Small Business Travel Management: Saving On Your Rental Car, Hotel & Accommodations

As a small business owner, you know full well how important it is to save money on business travel

. You know that your salespeople must be aware of their expenses while traveling for your company. After all, every dollar saved on travel goes directly to your bottom line. You also know that you can't ask your salespeople to sacrifice their own personal space by asking them to share accommodations. Your salespeople are out of their comfort zone, constantly on the road and should never be asked to share a room with a coworker. In return, all you ask is that they don't live vicariously through your company. Most importantly, you simply ask that they do their best to save on things like their rental car, accommodations and food. Regardless of this, there are still going to be those instances where your salespeople try to take advantage of your goodwill. So to avoid this from happening, we'll come up with some simple tips your company can adopt to reduce its traveling expenditures. What are some of these ideas?

-The Daily "Per Diem"

You must stop giving your employees carte blanche to spend what they want, when they want. Having your employees fill out daily expense reports won't help you reduce your small business traveling expenses. What's ultimately required is the ability to reduce these expenditures yourself. Instituting a daily "per diem" will help you do just that. It allows you to put a cap on how much your employees can spend on meals and miscellaneous items. To help, start by determining your small business's average daily expenditures on the last quarter's business trips. Next, you'll use the per diem to reduce these expenses immediately. For instance, if your salespeople average $50 a day on meals, then give them a flat $40 per day in cash as a per diem. Granted, they'll have this $40 as cash in their hands to do with as they please. However, your company will guarantee itself an immediate savings.

-Savings on Rentals and Accommodations

You don't have to scrutinize every single expense report submitted by your sales department in order to reduce costs. The best plan of attack is to limit the options your salespeople can take on trips. For instance, your company should pick the rental car company well in advance of any trip. The hotel itself should also be picked well in advance. Reward and incentive programs should be used to their fullest. Join as many of these programs as possible and any accrued points must go to your company. Those points can then be redeemed for free accommodations, thereby further reducing your traveling costs.

-Save on Meals

Instituting that aforementioned per diem will go a long way to controlling what your employees spend on meals. They'll be forced to make tough decisions. Your company will immediately secure savings by getting your employees on a daily per diem. After all, you can always go back to the old system if needed. By that time your salespeople should have a much better understanding of the importance of saving money. A number of companies train their employees with a per diem, and then they gradually reduce that per diem going forward.

Saving money on business travel is very important. Regardless of the size of your enterprise, getting your salespeople thinking about reduced costs is an essential part of running a business. Use these three aforementioned ideas to reduce your travel expenses. It will not only improve your bottom line, but it will also get your salespeople thinking about the importance of saving money.

by: Brenton Nickols

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