Employee Travel Policy Template

What to Include in an Employee Travel Policy

When creating your business travel policy, have a discussion with other stakeholders to get a firm idea of what the policy should include as standard and any other items that might help. Getting the finance team, admin team, and CEO or COO involved is a good start, but talking to any staff who frequently travel will give you insight into what does and doesn’t work.

Once you have your team together, decide how much freedom employees will have when it comes to business travel. Many employees, despite having a business travel policy in place, will search for cheaper deals themselves. In fact, a report by Expedia showed that 69% book outside their policy in order to find their own deals.

Will you allow employees to do this and then get reimbursed, or would you rather have them book through a business travel platform with pre-approved rates? Will another designated member of staff such as the office manager do all bookings on behalf of staff or will staff find their own options and get them approved for booking? 

Another thing to consider is how strict you’ll be with the rules of expenses and reimbursement. There are a few ways to set out guidelines for this. For example, you can have a detailed and itemized list of what can and can’t be expensed, or you can set a spending cap for anything outside of travel and accommodation. This decision really depends on how strict company management wants to be on costs.

1. Introduction to the policy

In this section, write a short intro for staff to outline what the policy is for and who they can contact with any questions. 

Make it clear that the policy is there for their convenience and also their safety, as well as to save time on admin.

2. Approved procedures

This is the place to clearly outline how staff can book their business travel. If you are using an business travel booking tool, give a brief outline on how to use it and what other information they can find on there. If you’re not, then detail what the procedure is for booking – i.e. Getting a trip approved with the necessary people before getting to the booking stage. 

If there are any frequent flyer programs or if you’ve decided to allow leisure extensions to a trip, write in your procedures here. For example, any stipulations that go along with leisure extensions (extending the business trip by using vacation days) such as pre-approval with a certain manager or member of staff. It’s also wise to make it clear that any expenses incurred in the vacation day extension are the responsibility of the employee and not eligible for reimbursing.

3. Categories for reimbursement

This will be the longest section of your employee travel policy as it’s where you need to get really specific about what staff can expense. We advise splitting this clearly into further sections of Transport, Accommodation, Food and Drink, Miscellaneous (i.e. company cellphone usage).

Your transport section will need to cover all modes from flights to trains to taxis. If there are any special allowances – like staff over a certain height being able to choose the extra legroom seats on airplanes – make sure you include these. Do all flights and train journeys have to be economy class? Will flight changes and/or cancellations be covered by the company? Are taxi/Lyft rides capped at a certain amount?

For employees who will be driving on the trip, whether in a rental, personal or company car, be specific about how to expense for gas. For rentals, perhaps set a cap on what employees can spend to keep unnecessary splurging under control – we’d all be tempted by a sports car but it’s not the most economic transport on a business trip!

If you already have a list of pre-approved hotels or hotel chains, include this here. If you don’t, or the trip will be in a city where you haven’t yet discovered appropriate hotels for the list, provide some guidelines so that employees know what to search for. Also include any additional costs that the company will cover such as Wi-Fi fees, tips, breakfast or parking. 

You can also include information on non-hotel accommodation such as direct apartment rentals or Airbnb bookings. Costs for these types of accommodation are always fluctuating so perhaps you’d like employees to get the bookings signed off first, or set a spending cap.

It’s common for business travel to involve some interaction with clients, so make sure to factor potential entertainment costs here rather than preparing only for the cost of one employee going out to dinner. To avoid things getting out of hand, a cap on the reimbursable amount per person is also a good idea here.

4. Non-reimbursable items

You can keep this one nice and simple, unlike section three. Just compile a list of things such as minibar snacks, parking fines, or in-flight purchases that the company will not reimburse. Here are a couple of other ideas:

• Dry cleaning
• Paid-for upgrades of flights or hotel rooms
• Loss of personal items
• Excess baggage fees
• Child or pet care
• Luxury car rental

Talk to some of the frequent travelers in the company as well as any senior stakeholders to determine what is fair to exclude from reimbursement.

5. How to submit expenses

This can be an optional section – if you do use a business travel booking tool, then employees don’t need to submit any expenses separately as they can often be done through the tool. However, if you’re managing everything in-house then you’ll definitely want to have a streamlined procedure to minimize having to juggle too much.

Be clear who expense requests must be sent to, what the deadline is, and what information needs to be included. For example: receipts, the date of the transaction, the purpose of it (such as a client lunch) and the amount.

Also let employees know the time frame for reimbursement and how the amount will be paid back. 

6. Support and safety

This is another section where you’ll need to be very specific and concise. Outline your health and safety procedures as they relate to employees away on business, and make sure to include information about travel or medical insurance. Employees should have access to any travel insurance documents they might need while away.

Ensure your employees know they have your support even when they aren’t on site. Just because they’re not in the office, doesn’t mean they aren’t still part of the team! Give them phone numbers and hours of operation for whichever employee they can call with questions during their trip as well as the appropriate contact details for your insurance provider or duty of care vendor.

Because mishaps happen, also include guidelines on what to do in the event of a missed or cancelled flight, or issues with hotel bookings. Extra safety precautions include making sure office-based personnel know where the travelling employees are expected to be (hotel or accommodation address and flight times) for the duration of the trip.