If you are fortunate enough to be able to have paid business expenses as part of your job, the last thing you should be doing is abusing the privilege. Managing business expenses is not always easy, especially as you need to be very clear on what you can and cannot claim and when you can and cannot claim it. Knowing the best practices for claiming your business expenses will help you to streamline the entire process.

Whether you are allowed to claim for your travel, your accommodation, your meals, even the entertainment while you’re away, you need to get this right. Managing your business expenses takes the right software, the right distance matrix API documentation, and it also takes knowing that your boss is going to trust you to get the job done. If you are able to have expenses while you’re out at work, use these tips to manage them properly.

• Make it a policy. Give this one to your boss if they haven’t done it before, but the very first step towards ensuring that you can manage your business expenses is to have a policy about them. The policy should dictate a clear and fair expense policy for everybody in the company who is eligible for them. It should be reviewed periodically to ensure that it is up-to-date.
• Only gather what is necessary. When you are putting together your business expense claim, only add receipts for things that you know you’re allowed to claim for. Don’t waste the time of the finance payroll department by trying to claim for things you already know you’re not allowed to. It’s a good way to speed up the process of submitting your expenses reports, and being paid for them.
• Get your expenses in on time. A good management technique for your expenses is to make sure that you submit them by the date you were told to submit them by. Don’t be that person that tries to submit them too late and then get annoyed when you don’t get them paid back to you on time.
• Have them double checked by management. A good way to manage your personal business expenses is to make sure that your manager double checks them for you so there are no delays in paying them back to you. If you have one person swiftly checking the expenses for everybody, it’s a faster process.
• Bring on the software. We talked about having the right distance matrix API documentation, and this is to check the distance when you’re travelling. If you know you are travelling the right way for the right length of time, you’ll know exactly what expenses you should claim back for. Instead of accumulating all of your receipts and expense reports, have the right software to check them for you. It makes it so much simpler.
• Make sure you understand when you’ll be paid. Everybody wants the expense of the day after submission and that’s never going to be the case. Speak to your manager and find out when you should receive your expenses back. Of all people, your management team should understand that people are waiting on this money and they can’t always afford it  out of pocket.