Travel and expense management is the process companies use to plan, book, track, and pay for business travel and related expenses. It helps organizations stay on budget, follow company policies, and make sure employees are reimbursed quickly and fairly. T&E management combines travel booking tools with expense tracking systems to create a smooth experience for both employees and finance teams.
A good T&E system helps companies:
Book travel that follows company rules and budgets
Track spending in real time
Speed up expense approvals and reimbursements
Reduce errors and manual work
Get insights into travel and expense trends
Many companies use digital platforms to manage this process. For example, solutions like Amadeus Cytric bring travel booking, expense tracking, and approval workflows into one place, making it easier for employees and finance teams to stay aligned.
Managing business travel and expenses can be complex due to manual tasks, lack of visibility, and inefficient workflows. Here’s an overview of the main travel and expense management process challenges companies and employees are facing today:
Without a centralized T&E system, it’s difficult to track spending, enforce company policy, or stay within budget. Even with pre-approval steps in place, unauthorized travel bookings can easily go unnoticed. Without real-time insights, finance teams operate in the dark. Fragmented data makes it hard to track spending patterns, identify anomalies, and forecast budgets accurately.
Manual approval processes lead to slow reimbursements and can frustrate employees.
Despite technological advancements, many companies still require employees to keep receipts and manually record expenses when submitting claims. This process is both time-consuming and prone to errors. Losing receipts or submitting incomplete information can cause compliance headaches and hinder accurate reporting.
Without robust travel expense management software, fraudulent claims can go undetected, costing companies money and trust.
Legacy solutions lack automation, analytics, and integration, which are key for an efficient and impactful travel and expense management program.
Global business travel brings the need to manage multiple currencies and deal with a multitude of tax regulations. This can become quite a challenge. Keeping track of currency conversions, ensuring accurate reimbursements and VAT recovery adds even more complexity. Manual handling of these processes increases the risk of errors and penalties.
With the generational shift, rapid technological advancement, and the autonomy we enjoy when planning and booking leisure travel, it’s no surprise that employees demand modern self‑service options, more flexibility and autonomous decision‑making. So, centralized old‑school travel management along with clunky travel and expense processes create frustration impacting employee morale.
Delay in expense reimbursements, confusing policies and having to pay business expenses up front.
Reconciling expenses efficiently, maintaining compliance, and managing vast amounts of data is a struggle. The lack of transparency and policy enforcement further compounds these issues, making it difficult to make the most of travel investment – from fostering employee retention to sustainable business growth.
Moving away from traditional travel management and embracing digital transformation can help overcome some of these challenges. For example, you can include a clear roadmap, foster a digital‑first culture, and adopt solutions like advanced AI‑powered SaaS platforms. Here’s how your organization can benefit:
Modern T&E platforms include:
Online booking for flights, hotels, and transport
Mobile apps for submitting receipts and expenses, including receipt scanning
Automated approval workflows and tools for policy enforcement, policy checks and alerts, etc.
Comprehensive reporting and analytics
Dashboards for tracking budgets and trends
AI-capabilities and seamless integration with day-to-day productivity apps, such as Microsoft Teams
By deploying travel and expense management solutions, like Cytric, businesses can boost compliance, reduce administrative burdens, and generate detailed insights to optimize travel spending - while empowering travelers and finance teams alike.
It helps companies manage business travel and related expenses from booking to reimbursement.
Employees, travel managers, and finance teams all use T&E tools to book trips, submit expenses, and track spending.
Yes. Most systems include built-in policy checks to make sure bookings and expenses follow company rules.
It automates manual tasks like data entry and approvals, saving time and reducing errors.
Look for mobile receipt scanning, automated workflows, integration with accounting and credit card systems, customizable policy controls, comprehensive reporting, and centralized data storage.
By using automated checks, setting clear policies, providing regular training, and ensuring transparent, auditable processes, companies can greatly minimize the risks of expense fraud.
