What is a travel expense report?

More and more, you need to travel to conferences, client meetings, or offsite meetings to keep your business growing. According to the Global Business Travel Association, 71% of travel buyers saw increased business bookings in 2024. But as costs continue to grow, how do you know if it’s worth the money?

There are so many potential opportunities. If you don’t calculate the actual return on your investment, you’ll never know if you’re seeing tangible benefits.

Travel expense reports are crucial for keeping budgets in check and making the most of your available funds. They help you track where and how you’re spending against your business travel budget.

In this article, we explain travel expense reports and what they should include, why they’re important, the benefits of automating them, and best practices for getting the most out of your expense reporting process so you can see exactly how travel improves your business.

What is a travel expense report?

A travel expense report (T&E report) is a physical or digital document that lists an employee’s business trip expenses, including airfare, lodging, meals, mileage, and more.

T&E reports, also called travel and expense reports or travel expenditure reports, include critical details about each business travel expense, like the purchase price, date of purchase, and expense category. Reports also include receipts or other proofs of purchase that verify the accuracy and business necessity of each expense.

Travel expense reports allow companies to track travel costs and analyze spending patterns. Employees are reimbursed for any out-of-pocket business travel expenses they incur during their trips.

Elements of a travel expense report

On a typical T&E report, employees provide the following:

• Employee information: Name, title, department, and contact information
• Trip details: Location, dates, and business purpose
• Expense categories:
  • Transportation (e.g., airfare, train tickets, car rental, mileage)
  • Lodging, including hotel stays and Airbnb rentals
  • Meals
  • Entertainment
  • Other business-related expenses
• Expenses within each category: The specific items and amounts spent
• Grand total: The complete cost of all trip expenditures

Each expense listed should include:

• Transaction date
• Purchase cost
• Description of the expense
• Vendor name
• Payment method (e.g., per diem, credit card, etc.)
• An itemized receipt or invoice for each expense

Why are travel expense reports important?

Although travel expense reports might sometimes seem like administrative busywork, they are important financial records. Here are four reasons why they matter:

1. Budgeting and cost monitoring

If your organization exceeds its travel budget, you can use the business intelligence data from T&E reports to find cost-saving opportunities. Additionally, trip expense reports help finance teams monitor spending trends for more accurate travel budget forecasting.

2. Compliance with travel policies and guidelines

When employees submit T&E reports as part of the expense tracking and travel reimbursement process, finance teams can ensure compliance with their organization’s T&E policy. This reduces errors and helps employees get reimbursed faster, ultimately making them happier and more productive.

3. Tax preparation

Generally, business-related expenses—including travel reimbursement—are tax-deductible. However, the IRS and many other tax authorities require an itemized receipt or some other proof of purchase for each transaction to qualify for these deductions in case of an audit.

4. Fraud Protection

Requiring itemized receipts for every transaction listed on an employee’s trip expense report also helps to reduce expense fraud. With your company policy in place, your team knows they need to provide proper documentation for reimbursement.

Benefits of automating T&E reports

Implementing a travel expense reporting process allows you to gain greater control and visibility into your team’s travel spending.

Many small businesses track expenses with paper reports or digital spreadsheets because they’re simple to use and implement. Although this expense reporting method can save you some money upfront, manually filling out and reviewing T&E reports can lead to errors and eat up valuable time—which can cause issues for employees seeking expense reimbursement if the system gets backed up.

As you might imagine, the benefits of automating your expense reporting come at a cost. Depending on the software you choose and the size of your organization, these solutions can be quite an investment. However, the time you save with expense reporting alone is often well worth it.

These tools simplify the overall expense reporting process and provide real-time visibility into your expense data. You can expect most expense management platforms to come with the following features:

• Receipt capture and scanning, eliminating paperwork
• AI scanning for T&E policy compliance
• Mileage tracking
• Automatic expense categorization
• Customizable expense policies
• Integrations with HR and accounting software
• Automated approval workflows, enabling faster reimbursement

Best practices for tracking and automating T&E reports

Here are some strategies for streamlining the process of tracking and automating your travel expense reports:

Simplify your expense reporting process

Keeping your expense reporting process as simple as possible makes it easier for employees to submit expense reports that comply with your corporate travel policy, which, in turn, reduces the amount of time your finance team spends reviewing T&E reports and chasing down travelers for missing information.

Encourage consistent booking practices

Employees want the flexibility to book their travel. But make sure to guide them toward approved corporate travel management platforms. If possible, everyone on your team should be booking in the same place so your expenses aren’t spread throughout different platforms or consumer sites that aren’t designed for business travel booking in the first place.

Digitize your policies and guidelines

Create a digital copy of your travel policy your team can easily access when they have questions. Even if you aren’t ready to invest in expense management software, you can create a standardized travel expense report template for employees to use that includes a link to the policy.

Invest in the right tools

When you’re ready to automate with expense management software, make sure it has the capabilities you need. Look for software that integrates with your existing tools and allows you to incorporate your travel policies, create workflows, and automatically scan receipts.

Take advantage of corporate cards

Consider offering corporate credit cards so your travelers don’t have to foot the bill in advance. This switch reduces the risk of expense fraud, controls spending, and saves time. Corporate credit cards capture real-time transaction data, eliminating the need for a convoluted expense reporting and reimbursement process.

How Ramp eliminates manual travel expense reporting

Travel expense reporting is a notorious time drain for finance teams. You're dealing with employees submitting crumpled receipts weeks after their trips, manually matching hotel bills to credit card statements, and chasing down missing documentation for flights booked on personal cards. The back-and-forth alone can stretch the reimbursement process to 30 days or more, frustrating employees and creating unnecessary administrative burden.

Ramp's expense management software transforms this chaotic process into an automated workflow that practically runs itself. When employees book travel through Ramp, every transaction automatically flows into pre-categorized expense reports with merchant details, amounts, and dates already populated. There's no manual data entry or guesswork about which expenses belong to which trip.

The platform's receipt capture technology makes documentation effortless. Employees use their phone snap a photo of their receipts, send it via text or mobile app, and optical character recognition (OCR) instantly extracts vendor names, amounts, and expense categories. These digital receipts automatically attach to the corresponding transactions, creating a complete audit trail without any filing or paperwork. For travel expenses like hotels that often generate multiple receipts, Ramp intelligently groups related charges together, preventing duplicate submissions and confusion.

Real-time policy enforcement ensures compliance before expenses are even submitted. You can set specific rules for travel spending, like maximum per diem rates for meals or preferred hotel chains, and Ramp automatically flags any out-of-policy expenses for review. This proactive approach eliminates the need to retroactively deny reimbursements or have awkward conversations about excessive spending.

The result is a travel expense process that takes minutes instead of hours. Finance teams spend less time on manual reconciliation and more time on strategic work, while employees get reimbursed faster with minimal effort required on their part.

Travel expense reporting that pays dividends

Ramp’s expense management platform streamlines the expense reporting process from beginning to end, eliminating busy work so finance teams can close their books faster and reimburse employees sooner.

Whether you’re looking for customizable travel policies, integrated corporate cards, powerful automation workflows, or all of the above, Ramp has you covered.