Trip management

Learn how to plan business trips, organize all trip-related expenses together, and manage trip budgets effectively.

What is trip management?

Trip management in Eloope provides a dedicated container that groups all expenses and details for a specific business trip in one organized place. Rather than having trip expenses scattered across your expense list, a trip record collects everything together—flights, hotels, meals, ground transportation, and incidentals—providing a complete view of trip costs and significantly simplifying the expense reporting and approval process.

Benefits of using trip management. Organizing all trip expenses together creates logical groupings that make sense to both you and your approver. You can request a cash advance for the entire trip rather than estimating individual expenses, streamlining the funding process. The trip provides real-time tracking of total trip costs against your budget or estimate. You can generate comprehensive trip summary reports showing exactly what a business trip cost. The approval process becomes simpler when approvers can see all trip context in one place rather than piecing together scattered expenses.

Create a trip

Creating a trip record before your business travel helps you plan, budget, and organize expenses effectively.

Set up your trip before traveling. Navigate to "Trips" in the sidebar navigation. Click "+ New Trip" to open the trip creation form. Fill in comprehensive trip details starting with a descriptive trip name like "NYC Client Meetings - March 2024" or "Q1 Sales Conference - Las Vegas" that clearly identifies the trip. Enter the destination including city, state or country to provide geographic context. Specify the start date representing the first day of your trip and the end date for the last day. Write a clear purpose statement explaining the business reason for the trip, such as "Quarterly business review with top three East Coast clients" or "Annual sales kickoff and product training conference." Estimate the total anticipated cost for the trip based on flight prices, hotel rates, meals, and ground transportation. Click "Create Trip" to save the trip record.

Your new trip starts with "Draft" status, meaning it's created but not yet submitted for any approval or linked to expenses.

Request trip approval (optional)

Some organizations require pre-approval for business travel before you book flights or hotels, ensuring budget availability and business justification.

Open your draft trip from the trips list. Fill in detailed estimated costs broken down by major categories: Flight costs including any anticipated baggage fees, hotel charges calculated as number of nights multiplied by the nightly rate, meals estimated as number of days multiplied by your per diem or typical daily meal budget, ground transportation including airport transfers and local travel, and any other anticipated costs like conference registration or client entertainment. Add justification explaining why the trip is necessary, what business outcomes are expected, and why in-person travel is required rather than video conferencing. Click "Submit for Approval" to send the trip to your manager. Your manager reviews the trip details and either approves the travel, authorizing you to proceed with bookings, or rejects it if the trip doesn't meet business necessity or budget constraints.

Once approved, your trip status changes to "Approved" and you can proceed with booking travel arrangements.

Request cash advance for trip

After your trip is approved, you can request upfront funding to cover anticipated expenses without using your personal credit card.

Open your approved trip record. Click the "Request Advance" button, which is available once the trip is approved. The advance request form automatically pre-fills with your estimated trip cost from the trip record. Adjust the amount if your estimates have changed since initially creating the trip. Submit the cash advance request, which follows your organization's standard cash advance approval workflow. The advance automatically links to your trip, creating a connection that will be used later for settlement reconciliation.

See the Cash Advance Workflow article for detailed information about the advance approval and disbursement process.

During the trip

As you travel and incur actual expenses, link each expense to your trip to maintain organization and enable automatic tracking.

Create expenses and link them to your trip. As you incur each expense during your trip, create the expense in Eloope using either OCR scanning or manual entry as you normally would. When filling out the expense form, locate and click the "Link to Trip" checkbox or dropdown field. Select your active trip from the list of trips. The expense automatically associates with the trip and appears in the trip's expense list. Save the expense as usual.

Typical trip expenses you'll link include everything related to the business travel. Your flight to the destination city, hotel charges for each night of your stay, all meals including breakfast, lunch, and dinner for each day, taxi or Uber rides between locations, client entertainment meals or activities, parking fees at hotels or meeting venues, conference registration if applicable, and any other business-related expenses incurred during the trip dates.

Track trip expenses

Eloope provides real-time visibility into your trip spending, helping you stay within budget and know exactly where you stand.

Navigate to "Trips" from the sidebar and open your active trip. The trip summary dashboard displays comprehensive information: your original estimated cost, the actual cost showing a running total of all linked expenses, the number of expenses linked to the trip, your cash advance amount if you requested one, and the settlement calculation showing whether you're on track, underspending, or overspending relative to your advance.

Example trip summary display. Estimated cost: $1,500, Actual cost: $1,425 (and counting as you add expenses), Expenses linked: 12, Cash advance: $1,500, Current settlement status: You will owe $75 if spending remains at current level (underspent). This real-time tracking helps you manage spending during the trip and anticipate your final settlement.

Submit trip expenses

After returning from your trip, you'll create an expense report containing all trip expenses and submit it for approval.

Compile and submit your trip report. Ensure all expenses from the trip have been created in Eloope and linked to the trip—review the trip expense list to confirm nothing is missing. Create a new expense report for the trip, using a report name that matches or references the trip name. Add all trip expenses to the report at once by selecting them from your linked trip expenses. The report automatically shows the trip context, making it clear to approvers that these expenses are related to a single business trip. Submit the report for approval following the normal approval workflow.

