Business travel 101: Managing expenses from booking to boarding

Business travel is essential for many teams. But from a finance perspective, it can quickly become messy. Flights booked on personal cards. Missing hotel invoices. Crumpled taxi receipts. Expense reports submitted weeks after the trip.

But travel spend doesn’t have to be chaotic. With the right setup, you can manage expenses from booking to boarding in real time. That means cleaner data, fewer reimbursements and no last-minute chasing at month-end.

Here’s how to build a smooth, controlled travel spend process from start to finish.

Key takeaways:

• Start with the right payment setup. Issue virtual cards for travel and set clear spending limits before anything is booked.
• Automate travel invoices at source. Integrate Pleo with Perk so booking data and PDF invoices are imported automatically.
• Capture expenses in real time. Use the mobile app and receipt scanner to attach receipts the moment a purchase is made.
• Let Pleo Fetch handle email receipts. Automatically retrieve and match invoices sent to inboxes, including those from the past 30 days.
• Arrive at month-end already prepared. With transactions tagged, receipts attached and invoices synced, finance reviews travel spend instead of chasing it.

1. Set up travel spend before booking

The biggest travel expense mistakes happen before anyone gets on a plane – and that’s where virtual cards make a huge difference.

A virtual card works just like a physical company card, but it lives in the Pleo app. There’s no waiting for plastic and no risk of it being lost in transit.

With Pleo’s virtual cards, you can:

• Issue a card in seconds
• Set individual spending limits
• Freeze or disable it at any time
• Track transactions in real time

This is especially useful for things like one-off trips or project-based travel – and it makes it much easier to arrange travel for freelancers, contractors and seasonal or temporary workers.

Once the trip is over, you can simply freeze or delete the card. All expenses remain recorded and synced with your accounting software.

Set the right limits

Before booking, configure:

• A per purchase limit to prevent unusually large transactions
• A monthly or total limit to cap overall trip spend
• A temporary limit that automatically reverts after the travel period

This gives employees the freedom to book what they need without exposing the business to unnecessary risk.

2. Book smarter with the Perk integration

If your team uses Perk for travel booking, integrating it with Pleo helps you automate one of the most time-consuming parts of travel finance: invoice handling.

When you integrate Pleo with Perk:

• Booking transactions are automatically imported into Pleo
• The PDF invoice is attached to the transaction
• Key data such as Trip ID, booking amount, currency and category are included
• Tags can be synced between systems
  
  

How to connect Pleo with Perk

Prerequisites:

• A Pro or Premium account on Perk
• Admin access in both Pleo and Perk

In Pleo:

1. Go to Settings
2. Select Integrations
3. Access Receipt tracking
4. Click Connect next to the Perk integration

In Perk:

1. Go to Account Settings
2. Access Integrations
3. Find the Pleo integration and click Set up
4. Click Enable

To sync tags:

1. In Perk, go to Account Settings
2. Access Integrations
3. Find the Pleo integration and click Settings
4. Click Configure next to Sync cost fields
5. Choose which tags to sync
6. Click Sync cost fields

Once enabled, book a trip in Perk using your Pleo card and select the appropriate project or department tags. The transactions will appear in Pleo with a title that includes Perk and the invoice attached automatically.

This way, finance won’t have to chase booking confirmations or upload PDFs manually.

3. Manage expenses whilst travelling

Travel doesn’t stop at flights and hotels. Meals, taxis and incidental costs add up quickly. The key is capturing everything in real time.

Employees can use their virtual card to pay:

• Online for bookings
• In person by adding it to Apple Pay or Google Pay

Every time they make a purchase, they receive an instant notification in the app. This real-time visibility helps both the employee and finance stay on top of spend as it happens.

4. Capture receipts on the go

Lost receipts are one of the biggest travel pain points. Instead of collecting paper copies and submitting them later, encourage employees to scan receipts immediately.

How the receipt scanner works

1. Make a purchase using the Pleo card
2. Receive a notification in the app
3. Snap a photo of the receipt
4. Add any necessary details

And that’s it. The receipt is attached to correct expense automatically. Pretty neat, right?

Capture email receipts automatically with Pleo Fetch

Receipt sent to your inbox? No problem. Pleo Fetch can retrieve it automatically and match it to the correct expense. It can even pull receipts from the past 30 days.

This reduces the risk of missing documentation and eliminates the need to forward emails or upload PDFs manually.

Why this matters:

• No manual invoice uploads
• Fewer errors and mismatches
• Better organisation
• Real-time documentation
• Faster month-end close

By the time the employee boards their return flight, most travel expenses are already recorded and categorised.

5. Close the books without chasing anyone

When travel spend is handled properly from the beginning, month-end becomes a review process rather than a clean-up operation.

With virtual cards for controlled spend, automatic invoice imports from Perk, real-time receipt scanning and tagged expenses at booking, finance has immediate visibility into:

• Total trip cost
• Spend by project or department
• Category breakdowns
• Supporting documentation

No reimbursement cycle, no manual invoice uploads and no hunting for missing receipts.

Travel spend best practices

Managing business travel well isn’t just about paying for flights and collecting receipts. It’s about building a repeatable process that works for employees and finance alike.

If you want to keep travel expenses clean and controlled, focus on these fundamentals.

1. Issue a dedicated virtual card for each trip or traveller

Avoid shared cards and personal reimbursements wherever possible. A dedicated virtual card gives you clear visibility into who is spending what and why. It also makes it easier to track total trip costs in one place, especially for projects or client-related travel.

2. Set temporary limits aligned with the travel period

Travel spend naturally fluctuates. Instead of permanently increasing limits, use temporary limits that match the travel window. This gives employees flexibility during the trip whilst reducing exposure once they return.

3. Tag costs at the point of booking

The best time to categorise travel spend is when it’s created. Assign projects, departments or cost centres during booking so expenses are already structured before finance reviews them. This improves reporting accuracy and makes budget tracking far easier.

4. Encourage immediate receipt scanning

Receipts are far less likely to go missing when they’re captured in the moment. Encourage employees to scan receipts as soon as they pay, whether it’s for meals, taxis or incidental costs. Real-time documentation reduces errors and removes the need for end-of-month catch-ups.

5. Close the loop after the trip

Once travel is complete, review the total spend and freeze or disable cards if appropriate. This keeps your card setup tidy and ensures unused limits don’t remain active longer than necessary.

Bring travel spend together with Pleo

Business travel will always involve moving parts. Flights change. Meetings run over. Plans evolve. But the financial side of travel doesn’t have to be reactive.

With Pleo, the entire travel spend process – from booking flights to capturing taxi receipts – happens in one connected workflow. Virtual cards give employees a secure way to pay for travel without using personal funds. Integrations like Perk automatically attach booking invoices. Receipt scanning and Pleo Fetch ensure documentation is captured as expenses happen.

Instead of piecing together trip costs after the fact, finance teams can see travel spend unfold in real time. That means fewer reimbursements, fewer missing receipts and far less chasing at month-end. Every transaction already has the context, documentation and categorisation finance needs.

The result is a travel spend process that works for everyone involved. Employees can focus on the trip itself. Finance retains full visibility and control. And the business benefits from cleaner data and faster reconciliation.

Because when travel expenses are managed properly from the start, closing the books becomes the easiest part of the journey.