crucial,” explains Greggy. In our recent webinar, Andrew and Greggy shared their top tips for managing travel spend, like using embedded card controls, dynamic market-based limits, and open communication about employees’ needs. 

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The result? Travel spending that delivers maximum business mileage for every dollar. Read on for a full recap, or watch the webinar to get their strategies in-depth. 

Prevent out-of-policy spend before trips even start 

Generally, employees want to do the right thing. Make that easy for them with a digital travel policy that is embedded in your travel tools—not a static PDF that never gets referenced. 

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“If the policy lives in a PDF document, it might not get referred to until out-of-policy spending is being discussed after the fact,” says Andrew. 

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Finance platforms like Ramp allow companies to embed travel policies into employees’ corporate cards so finance teams can prevent policy violations instead of dealing with them after the fact. For example, finance admins can use Ramp to set T&E guardrails like: 

• Maximum flight, hotel, or per diem spending
• Allowing employees to only book refundable hotels 
• Flagging alcohol and high-percentage tips on receipts, even if they’re within per-diem limits

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When bookings are made through Ramp’s travel platform, employees immediately see which flights and hotels are in policy. “Because we can set these policies proactively and Ramp does everything, we don't really have any worries,” says Andrew. “We either stop out-of-policy spending, or get it approved immediately. That’s what really enables savings to happen.”

Set dynamic guidelines based on market rates

If a hotel or flight limit is the same in Denver and New York, one employee may be overspending, while another can’t book a comfortable place to sleep. “Generally, if you give people $500 or $1000 to spend, they’ll spend all of it,” says Greggy. Dynamic guidelines allow finance teams to guide employees’ spending based on market rates.

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Without the right tools, flexible guidelines like these are time-consuming to calculate and enforce. But Ramp’s dynamic rules make it easy. Instead of imposing a hard flight limit, Gregory’s allows its employees to book flights up to 10% above that market rate. “This way, we make sure people aren’t booking business class, when they could be saving the company a few dollars instead,” Greggy continues.  

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Rally employees around responsible spending 

In Andrew’s experience, communication is the key to encouraging employees to act as good stewards of company resources. “Most people aren't starting from a place of trying to do the wrong thing,” he says. “Communicate not just what the policy is, but why it's important and what it will do for the company.” 

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One area where communication is especially key is around travel points. Many employees prefer to pay for travel on personal cards to accrue loyalty points—but that kind of workaround results in tedious reimbursement paperwork for everyone and an inability for finance teams to control spending in real time. To address this, Andrew recommends being transparent with employees and saying something like, “We know you’ll stop collecting points once we stop reimbursing personal card purchases. But now, we’re getting cashback on all purchases, which saves the company money and helps everyone.”  

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Of course, communication flows both ways. Finance leaders should actively listen to their teams’ needs and ideas, and be open to adjusting policies around them. “For us, it's not about restricting our employees,” says Greggy. “In terms of rates, limits, and controls, we’re always adjusting and happy to change. We look at what’s best for the overall business, not just for the finance team.”  

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When employees understand the reasoning behind policies, and feel they have a voice in creating them, they will feel much more motivated to stay within expectations.

Avoid accounting bottlenecks by making expense reporting easy

Too often, expense reporting is a headache both for employees and finance teams. Employees dread sorting through stacks of receipts at the end of a trip, and the inevitable delays in submitting expenses cause accounting teams to fall behind on reconciliation.

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Ramp eliminates hours of manual reporting, so employees can spend less time on expenses and more time on their jobs. Employees simply text a photo of their receipts to Ramp and the platform automatically matches them to transactions and scans them for compliance. Ramp can even automatically collect receipts through integrations with Gmail, Uber for Business, and more. 

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“Before Ramp, we had expenses going back as far as 2022 or 2021 with no receipts whatsoever,” recalls Greggy. “Now, 90% of the time employees don't even need to categorize the expense because it’s done automatically. The rest of the time, it’s a quick upload to the Ramp app and adding a memo.” 

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Greggy and Andrew both use Ramp’s auto-locking capability to eliminate any lingering issues with compliance. If expenses aren’t reported after a set period, like three or seven days, finance teams can lock cards remotely, so no more purchases are made until everything is uploaded and categorized. 

“That limit applies to everyone—including our CEO,” says Greggy. “But at the same time, we can snooze it, say if someone’s on vacation and simply forgot to update one charge.” 

To support growth, keep policies nimble and flexible

For Studs and Gregory’s Coffee, flexible travel policies keep the focus on overall business growth. “If someone needs to travel tomorrow to fix an urgent problem, that’s going to be out of our time limit policy,” explains Andrew. “But if we need to travel to get that store open, of course we’re going to do it.” 

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Because bookings and card issuing all flow through Ramp Travel, finance teams can approve one-off requests like this quickly and easily. Managing travel spend doesn’t always mean keeping it as low as possible—it means supporting the brand in reaching its expansion goals. 

Growth through travel savings with Ramp

Despite business travel’s rebound, many companies still need a good way to manage their spending. Too many finance teams are sinking hours into expense management, chasing employees over out-of-policy purchases, and stuck between expensive travel management platforms and consumer booking sites.

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Gregory’s and Studs both use Ramp Travel to provide employees with an easy booking experience while ensuring total control over spending. To hear more insights from Andrew and Greggy, watch the full webinar.