Business travel expenses are inevitable. From food and hotels to travel and extras, every purchase needs to be correctly documented to help you get reimbursed faster.
But in the stress of getting to your destination and getting on with the job you’ve been sent there to do, it’s not always easy for travelers to manually report accurately, creating additional time-consuming tasks to chase up.
By learning how mobile expense reporting works, travelers can make the most of their automated expense management platform and submit expenses on the go faster and more easily.
While this article covers advice for travelers, guidance for travel managers can be found in the article “How to use mobile receipts to speed up your reimbursement cycle”.
What is mobile expense reporting?
Mobile expense reporting is a process that lets teams submit work travel expenses from their mobile devices, rather than submitting physical receipts on their return.
The key to minimizing expense reporting is moving away from manual processes and towards an automated and real-time model. This reduces the amount of human error and automates travel reporting, ensuring that budgets, expense types, and other policies are automatically enforced, all while keeping work travelers free from juggling a pile of paper receipts.
How does mobile expense reporting work?
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As soon as a payment is made, travelers simply need to take a photo of their receipts and share them on their expense platform. The platform then processes the receipt and, most importantly, stores it, so you no longer need to carry physical receipts and risk being unable to claim because one goes missing.
Having incorrect expense information doesn’t just affect travelers, but can have an impact on the finance team, too. While the IRS accepts digital expenses and receipts, they must contain the same level of detail as a physical record would hold.
Corporate cards and digital wallets
Another popular method for simplifying expense processes is the use of corporate credit cards, purchasing cards, and digital wallets. Not only can these help to manage spending with pre-agreed per diem limits, but they also allow for billing and receipts to be shared automatically with your expense management system.
Digital payment via mobile devices is becoming increasingly popular, accounting for 17% of US in-store spending in 2025, and is expected to increase by 10% per year until 2030.
Combining company-managed systems with digital payment methods helps to make monitoring and record-keeping more accurate and controlled, with payment details automatically logged in real-time. While this is great news for travelers and finance teams, we still recommend continuing to supply a photograph of any physical receipts as a backup as part of your travel expenses.
How mobile expense reporting solves work travel frustrations
Lost receipts and human error
When there is a query on an expense claim, the likely reason is some form of human error. While these mistakes are often easy to resolve, our research shows they contribute to the $1.7 trillion lost in the US every year to shadow work - the small, and often avoidable, tasks that accumulate to pull people away from their main tasks.
Automated expense tracking through a receipt logging app can help by using either Optical Character Recognition (OCR) or AI to pull relevant information from the receipt image (cost, date, etc.), removing the need for manual input and protecting against lost physical receipts, which could be particularly common when on the move.
The more time you spend on manual data entry, the higher the risk of something going wrong. So by automating, the potential number of mistakes is reduced at the same time as making the process quicker and easier than ever for business travelers.
Navigating the challenge of split bills
A common issue with work travel is how to manage a split bill that includes both business and personal items. This process can be extremely time-consuming as the traveler has to work out which elements of their trip are covered by their per diems. The growth in popularity of Bleisure travel, which combines business and leisure in a single trip, could create a larger grey area over what items can be reimbursed.
Aside from requesting an itemized bill for clarity about what has been spent, mobile expense reporting can help resolve this confusion.
As an integrated, transparent platform, all of your company's travel policies, expense limits, and other rules for the trip can be automatically referred to, quickly and clearly defining which elements can be expensed.
Currency conversion
International travel can provide the additional challenge of converting expenses between multiple currencies. This can be especially complicated on longer international trips with more than one stop.
Thankfully, an automated platform will automatically calculate the exchange rate back to USD as part of recording the expense, removing any uncertainty over the accuracy of the reimbursement.
Out-of-scope payments
Mobile expense reporting allows for real-time checks against policies, meaning you will be alerted quickly if a payment is within your company policy and spending limits, or not.
It’s a simple change, but it allows you to be more informed when making payments, rather than getting a nasty surprise that a purchase was not eligible for reimbursement weeks after you return home.
Slow repayment
Getting your expenses paid can be a slow process, made more frustrating when paperwork needs to be queried over manual errors or a lack of detailed information.
Automated, digital submission means your receipts are sent directly from the app on your phone to your trip’s central hub, making them instantly accessible by the travel management and finance teams. This allows for issues to be identified and resolved quickly, reducing the amount of time you have to wait.
Benefits of mobile expense reporting
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Makes reimbursement payments faster
Minimizes human error that could delay repayment
Reduces the risk of lost receipts
Simplifies expenses on split bills
Ensures policy compliance
Automates currency conversion
Simplify your travel expenses with Perk
Managing travel expenses shouldn't become a second job for work travelers. By adopting a mobile-first approach to expense management, you can eliminate the invisible shadow work tasks that drain your energy and focus, while also ensuring that every purchase is accounted for.
At Perk, we believe in powering real work by removing the friction of travel and spend. Our intelligent platform for travel and spend is designed to simplify your next trip:
Automated matching: No more hunting for receipts. Our platform’s AI automatically extracts key data from photos of your receipts and matches them to transactions in real time.
Auto calculation of per diems: Perk automatically calculates rates per country based on stored per diems and allowances.
Real-time compliance: Perk’s platform applies your corporate travel policy to avoid nasty surprises for travelers if, for example, their travel options are out of policy.
Explore our intelligent platform for travel and spend by requesting a demo to see how Perk can transform your existing expense processes.
Written by
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Growth Marketing Director
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