Corporate travel management guide - using TruTrip on Volopay
Business travel costs are an indispensable part of the obligatory business expenses. What can, however, be the most difficult part about it? It’s indeed managing travel expenses. Both employees and the corporate travel management team find this frustrating. Finding economic tickets, booking them on time, gathering receipts, or cancelling tickets sounds too exhausting and expensive.
But how can Volopay, a payment management platform, help you manage your business travel system? Is it possible for employees to plan a peaceful business trip and not worry about its expenses for once?
What is a corporate travel management portal?
Corporate travel management is the service offered to businesses to plan corporate travel, take care of bookings, and get better deals on travel fares for business travellers. Companies usually find third-party service providers to execute corporate travel management. The reason to bring in this additional assistance is to minimize the out-of-policy expenses that businesses deny to pay back. Also, last-minute bookings can skyrocket the fare making half of the expense unable to be claimed.
Corporate travel management companies singlehandedly manage bookings, deal negotiations, on-trip support, and other business travel procedures. The corporate travel management portal is the company’s internal system to take care of the aforementioned functions.
How is a business travel portal better than individual booking?
Automated approval process
Approve the travel and stay expenses on the go from the corporate travel management portal. It takes only seconds to make a booking and get them approved.
Smart policy tools
Every company has its itinerary for business travels. And it differs for employees from different hierarchical levels. Leverage the travel management system to update the corporate travel policy about respective levels for them to comply accordingly.
One-stop-shop
Book hotel rooms, cab for local transit, meal plans, and other things your reimbursement plan covers in a single portal with the corporate travel management system. This way, you save time and ensure nothing is forgotten.
Travel profiles to protect sensitive information
Your travel data must be stored safe and confidential. You cannot guarantee that when you book using your profiles. With corporate travel management, you can maintain travel profiles and make bookings. Travel profiles contain your personal and company information, along with travel preferences. Profiles help the travel consultant to pull out accurate information while booking.
Expense reports
When you follow old-school methods for booking, you have to manually update travel data into your expense reports and payment/reimbursement management software. Make it a one-step process and keep track of your business travel costs as you book tickets. A typical business travel portal integrates well with other applications to save manual work.
Easy reimbursements
It disappoints employees when their reimbursement requests get rejected, even if it’s a claimable expense. When bookings are made through your official business travel portal, you can prevent this from happening. It’s easier to enforce the corporate travel policy and process reimbursements in a jiffy.
Flexible payment
Corporate travel services accept different modes of payment. One of the best ways to pay is using a corporate credit card. They accept various cards like Visa, Master card, or American express and digital wallets like PayPal, Gpay, etc. So, nothing can stop your employees from booking their tickets peacefully.
Integrated travel restrictions
Does your company’s corporate travel policy have budgets for each category or travel restrictions? When you manage travel expenses with a business travel portal, you can customize and apply these restrictions. Set rules that wouldn’t let them view only the approved categories and suppliers and hide options that don’t fit your travel allocated budget.
Spare the surge pricing
You know how the prices of hotel rooms or plane tickets constantly change? It can burn your pocket if your employees keep booking at surged prices. Get access to exclusive deals that your travel management partner fetches for you at no extra cost.
How to use TruTrip via Volopay?
Yes. Volopay is a spend management platform. But it can make corporate travel bookings too. Volopay has integrated with a corporate travel management platform called Trutrip. So, without leaving the Volopay screen, you can take care of all your travel and stay bookings without exceeding your corporate travel budget.
Link each employee’s expense with a virtual credit card from Volopay and manage and track expenses wisely. You can see the total travel expense of each trip in this sense while covering their miscellaneous expenses.
Since you manage travel expenses on your expense management application, it gets automatically updated with your accounting books. Avoid feeding data manually.
Take care of booking every travel expense from air tickets to car rentals under one window. Organize the travel plan and costs in one place.
Don’t let your employees chase bills and receipts for reimbursement purposes. It is hectic to manage, and some vendors don’t care to offer bills. This being stated, they don’t have to go through the detailed reimbursement process, as you can do it directly through Volopay.
What benefits does TruTrip booking give your business?
Flexible booking and payment
Flexibility in terms of booking and payment options is available at Trutrip. Changes in travel schedules do happen all the time. Trutip won’t let you lose money and rebook again. Employees will be able to cancel their booking at any time and get refunded. Regarding payment, you can make payments with any option at your convenience. Any credit or debit card is acceptable, and one can save the card details for later use.
24/7 support
Unlimited support from corporate travel services is crucial because you never know when an emergency could occur. Trutrip’s customer service personnel are available round the clock to ensure that your business stay is comfortable and convenient. We often call our travel agencies when there is an issue with tickets and wait for hours or receive no reply. Trutrip takes full responsibility to make sure you encounter no such disruptions.
No extra charges
There are no hidden or extra costs involved. You will see the total breakdown of the expenses at the end of the booking process. Trutrip makes you aware of every penny spent on business travel and shows where the money goes before it’s spent. Additionally, there are no extra charges like booking or convenience charges you will face when booking through normal websites.
Save money by booking at cheaper rates
Companies exceed 5 to 10% of their corporate travel budget due to high and varying ticket fares and booking charges. To help with this, Trutrip has partnered with many sources across the globe to get you the best of deals for corporate travel. You can save up to 30% on travel expenses when you book on Trutrip through Volopay.
Get corporate cards for easy business travel management
Corporate cards are a part of Volopay’s expense management system. There are moments when your employees have to pay locally on a business trip. Corporate cards can be handy for this. It’s safe to distribute this to your employees as the admin can manage the card, set budgets, or refrain the employee from using the card.
Cards can turn into an irreplaceable resource for your corporate travel management and help you turn the system more efficient and ordered.
Frequently asked questions
TruTrip offers their basic features free of charge by signing up for their "Essentials" plan. Volopay users can opt to sign up for free. On the occasion that you wish to avail advanced features, you may upgrade your subscription with additional fees.
If your refund request matches all the criteria set by the airline or hotel vendor (where the ticket is booked), you can receive a refund. Contact the support team of TruTrip to get the refund money added to the credit card. TruTrip has made it extremely safe to share your card information with their customer care team. By adhering to Personal Data Protection Acts, they protect your sensitive information by not recording the call and not asking the user to share the card number on chat.
Yes. Since you make the payment through Volopay, the accounting data of travel and stay expenses gets synchronized with Volopay and your other accounting systems. As Volopay syncs with other ledgers you use, your business travel costs are updated everywhere.