Travel Expense Report Template

The global business travel industry tends to be a prosperous one. It does not matter where your business is, travel may be one of the expenses that it faces. It is important to track where money is getting spent and also why. This is if a business wants to operate successfully.

A travel expense report can help here. This is because it includes details about the travel and the expenses related to it. This can be shown to the company that needs to incur the costs of the travel.

What is a Travel Expense Report?

These can be physical or even digital documents which include all the important details related to a travel-connected expense. This includes stuff like the total amount of the purchase, the date, as well as the expense category. Often original receipts are included in this report.

What does a Travel Expense Report do?

A business needs to understand travel costs so that it can know where money is being spent and why. This expense report can help here. It will be possible to figure out projects or teams which are overspending when it comes to travel. Travel reimbursements can be subject to employee fraud. When the correct procedures are present, it is possible to limit the company’s risk of fraud. This is because proof will be present of the expenses incurred due to travel and where these happened.

Travel Expense Report Template

Travel Expense Report File 83 KB

How to create a Travel Expense Report?

If you want to create a proper and professional travel expense report, you can consider the following points:

Choose the right application

You need to choose an application that will help you create the expense report effectively. Microsoft Excel can be used here. You can use a spreadsheet to enter the details and make the expense report.

Details to add

You will need to add some details in the expense report that will help let the reader know about the expenses that happened due to travel for the company. This can include the date of purchase of the travel ticket, the vendor it was bought from, etc. There will be expense categories like the client, project, account, and department.

You can state the name of the employee who bought the item. If there are any additional notes related to the purchase, you should tell them. These will let the reader know where the expenses happened and how much they were. You should state the amount next to the items that you state. If there is any tax or VAT connected with the purchase, these should be stated.

Total expense

There needs to be a row on the table that will state the subtotal of the purchase. There can be a place for the total that will include the tax as well.

Receipt or invoice

To make the travel expense report valid, it is necessary to include the receipts or invoices related to the expenses that have been stated in the report. These will let the reader know that what expenses you are stating are valid. The receipts can behave like proof of this as they clearly state where the expenses happened and how much they were.

This is why you must include these with the travel expense report. You may want to attach photocopies of them so that you can keep the original with you in case needed at any time. If you are sending the expense report electronically, you can attach the reports.

Importance of a Travel Expense Report

This expense report is important for a business as it is a professional way for employees to let the business know about travel expenses related to work. The expense report will let businesses have proof of where expenses connected to travel have occurred.

They can see if there is fraud occurring in any place. The business can even know where more money is being spent and whether it can reduce expenses to function more effectively. This report can be kept in the records of the company if it needs to be consulted at any time. This may be when the company is handling its taxes for instance.