How Perk makes managing business travel spend and expenses stress-free

Updated: September 2026

Work travel is an essential business driver, but for travel managers, the process of juggling the expenses that come with it can be a source of stress. Working across multiple booking platforms, spreadsheets, card statements, paper receipts, and invoices can soon turn into an administrative nightmare. 

This extra work costs US businesses an estimated $564 billion a year in lost productivity. Not only does it damage cash flow, but the reliance on manual processes increases exposure to compliance risks.

The good news is that there are some strategies you can embed into your existing process to help relieve some pressure.

The challenge of managing travel expenses

Travel expense management can become a source of operational stress if the process is inefficient. And when companies want to scale up, what was previously a simple accounting workflow can soon become unfit for purpose. The consequences can be costly if you can’t maintain accurate visibility of your outgoings.

Several factors make processing travel spend and expenses more stressful:

Fragmented software systems

If software, like booking platforms and expense tracking tools, doesn’t integrate, it means a travel manager has to manually input data in several places. This introduces a significant margin for human error and becomes a frustrating administrative burden. In the US, workers spend around 113 minutes on time-consuming shadow work every time they file an expense claim.

Delayed expense reporting 

If your expense reporting process relies on employees submitting paper receipts, this can create a severe lag in visibility for your finance team. Workers might hold on to physical receipts for weeks after a business trip, possibly losing some in the process. This means that expenses are submitted late, causing unexpected end-of-month surprises for the accounting department.

Expense leakage 

Spend management processes that rely too heavily on manual input and paperwork are risky for several reasons:

• Paper documents can easily go missing

• Claims can be accidentally processed more than once, leading to costly duplicate claims

• Subtle policy violations or out-of-policy bookings can be missed during manual reviews 

The cost of inefficient travel expense management

All the issues noted above create a damaging routine of shadow work,  time-consuming admin that demotivates your workforce and keeps them from their core work tasks. The impact of this shadow work must not be underestimated. In fact, The Cost of Shadow Work, a Forrester Consulting study sponsored by Perk, lays out the substantial costs to businesses: 

• Employees spend, on average, 7 hours every week completing shadow work tasks.

• It takes an average of 11 minutes for someone to completely refocus on core strategic tasks after interacting with a single administrative distraction.

• Around 45% of surveyed professionals state that shadow work has actively contributed to workplace burnout.

What makes travel for work less stressful?

Managing unpredictable spend has a huge negative impact on your travel management team. So how can you shift the dial from reactive tracking to proactive control?

It’s all about using automated expense management platforms to your advantage and making automation work for your team. This includes business travelers too, who will no longer have to stress over lost receipts or worry about filling out expense forms when they return to the office. 

By replacing disjointed manual workflows with AI-driven spend management solutions that integrate with your existing processes, managing expenses will soon be simple, consolidated, and stress-free.

Centralize your data feeds

If work travelers are booking their trips across a variety of travel websites, keeping travel within policy is going to be extra challenging. By bringing all flight, hotel, and transport choices into a business travel expense app like Perk, travel managers can rest assured that all bookings are tracked and within pre-defined rules, while still giving travelers the freedom to book their own trips. Perk’s user statistics show that, when travel policies are preset within the platform, policy compliance sits at an average of 95%.

It also reduces shadow work. Activewear brand Fabletics was allowing its employees to book their work travel individually, but by switching to Perk’s platform, the company reclaimed 60 hours every year on travel management alone. 

Real-time transaction syncing

Choose a spend platform that tracks every transaction instantly, at the point of purchase. This reduces the need for manual data entry and gives the finance team complete spend visibility in real time. Chasing colleagues for receipts weeks after a trip because there is no immediate record of the transaction becomes a thing of the past. On average, it takes people 11 minutes to refocus on their primary work after completing one of these administrative tasks. 

With Perk, once an expense is paid for, such as a flight or a business dinner, the transaction data is captured directly from the card feed. This data is then automatically mapped to the correct employee itinerary and booking.

Automated data extraction

83% of employees struggle to reconcile work trip expenses. With Perk, the built-in AI integration reads uploaded receipts, instantly pulling out exact spend, dates, and vendor details without the need for human data entry. This transaction data integrates seamlessly with automated expense management solutions to map spending patterns and problem areas of non-compliance.

Mobile-first reporting

With Perk, expenses can be managed right from your phone, whether that’s a work traveler uploading receipts, a travel manager tracking individuals to check they’ve reached their destination safely, or the finance department having real-time visibility of travel budgets.

Integrate business travel management with existing corporate cards

Perk allows businesses to integrate travel and expense management with their own existing card programs, which means no more swapping between systems or end-of-month budget shocks. With features like Pass-Through Payments, your travelers can pay directly to collect their personal rewards and credit card points, while finance retains complete visibility and control over the travel budget.

Eliminate stressful shadow work with Perk

Stop losing valuable team hours to stressful expense management shadow work. Use Perk to automate manual work, reduce risk, and bring your data together for audit-ready reporting from day one. 

Take advantage of real-time receipt reconciliation tools and transparent transaction data to get a 360° view of your business's expenses, freeing up your team to focus on real work. Book a demo now to get started.