If your business operation requires frequent traveling for business purposes, it is absolutely critical to maintain a travel budget. Because with increasing merit of a company increases the trips and travels for business purposes. Whether it is a sponsored trip or a venture related, the company has to make a guesstimate of the travelling expenses. Business travel budget templates are the most useful instrument to maintain travel expenses in check.
Planning a corporate travel budget is not an effortless task, but it can be done systematically. There are several parts on a business trip. Starting from reaching to a destination, attending events and meetings, and then returning back. All these activities will incur quite a large amount of spending. To maintain and keep the money on edge, the company prepares a budget. If avoided, the consequence could be severe and cost a hefty amount of superfluous spending, which will eventually affect the company’s top line.
Depending on the business nature and activities, you can prepare a customized Excel travel budget template and hand over to the employee taking the business trip. We have compiled the 12+ Sample Business Trip Budget Templates in Excel, Google Sheets, and MS Word Format to help you out.
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Sample Business Travel Budget Template
What is Business Travel Budget?
A business travel budget is a budget document created to estimate the costs of a complete business trip spent on an employee. It is to identify the kind of expenses the company has to bear to cover the complete trip.
There are many moving parts in a business travel trip. Still, careful planning and in-depth research with proper scheduling, you can get quite close to estimating the actual spending and making a perfect travel budget worksheet.
Travel Budget Worksheet Template
Is it necessary to create a budget for business travel?
Absolutely! It is extremly critical to have a Business Travel Budget Template.
Let’s take an example. Suppose your company is about to collaborate with a foreign firm. So you probably must have planned or appointed someone to reach and discuss the essential matters concerning a project.
As you planned the matters related to the project to better understand the situation, estimating the travel cots is equally significant.
Making a budget is as important as holding up the discussion of the project. Will it be okay for your company to spend on resources and places to have a better alternative? More than the employee, the company must put effort and time in planning out the cost at each phase to reduce down the spendings without affecting the quality significantly.
Here are some reasons to consider creating a travel budget template or budget planner:
- A budget would tell the company the overall proximity amount needed to make the trip.
- While making the budget and listing all possible expenses, the forecaster would come across some not considered costs beforehand.
- On seeing the budget, the company may make the informed decision whether to proceed or not.
- It helps in accumulating funds if the company feels necessary.
- Having a travel budget worksheet template will help the employee know the limit and spend accordingly.
- If a company avoids planning budget for trip, then after returning, the employee may increase the travel expenses amounts and present the bill higher than the actual one.
Business Trip Budget Template in Excel, Google Sheet, Word
Road Trip Budget Template
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What is the need of a Template for a business trip?
The companies that reached an absolute peak and are dealing with high-end clients and MNCs will have frequent business travel to hold and attend important meetings and conferences. Is it possible for an employee to type the budget whenever some trips are planned?
Especially in the time of urgency, it would be a fool’s work to sit and make the budget all over again.
1. To handle such critical circumstances, the templates are made. Companies create templates beforehand to avoid delay. They can have a new budget worksheet ready for each business trip.
2. To understand the need, one needs to know the usefulness of such templates.
3. Suppose your company cracked a deal, and you are invited to finalize the collaboration and hold a public conference and thus have to reach to Australia as soon as possible. You have just eight days, and within that, the complete preparation has to be done.
4. The preparation may include arranging necessary documents, making a document of contracts, and gathering of funds. In most cases, one might think of quitting the idea of budgeting as it would draw in quite a time. Due to such a hurried decision, the trips and hotel booking expenses, the company may cost extra money than needed.
5. If you already have a business travel budget template ready, it would ease the method and eventually save time. The estimator needs to do research, but the figures on the sides of each expense, and make a total of it. Without a template, the estimator’s work doubles up as he/she had to build the entire format of the budget.
Who doesn’t want to do the work as early as possible? Thus, many companies have adopted the style, and a lot are on its way.
Standard Procedure to craft Business Trip Budget Template:
The company’s travel policy is the most crucial and determining factor that indicated how the business budget Trip should be created. The person who makes the budget template should create a section for expense report and Schedule of actions. Here are some details to keep in mind while crafting business Travel Budget and travel costs estimation:
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- Listing down all the possible trips in the given financial year is the first step to have an essential business trip estimation cost. Depending on the business size and purpose, the number of the trip will very. Consulting with the planning head and operation manager can shed significant light on the upcoming business trip schedule, and arrangements could be made accordingly.
- Once you have the rough estimation, you can structure the cost and expenses for the travel budget. Transportation and accommodation share the most considerable portion in any travel budget, and once you mark that down, you already have a basic estimate on your hand.
- Apart from the two main expenses, i.e., Transportation and accommodation, there are plenty of other costs that need to be estimated after that. A brief expense report field can accommodate all budget expenses like meal cost, travel agent expense, local transportation cost, the entry fee for conference/show, and all other miscellaneous expenses.
- Finally, once you have the travel budget estimation, it’s time to review every detail and make the necessary changes and arrangements to reduce the redundant expenses without compromising employees’ travel comfort. And there you have the Business Travel Budget Template.
What are the common elements of a travel budget template?
A travel budget template varies on several factors, such as the distance of travel, the number of days required, the number of employees travelling, and the place of travel.
Based on these factors, the elements and the figures differ from the other budgets. Even if traveled to the same destination, the fares and rates of flights do alter after a given date. So, the elements depend on the factors affecting the travelling expenses.
Few element states are mostly found common in few business travel budgets. They are:
• Air fare
• Car expenses
• Hotel costs
• Itinerary
How to create a budget template for business travel?
Creating a template is a more straightforward process and does not need any specific rules to follow. A template is generally created in Excel but also can be processed in Word. In this article, we have shown the step-by-step process of template creation in Excel. Follow the steps accordingly to achieve an accurate and useful Business Travel Budget Template.
1st Step – Open a blank document in Excel.
2nd Step – Select a few consecutive cells and click on “Merge and Centre.” On clicking, the lines dividing the cells would erase, and you would get empty space.
Use the space to write the title of the document and other details relating to the trip.
3rd Step – Follow a sequence to write the heads following a row. For example: Categories > sub-categories > Rate > Amount Estimated > Actual Amount > Measure > Total
4th Step – To save the file, go to the office button and select “Save As.”
A dialogue box would open with a space to write the name of the file. Write the name of the file, and click on OK.
With this the process ends, and the template is ready for use.
How to use a budget template in action?
Following rules may give you an effective Business Travel Budget Template, but to make it useful, you have to understand the template’s needs. Various formats of organizations demand different information. So, the first step would be to understand what the company requires. If they allow you to follow your system, then one must do the work of the estimator.
A business trip would sustain only if the budgets are prepared. No matter how big a company is, there will be no way of keeping or increasing wealth without planning.
Funding a business excursion is not a small amount when planned for longer days, often drawing money near lakhs. If the similar rate of amounts gets flowed away on many business travels, the company would undoubtedly gain less than expected. So, prior to moving out, plan the process and expenses with your estimator.
Costing Estimation is necessary to have a better understanding of Travel Cost Budgeting, and there is no better alternative to Business Travel Budget Template. Hopefully, above listed templates will serve your purpose and if you like to have an automated Travel Cost Budgeting Template or Business Travel Budget Template in Excel, send over your request in our Facebook page, and we will try to get your brand new customized templates.
