Sample Travel Expense Report with Free Generator
If your job requires travel, you probably need to create expense reports to ensure you’re recompensated for business-related expenses. Larger companies typically have a defined process to submit expenses, but smaller organizations might require you to create an expense report on your own. This article will outline a simple way to create professional looking expense reports to impress your boss, and include sample travel expense reports to help.
What Typically Counts as Business Related Travel Expenses?
Every employer is different, but usually they will reimburse you for the following travel expenses:
- Transportation: Airfare and road transportation, such as taxis or rideshare are typically covered. If you need to drive your own car, they will typically reimburse you for any fuel costs.
- Hotel or Lodging: If you need to stay overnight, that is typically covered by your employer as part of the travel expenses.
- Food and Drinks: Meals are typically covered as well as some snacks, coffee, etc. Some businesses will offer a daily cap or per diem that limits how much you can spend. If you work for a smaller organization, it’s best to look at your food costs and ask yourself whether it seems like a reasonable amount.
- Client Entertainment: If you work in sales and need to host clients, this is typically a business related expense. If you are a nanny or household worker, any materials you buy yourself to help you in your job will typically be covered as well.
How to Plan Ahead for Travel Expense Reports
When traveling be sure to keep all of your receipts or use a single credit card so you can easily reference statements online. You don’t want to find yourself in a position where you can’t remember what you spent and have to guess on the expense report. This is almost always apparent to the employer, and will cause them to question your accuracy – or worse, your honesty in reporting. Depending on your situation, some business travel expenses might also be tax deductible.
Sample Travel Expense Report
Expense reports are typically structured as an itemized list. Some businesses have a template you should use or software with this capability. If note, you can reference this sample travel expense report and follow the below process to create your own!
1. Collect Receipts and Documentation
Gather all receipts and documentation related to your travel. This includes receipts for accommodation, meals, transportation, and any other business-related expenses incurred during your trip.
2. Categorize Expenses
Organize your expenses into categories such as transportation, lodging, meals, and miscellaneous. This will help in creating a clear and structured report.
3. Enter Expense Details
Include detailed information for each expense, such as:
- Item: The category or type of expense (e.g., transportation, lodging).
- Date: When the expense was incurred.
- Amount: The total cost of the expense.
- Description: A brief description of the expense (e.g., “Hotel stay in Los Angeles”).
At the top of your expense report include a summary of the trip including the purpose of travel. If your report is to get reimbursed for driving expenses, you can instead include the time period the expense report covers.
4. Attach Receipts
Attach digital copies of all receipts to the report if possible, if not make sure you retain them in case your employer needs them in the future. Ensure each receipt corresponds to the expenses listed in the report. If you’re sending the travel expense report via email, you can attach the receipt copies there. Better yet, use a tool like Google Drive to upload digital receipts into a cloud folder, and include a link to the receipts on your expense report.
5. Calculate Any Driving Expenses
If you drive in your own car for work, it can be difficult to remember all the fuel costs you spent along the way. Using Fuel Math makes it easy to enter your routes and quickly generate a professional looking expense report for any driving related expenses.
Driving expenses are difficult to estimate accurately since there are so many variables. Fuel price inflation makes it difficult to even remember what you paid for fuel during your trip, and it differs greatly from region to region. We developed Fuel Math to ensure accurate recompensation and also to simplify travel expense report generation.
Create a Trip Report for Driving Expenses
Using Fuel Math, it’s easy to create a professional expense report for reimbursement. Simply enter your routes and adjust criteria such as your driving style, then add the trips. Using the notes feature in the Trip Report you can enter additional information such as the date or purpose of travel. Using Fuel Math also ensures that you’ll be fairly compensated, since it factors in driving style and real world conditions rather than relying on the standard driving reimbursement rate, which is overly generic and can leave you paying many costs out of pocket.
Final Thoughts
Creating travel expense reports can be overwhelming – you don’t want to pay out of pocket for costs that should be covered by your employer. Make sure to plan ahead, use tools like Fuel Math to calculate driving expenses accurately, and submit expense reports quickly to avoid any awkward conversations with your employer. Safe travels!