corporate travel management

Who is responsible for travel expenses?

Someone in your finance team is chasing a missing receipt again. The trip happened three weeks ago, the employee has moved on to the next thing, and nobody's quite sure who was meant to approve the hotel booking in the first place. Sound familiar? 

Travel expenses are one of the most commonly mismanaged parts of a growing business. Without clear ownership, spend leaks out, reimbursements stall, and everyone ends up frustrated

So, who's responsible for business travel expenses? This guide breaks down what each group owns, what happens when there's no travel policy, and how a TMC changes the equation.

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Who is responsible for travel expenses in a business?

In most businesses, responsibility for travel expenses sits across three groups: the travelling employee, their manager or approver, and the finance team. A written travel policy makes those responsibilities clear and enforceable.

Here's the quick breakdown of who's responsible for what:

  • Employees own compliance and record-keeping. That means booking within policy, keeping receipts, and submitting claims on time.
  • Managers or approvers own oversight. They sign off on trips before they happen and check claims against policy afterward.
  • Finance teams own the process. That's reimbursement, reconciliation, GST substantiation, and reporting.

What is the employee's responsibility for travel expenses?

Employees are responsible for following the travel policy, keeping receipts, and submitting accurate expense claims on time.

In practice, that includes:

  • Booking through approved channels and staying within budget limits
  • Keeping receipts for every claimable expense (and that means every expense)
  • Submitting claims by the deadline set in the travel policy
  • Flagging out-of-policy spend before or immediately after the trip

On receipts specifically, general ATO guidance requires documentation for expense claims over $82.50 including GST, and records typically need to be kept for five years. These figures are general guidance only, so check current ATO rules before setting your own policy thresholds.

When employees skip these steps, it creates extra work not only for them, but for their manager and the finance team, who end up chasing information that should have been captured at the time.

What role does a manager or approver play?

Managers and approvers are responsible for approving travel before the trip, checking claims against policy, and flagging out-of-policy spend.

That role plays out in three stages:

  • Before travel: reviewing and approving trip requests, checking costs against budget and policy.
  • After travel: reviewing expense claims for accuracy and compliance before passing them to finance.
  • Ongoing: spotting patterns of out-of-policy spending and feeding that back into policy reviews.

What is the employer's responsibility? 

The employer is responsible for setting up a clear travel policy, giving employees and managers the tools to follow it, and paying valid claims on time. Expectations should also be easy to find and easy to follow.

At many SMEs, approval falls to a line manager, an EA, or the office manager who's never been given clear guidelines to work from. A written policy fixes it by spelling out what's approved, what's not, and who signs off at each stage.

 

Related article: The easiest way to make business travel expenses a breeze

What does the finance team own in the travel expense process?

The finance team owns reimbursement processing, budget reconciliation, GST and tax substantiation, and travel spend reporting. 

It's a significant workload: manual reconciliation can eat up to 30% of a finance team's time, and poor expense controls can cost businesses 8% to 12% in spend leakage through manual errors and missed policy breaches.

In practice, the finance team is responsible for:

  • Processing approved reimbursements within agreed timeframes
  • Reconciling travel spend against budgets and cost centres
  • Managing GST claims and ensuring substantiation requirements are met (again, check current ATO guidance for your business)
  • Producing reporting that gives leadership visibility over travel spend

Lean finance teams at growing businesses often don't have the tools to do this efficiently. Reconciling paper receipts against a dozen separate credit card statements is nobody's idea of a good afternoon; this is exactly where an integrated expense platform earns its keep. 

Karen Pereira, Executive Assistant to CEO at DT Infrastructure, put it simply: "One of the big advantages of moving to (Corporate Traveller) was eliminating the admin that came with credit cards and receipts — everything is booked to a cost centre, which made my life a lot easier."

 

See how CT Pay takes the admin out of travel expense management for finance teams.

Who is responsible if there's no travel policy?

Without a travel policy, responsibility often defaults to whoever is closest to the problem, often an EA or office manager. That creates inconsistency, risk, and unnecessary admin.

This is the reality for a lot of growing businesses. Responsibility is informal, undocumented, and inconsistent from one trip to the next. 

The risks stack up quickly: out-of-policy spend goes unchecked; reimbursements get delayed, ATO obligations may not be met, and employees genuinely don't know what they're allowed to claim, or if they’re even allowed to claim anything at all. 

The fix doesn't need to be complicated. A written travel policy should clearly set out who approves what, what expenses are covered, and how claims should be submitted.

Clarity beats complexity every time.

Need help building a travel policy? We’ve got you covered with our (free) Travel Policy Template Builder. 

 

Download: Free Travel Policy Template Builder

How does a TMC change who's responsible for what?

A travel management company (TMC) helps reduce the admin burden on employees and finance teams, while making it easier to enforce policy, track spend, and process expenses accurately. With Corporate Traveller’s CT Pay, businesses see 90% less spend leakage and 96% fewer invoices to manage. 

Liarne, a Business Support Officer at Leading Roles, experienced this first-hand:

“The consolidated invoicing is just amazing. Every time I do a booking, I get my invoice straight away, and then every month we get that statement from Corporate Traveller, we're able to cross check that we’ve got all those invoices. It saves me so much time. It's just incredible.”

Bookings made through the platform are already policy-compliant, so less falls on managers to police after the fact. 

CT Pay consolidates travel spend into a single statement, giving finance teams one clean view of what's been spent, and employees have zero out-of-pocket costs, so there's no personal card juggling or reimbursement delays to manage.

None of this replaces the need for a policy. It just makes the policy easier to stick to, for everyone involved.

Get your travel expenses sorted with Corporate Traveller

Employees, managers, and finance each own a distinct piece of the travel expense puzzle. Employees handle compliance and record-keeping. Managers handle approval and oversight. Finance handles processing and reporting. A written travel policy is what ties those three pieces together into something that actually works.

Most growing businesses don't have a perfect process in place yet, and that's fine. The first step is simply getting clear on who owns what.

 

Ready to master your travel expense management? Speak to a Corporate Traveller expert today and find out how businesses like yours are cutting the admin and keeping spend on track.

Book a demo

Frequently asked questions (FAQs): Travel expenses

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