Why might your employer ask you to pay for business travel?
What are the negative effects of having to pay for business travel up front?
- Financial strain: You’ll suffer a temporary loss in your personal finances, and then have to wait until your company pays you back. This can put a dent in your financial planning for the month, especially when you don’t know exactly when the payment is going to come in. If you’re struggling with the cost of living at the moment, this can be especially challenging, if you don’t have enough money to pay for these expenditures on top of your personal expenses.
- Interest: If you pay for travel on your own credit card rather than a corporate card, you might rack up interest as you wait for your reimbursement. It could be complicated to get this back from your employer. This could also impact your credit score.
- Inconvenience: Searching for and booking travel options, keeping track of expenses, organizing your invoices, and submitting expense reports manually is very time-consuming. And if you’re doing everything yourself, there’s a greater chance of making a mistake—potentially causing an even more delayed payment.
- Harder to stay within policy: Having to book everything yourself makes it harder for you to stay within policy. You may not be familiar with every detail of your company’s travel policy, so you could end up accidentally exceeding your travel budget.
- Dissatisfaction: The ultimate consequence of all this stress is that you will probably feel less satisfied, since business travel will feel like a burden instead of a privilege. This may have consequences for your employer, in the form of reduced employee retention—you may start looking for a new job.
79% of North American business travelers say their business travel experience impacts their overall job satisfaction at least somewhat, so creating processes that work for everyone is a win-win situation.
Global Business Travel Association
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