What is global travel and expense management?
Global travel and expense management covers everything that happens between an employee deciding to take a work trip and getting their money back, whether they flew to Denver or Dublin. It's how the trip gets booked, how the costs get recorded, and how the person gets paid back, in their own currency if they need to be.
If your company has only ever reimbursed people at home, the global part can sneak up on you. The first time someone files a hotel receipt in euros, you find out that exchange rates, foreign card fees, and local tax rules all change how much you actually owe.
The good news is that the basics work the same way everywhere, so once you understand how booking, tracking, and reimbursement fit together, the cross-border pieces are easier to handle.
Key takeaways
- Travel and expense management works best as one connected process that runs from booking to tracking to reimbursement.
- Global business travel spending is forecast to reach a record $1.71 trillion in 2026 and pass $2 trillion by 2030 (GBTA, 2026).
- The international side, like foreign currencies, card fees, and local tax rules, is where most tools and most explanations get thin.
- Most of the cost and delay in T&E sits in the handoffs between booking, tracking, and reimbursement.
- Write your travel policy before you choose a tool.
What is T&E, and what does it cover?
T&E stands for travel and expenses. T&E management, short for travel and expense management, is the process a company uses to book work trips, record what those trips cost, and pay employees back for what they spent.
It brings together two jobs that sound separate. Travel management is everything before and during the trip, like booking flights and hotels and making sure they fit the company's travel policy. Expense management is everything after the money is spent, like collecting receipts, approving costs, and getting them into the books.
You'll usually see the two handled together because every trip creates expenses, and most of the hassle happens where one job hands off to the other. A flight booked in one system and expensed in another means someone has to match the two by hand.
GBTA's Business Travel Index Outlook shows how big this has gotten, forecasting global business travel spending to reach a record $1.71 trillion in 2026 and pass $2 trillion by 2030.
How travel booking works
Booking is where travel costs start, and the way your company handles it decides how much your finance team can see before the money's spent. Most companies use one of three approaches, sometimes more than one at once.
Self-booking within policy
Employees book their own trips in a booking tool that already knows your company's rules, like hotel limits and cabin class. Anything inside the rules goes straight through, and anything outside gets flagged. Your finance team sees every booking as it happens.
Approval before booking
Employees request a trip, and a manager says yes before anything is booked. It gives you more control, but it's slower, and prices can go up while the request waits.
Booking outside any system
Employees book on their own personal accounts and expense it later. It's the simplest setup, but it's also the one where you only find out about a trip after it's over.
How tracking works
Once a trip is booked, you need to record every cost with enough detail to approve it and get it into your books. Each type of cost gets captured a little differently.
Receipts show what was bought, where, and for how much. A photo taken at the time of purchase is far easier to keep track of than a paper slip found at the bottom of a bag weeks later.
Card transactions come in automatically from company cards, but each one still needs a receipt and a category before it can be approved.
Per diems are set daily amounts for meals and incidentals, so the traveler doesn't need a receipt for every coffee.
Mileage tracking covers business driving in a personal car, usually paid at a set rate per mile.
How you capture these decides how much manual work follows. If receipts are scanned and matched to card charges automatically, there's little left to do. If they're typed into a spreadsheet at the end of the month, someone spends a day fixing it.
How reimbursement works
Companies reimburse employees for business travel by having them submit expenses with receipts, getting those expenses approved by a manager, and then paying them back, usually by direct deposit, within a set number of days. Costs charged to a company card don't need reimbursing, since the company pays the card issuer directly.
That short version hides a few decisions you'll need to make, such as the following:
Approval. Who approves which expenses, and whether bigger or out-of-policy costs need a second look.
Payment method. Most companies pay reimbursements by direct deposit. Some still add them to payroll or write checks.
Timing. Some companies pay as soon as a report is approved, while others batch reimbursements weekly or monthly.
Employee money versus company money. Reimbursing an employee means paying back money they spent out of pocket. Settling a corporate card means paying the card issuer for charges the company already owes.
Travel expense reimbursement software can handle all four, so approved expenses get paid without anyone moving money by hand.
What changes when the trip crosses a border
International expense management adds a layer to every step above. It's also more common than many small companies expect.
The Federal Reserve's 2026 Report on Employer Firms found that 48% of small employer firms sourced at least some of their inputs from outside the US, and suppliers abroad often mean trips abroad.
Here's where global travel and expense management gets different, once a trip or an employee is in another country.
Paying people in their own currency
Your employee in Germany wants to be paid back in euros, into a German bank account. Paying them in US dollars leaves them to cover the conversion, and they'll notice.
Exchange rate timing
A receipt in yen has to be converted to your company's currency at some point, and the rate on the day of purchase may not match the rate on the day of payment. Your travel expense policy should say which rate you use and who absorbs the difference. There's more on how to record this in accounting for foreign currency expense reports.
