A business travel report is a document that summarizes all aspects of a work-related trip, including travel details, activities conducted, expenses incurred, and supporting documentation. Travel managers and those in charge of organizing business trips and corporate travel will need their travelers to submit a business travel report. This type of report gives travel managers an overview of expenses and budgets to help improve future business travel.
- A business travel report documents trip details, activities, expenses, receipts, and notes
- Essential components include: trip overview, itinerary, meetings, activities, expense report, attachments, and additional comments
- Gather all receipts and documentation during your trip for accurate reporting
- Use a structured template or travel management platform to streamline the process
- Reports help improve budgeting, policy compliance, and future travel planning
How to make a business travel report: Step-by-step
Gather all trip information – Collect travel dates, destinations, purpose, and participating employees
Document your itinerary – Record flights, hotels, car rentals, and places visited
List all meetings and activities – Note conferences, seminars, and business events attended
Compile your expenses – Itemize all costs with amounts and payment methods
Attach supporting documents – Include receipts, invoices, contracts, and certificates
Add relevant notes – Document cost-saving opportunities, issues encountered, and follow-up actions
Submit for review – Send the completed report to your travel manager or finance team
What is a business trip report?
The business trip report is an important management tool for budgeting, reporting, and auditing costs. Put simply, it ensures your company has a comprehensive view of the trip, which helps improve reporting accuracy.
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This printable business trip report template provides an overview of travel expenses and budgets to help improve future business travel. It also helps corporate travel managers identify and gather learnings to improve your company’s travel policy and optimize your budget for future business trips.
What does a business travel report include?
A complete business travel report includes the following components:
Trip details – Destination, dates, purpose, and participating employees
Itinerary – Flights, hotels, car rentals, and locations visited
Activities – Meetings, conferences, seminars, and events attended
Expenses – Itemized costs for transportation, accommodation, meals, and other expenditures
Receipts and documents – Invoices, contracts, certificates, and proof of payment
Notes – Cost-saving opportunities, issues encountered, and follow-up actions
Let's take a look at what sections this business trip report template includes, and what information you need to add for each to it.
Business trip overview
In the trip overview section, you will give an executive summary of the business trip. The business trip summary report section includes:
Travel destination
Duration of the trip
The purpose of the trip
Participating employees
Plus any other information needed to summarize the business trip.
Trip itinerary
Right after the business trip report summary, you’ll find the trip itinerary.
The trip itinerary collects information on the places visited, flight tickets used, hotels booked, and car rental information to enable efficient expense reporting.
Meetings, events, and activities
Now that you’ve established all the important information about the trip, transport, and accommodation, you’ll need to specify the different activities that took place during the business trip. In this section, you can add meetings, conferences, seminars, and other events the traveling employee took part in.
What expenses should be included in a business travel report?
In this section, you’ll present the travel spend —including amounts and payment methods used for things like:
Airfare, bus tickets, and other transportation costs
Accommodation expenses
The cost of your meals
Sample expense breakdown:
This will enable the finance team to accurately report travel costs, check if the reported travel expenses are in-line with your company's travel expense policy, and process any necessary reimbursements.
For this part, we recommend you add your business travel expenses to a table or to an Excel sheet that you can import into your main travel report once done. This will keep your travel data easier to process.
If you've decided to use our report template, you can skip this step since the report format is based on Microsoft Excel.
Of course, you can create your field trip report or sales business trip report using any tool - from Google Docs to MS Word. But, if you want to make your travel manager's life easier, we recommend adding it to a spreadsheet.
Attachments and documents
This part of the report can be divided into two important categories:
Invoices and receipts: the proof of each expense
Other relevant documents: contracts, certificates, and declarations that were produced during the business trip
Additional comments
In this last section, you can mention important things that happened during the trip, including:
Cost-saving opportunities you’ve identified
Feedback about issues encountered during your travel experience
Whether there are any important follow-up actions for the activities taken during the trip
The bottom line is that you should include any relevant information that could help optimize your company’s corporate travel policy and budget for future business trips.
Business travel report checklist
Before submitting your report, ensure you have gathered:
Trip dates and destination details
Names of all participating employees
Purpose and objectives of the trip
Complete itinerary (flights, hotels, car rentals)
List of all meetings, events, and activities attended
Itemized expense list with amounts and payment methods
All receipts and invoices
Relevant contracts or certificates
Notes on cost-saving opportunities or issues
Follow-up action items
Get your business travel report template
Compiling a business travel report is easier with a pre-made template—just plug your travel information into the relevant section. While using travel report templates is helpful, it’s not the best way to get the job done.
A travel management platform like Perk enables you to book and manage your travel and automatically creates a business travel report following any trip. You can connect it with your expense management solution to include expenditure details and automatically compile travel reports.
Frequently asked questions
- A business travel report provides a comprehensive record of trip expenses and activities, enabling accurate budgeting, policy compliance verification, reimbursement processing, and insights for optimizing future travel.
- Any employee who travels for business purposes typically needs to submit a travel report. This includes sales representatives, executives, consultants, and anyone attending conferences, client meetings, or company events.
- Most companies retain business travel reports for 3-7 years to comply with tax regulations and audit requirements. Check your company's retention policy and local tax laws for specific guidance.
- If you lose a receipt, document the expense with as much detail as possible (date, vendor, amount, purpose) and check if you can obtain a duplicate from the vendor. Many companies accept bank or credit card statements as backup documentation.
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