You’ve got a trip coming up for work. You’re excited travel because it’s been a while, but one thing you’re not looking forward to is keeping track of what you’ve spent, when, where, and how. Fortunately there’s a new way to record your outgoings, and a faster way to claim that money back.
How to organise your trip
Need some extra help with organising your travel? Here are some awesome travel apps for business travel that can help in other areas, such as organising and booking trips.
TripIt!
TripIt is perhaps the greatest app for keeping track of all of your trip plans in one spot. Whatever information you need for your trip—flight schedules, hotel reservations, or meeting details—TripIt keeps it all in one place and arranges it on a calendar. The greatest part is that you can just forward all of your confirmation emails to your TripIt account, and the app will take care of the rest!
Google Translate
We know you’ve heard of it before, but it really is one of the best for general translating when you’re abroad. In its most basic version, you specify the language you want translated and the language you want it translated into, then enter in your words, and Google Translate does the rest.
However, the service, particularly the smartphone app, has become increasingly sophisticated and powerful with time. Google Translate now has access to your phone’s camera and microphone, allowing it to read and translate signs and menus via the lens of your camera, as well as listen to and translate conversations in real time.
Around Me
No idea where you are? Get the AroundMe app to solve your problem. AroundMe analyses local businesses and services to help you locate what you’re looking for, including banks, hospitals, hotels, gas stations, coffee shops, and more. After you’ve plotted your destination, utilise the directions tool to avoid getting lost.
How to manage expenses
Now you know how you’re going to travel, how are you going to deal with the costs and keeping track of everything?
Journey Calculator
Expense Once makes advantage of the Google API Distance Service to assist you in filing travel claims, whether you travel by car, bicycle, or as a passenger.
The service returns the distance between a start and finish location with any number of checkpoints in between. The service considers the date and time of the travel to establish the most precise mileage, as well as avoiding highways or toll roads. We use miles by default, but you may change it to kilometres if necessary.
This prevents an over-claim for travel expenses; nevertheless, you want to manually update the distance, we still compare the value to the calculated distance and compute the percent difference to highlight at the approval stage.
Vat Mileage Calculator
We keep track of HMRC’s advisory rates, which are pre-programmed and included in the software. We keep track of each vehicle type (fuel type and engine size) and the most recent HMRC fuel rates, which are updated every three months.
You may generate new vehicle records for each organisation and link them to HMRC authorised rates or insert your own set of vehicle rates with cumulative mileage support. This guarantees that the firm is claiming the proper amount of VAT and reimbursing each claimant for the permitted amount.
VAT Compliancy
The programme includes pre-built VAT records that incorporate all typical UK and EU rates. These can be changed for usage in other countries or for special partial recovery circumstances.
A variety of configurations can be used to establish the precise use of VAT by spending category and claimant; however, the most basic technique needs a VAT receipt to be attached for VAT recovery. Ensure you and your company are reclaiming the correct amount of VAT. In most situations using the programme boosts reclaim by up to 34%.
There are many ways to make business travel as pain free as possible, and with automated expenses and a healthy arsenal of travel apps, you can go and do anything you need.