Business Insights

Keep T&E Expenses Under Control with Travel Cards

Proactive policies and the right tools can help you track—and control—your spending.

While travel and entertainment remains a standard part of operating a business, employee spending can add up quickly. Finding more savings in corporate travel can be challenging, but you can keep T&E costs under control using these guidelines for business credit cards for travel.

Partnerships and Policies

Seek partnerships with hotels, airlines and car rental companies to help decrease travel expenses. “Companies can reduce additional costs by leveraging their purchasing power and funneling their expenses to preferred vendors to obtain discounts,” says David LaPaglia, Vice President of Regions Commercial Card Product Management.

Set company policies that restrict how much an employee can spend on certain expenses. For example, set caps on meals while employees travel, with varying amounts for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and meals when entertaining clients. “There is control and visibility around that spending,” LaPaglia says. “The more you are able to control and drive compliance around your spending policies, the less likely there is to be misuse.”

Even with vendor partnerships and a strong company spending policy in place, you might need additional assistance to take control of your travel and entertainment spending. That’s where commercial cards can help.

Commercial Cards

Commercial business credit cards for travel not only provide employees with flexibility and independence while they are conducting business with clients, but they also offer a solution to streamline the company’s expense and budget management.

Commercial business credit cards for travel can help companies control employee spending. Among other features, they can restrict how specific cards are used, ensuring that only approved types of purchases are made. Some cards can also integrate with enterprise resource planning systems and accounting processes—making it easy to reconcile transactions and accounts payable.

Executives who travel frequently and entertain clients can use travel and entertainment cards—which are a specific type of commercial card—to pay for expenses such as flights, rental cars and meals. Regions’ cards have a feature that limits purchases to approved vendors, such as certain airlines, LaPaglia says.

Depending on your company’s needs, you might consider an all-in-one card—another type of commercial card—that you can use to do anything from purchasing office supplies to booking hotel rooms.

Commercial credit cards for travel also offer expense reporting. “Companies that adopt electronic expense reporting experience a reduction in processing costs when compared with paper-based reporting,” LaPaglia says. “Electronic expense reporting allows companies to data mine transaction activity and flag out-of-policy spending or misuse.”

With the right policies, partnerships and commercial business credit cards in place, you can take control of your business and entertainment spending.