Foreign transaction fees
Many cards charge a fee on purchases made in another currency. Those fees add up over a long trip, so decide up front whether your company covers them.
VAT and local receipt rules
Many countries charge value-added tax (VAT), which businesses can often reclaim, but only with the right kind of receipt. A card slip usually isn't enough, so your travelers need to ask for a proper VAT invoice.
Some expense tools read the VAT straight off the receipt. Expensify's SmartScan, for example, picks up the tax amount printed on a receipt and applies it automatically where it can.
Cards that don't travel
A company card that works fine at home may not be available to an employee who lives in another country, since corporate card programs are licensed by region.
The same issues come up when you pay global contractors who aren't on payroll. And if you're reimbursing employees worldwide, each country can add its own banking and tax details to plan for.
How global coverage is measured
In global expense management, "global" can mean four different things, and a tool can be strong on one and weak on another.
Currencies. How many currencies employees can be paid back in.
Countries. How many countries money can be sent to.
Payment rails. How many different payment networks carry that money, like local bank transfers in each region. More rails usually means faster, cheaper payments.
Card issuance. Where the tool can actually issue company cards to employees, which depends on licensed card issuers in each region.
A tool might pay out to lots of countries but only in a few currencies, or offer cards in one country while reimbursing in many. If you're comparing tools, ask about each measure separately to see what "global" really covers.
Expensify makes a useful working example if you want to see all four measures side by side. Its global reimbursements cover 160+ currencies, 190+ countries, and 20+ payment rails, paid out from company bank accounts in six banking regions. The Expensify Visa® Commercial Card is available to companies in the US, the UK, and the European Economic Area.
Fully remote teams like Buffer use it to reimburse people across several countries.
“Expensify simplified tracking receipts and streamlining reimbursements across our team. It is customizable for the needs of every kind of team!” - Buffer Finance Team
The terms you'll hear alongside T&E
Travel and expense management comes with its own vocabulary. The following terms are those you're most likely to run into:
Per diem. A set daily amount paid to cover meals and incidentals on a trip, instead of reimbursing each receipt. In the US, the IRS guidelines for travel reimbursement explain how per diem rates work for tax purposes.
Incidentals. Small trip costs, like tips for hotel staff, that are usually covered by the per diem.
Expense report. A list of expenses an employee submits for approval and reimbursement, usually with receipts attached.
Reconciliation. Checking that the expenses recorded match what was actually charged to cards and bank accounts.
Unused ticket credit. A credit an airline leaves in the traveler's name after a trip is canceled, which can often be applied to a future booking.
Duty of care. A company's responsibility to know where its travelers are and help them if something goes wrong on a trip.
With the vocabulary down, the first practical step is the same for a ten-person team and a global one. Write a short travel policy for your employees that covers how they should book, what they can spend, and how they get paid back, including anyone abroad. Then pick tools that can enforce it.
FAQs about global travel and expense management
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A global travel manager runs a company's business travel across countries. They write and update the travel policy, choose booking tools and travel agencies, negotiate rates with airlines and hotels, look after travelers when plans go wrong, and report on travel spending by region.
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The 300% rule comes from the US Federal Travel Regulation. It says that federal employees reimbursed under the actual expense method can be paid up to 300% of the applicable maximum per diem rate. It applies to federal travel, and some state and public agencies use it too, but private companies set their own limits.
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Travel and expense management, or T&E, is the process a company uses to book work trips, record what they cost, and pay employees back. It connects booking, expense tracking, and reimbursement into one process.
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Employees submit their travel expenses with receipts, a manager approves them, and the company pays them back, usually by direct deposit.
Some companies use per diem rates for meals instead of reimbursing each receipt, and costs charged to a company card don't need reimbursing at all.
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Convert the expense at the exchange rate your policy sets, then pay the employee in their own currency, into their local bank account. Tools with global reimbursement handle the conversion and the transfer, so the employee gets the right amount without paying conversion fees themselves.
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Travel management covers booking and running trips, like flights, hotels, and travel policy. Expense management covers what happens after money is spent, like receipts, approvals, and reimbursement. Most companies handle them together, since every trip creates expenses.
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Yes. Most travel and expense tools today run in the cloud, so employees can book trips, snap receipts, and submit expenses from a phone or browser. Some handle both booking and expenses in one place, while others focus on one and connect to the other.
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Mid-size companies usually need travel policy rules built into booking, multi-step approvals, automatic card and receipt matching, and a direct connection to their accounting system. If employees travel or live abroad, check currency, country, payment rail, and card coverage separately.
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Use a tool where employees snap receipts on their phones, expenses route to the right approver automatically, and approved reimbursements pay out by direct deposit in each employee's own currency. That way, nobody has to collect paperwork across time zones or move money by hand.