What your approver sees when reviewing trip reports. All expenses are logically grouped together by trip rather than scattered among other expenses. The trip context and purpose are immediately visible, explaining why these expenses were incurred. The total actual cost appears alongside the original estimated cost, allowing quick assessment of budget variance. If applicable, the cash advance settlement calculation appears, showing whether you need to return funds or receive additional reimbursement.

Settle cash advance

If you received a cash advance for the trip, you must reconcile it with your actual spending after the trip concludes.

Open your completed trip from the trips list. View the automatic settlement calculation displayed prominently: Advance amount you received, Total spent as calculated from all linked expenses, and the settlement amount showing what you owe the company or what the company owes you. Follow the settlement process outlined in the Cash Advance Workflow article, which typically involves either returning unused funds to the company through payroll deduction or receiving additional reimbursement for overspending.

Three settlement scenarios explained. If you received a $1,500 advance and spent exactly $1,500, the trip is perfectly reconciled with no payment in either direction—this is the ideal outcome. If you received $1,500 but only spent $1,425, you owe the company $75 in unused advance funds that must be returned. If you received $1,500 but spent $1,680, the company owes you $180 in additional reimbursement beyond the advance to cover your out-of-pocket spending.

Trip types

Different types of business travel benefit from trip management in slightly different ways.

Single-destination trip involves travel to one city or location for consecutive days with all expenses serving one unified business purpose. This is the most straightforward trip type to manage. For example, a three-day client visit to Chicago with all expenses directly related to that client engagement.

Multi-destination trip covers travel to multiple cities during one journey, such as New York → Boston → Washington DC over a week. You can track which expenses occurred in which city by using descriptive expense names, though the overall trip purpose connects all the stops. This type requires careful expense documentation to maintain clarity.

Conference or event trip centers around attendance at a specific conference, training, or company event. These trips include the event registration fee, travel to and from the venue, hotel near the event location, and meals during the event dates. The trip name should reference the event for clarity, such as "Dreamforce 2024 - San Francisco."

Recurring trips involve regular visits to the same location, like monthly trips to a branch office or quarterly client site visits. Create a separate trip record each time you travel rather than trying to reuse one trip. Use consistent naming to track patterns, such as "Boston Office Visit - March 2024," "Boston Office Visit - April 2024," and so on.

Trip reporting and analytics

Historical trip data provides valuable insights for budget planning and travel pattern analysis.

View your trip history comprehensively. Navigate to Trips → Completed tab to see all trips you've completed and submitted. Each trip shows its total actual cost, allowing quick comparison across similar trips. You can review how actual costs compared to original estimates, identifying areas where your estimates tend to be high or low. This historical data informs better estimation for future similar trips.

Trip analytics reveal spending patterns. Over time, you can identify your most expensive destinations for travel, helping prioritize video conferencing for costly locations. Calculate average trip cost by destination to develop standard estimates. Track budget variance across trips to improve estimation accuracy. Identify frequent travel patterns that might benefit from preferred vendor agreements or travel policy adjustments.

Export trip data for reporting and budgeting. Generate individual trip summary reports with complete expense details for management review or client billing. Export all trips within a date range to analyze departmental or personal travel spending. Use this data for annual budget planning, basing next year's travel budget on actual historical costs rather than guesses.

Best practices

Following these guidelines ensures smooth trip management from planning through settlement.

Planning phase best practices. Create the trip record before you travel, ideally when you first learn about the trip, to establish the framework early. Estimate costs conservatively by reviewing actual costs for similar past trips and adding a 10-15% buffer for unexpected expenses—it's better to return unused advance funds than to overspend. Get trip approval if your organization requires it, never booking travel before approval. Request cash advances 7-10 business days before your trip departure to allow time for the approval and disbursement process.

During your trip, maintain organization. Create expenses daily as you incur them rather than waiting until you return home when details are fuzzy and receipts might be lost. Link all expenses to the trip immediately as you create them—don't plan to link them later, as you'll forget. Keep all receipts organized in a dedicated envelope or folder to ensure nothing gets lost. Track whether you're paying by cash or card to help with reconciliation later.

After your trip, complete the process promptly. Submit your expense report within one week of returning while everything is fresh in your mind. Reconcile any cash advance promptly to avoid overdue status and complications. Review your actual costs versus estimated costs to learn from variances and improve future estimates. Note lessons learned about trip planning, booking, or expense management for your next similar trip.

Trip with multiple travelers

When several team members travel together for the same business purpose, each person manages their own trip and expenses separately.

Each traveler creates their own trip record. You create a trip with your name or identifier in the title, such as "Q1 Sales Conference - Vegas - John Smith." Your colleague creates a separate trip with the same event but their name: "Q1 Sales Conference - Vegas - Sarah Lee." Each person links only their own expenses to their own trip, maintaining clear separation. Each person submits their own expense report for their own expenses. This separation ensures proper accounting and prevents confusion about who spent what.

The consistent naming convention makes it obvious to approvers and finance teams that multiple people attended the same event, while maintaining clear individual accountability for expenses.

Related articles

• Expense Submission Workflow
• Cash Advance Workflow
• Creating Expenses
• Submitting Reports
• Multi-Currency Expenses