How to Estimate Business Travel Expenses
Business travel expenses has to be estimated depending on the type of trip you are undertaking, for instance the duration of the trip will certainly impact the cost of the entire travel. International travel plans will also include special circumstances such as health vaccinations, etc. Before you start on your trip, it is important that you confirm each and every detail of the trip with your manager and in this way you can also research the travel destination before you take off for your trip. In order to get access to the basic information of the visiting place, you can contact your local travel agent or the visitor's bureau as well.
1) The foremost thing to do would be to conduct a thorough research on the place you are traveling to for business. You can get in touch with a local travel agency and can get information about the average cost which is associated with the transport and sightseeing. The visitor's bureau will also help you with the necessary information and the international business expenses can also be estimated with the help of an online conversion calculator.
2) Make a spreadsheet with the expected expenses to be filled in the columns and you can approximately compute the expenses by the number of days you will be out of station.
3) In your spreadsheet, include space for both personal and professional expenses and in this way you can understand what expenses you can account for in the business travel expenditure. In this manner, you can clearly distinguish between your grooming needs such as a purchase of an international adapter for shaving or that of a new adapter for your business laptop. Also, create separate columns for tips and gratuity.
4) To understand your costs on fuel, you can make use of the Trip Calculator which will assist you in estimating your fuel expenses while driving in the United States. This tool is a very helpful one and can also be used for other international business travel destinations such as for European trips.
5) Before summing up all the expenses, you have to complete all kinds of currency exchange conversions and you can record the results into your spreadsheet. Before submitting the same for reimbursement, please make sure that you have reviewed the data once again and have included all the necessary business travel expenses which you can claim from your company.
