Picture, if you will, the embarrassment of having to call your boss or spouse to expensively wire you money to pay for a client’s dinner or your hotel room. You probably don’t want to even imagine being in a foreign country or even a new city without cash and only a rejected credit card. This has happened to horrified business travelers who failed to adequately prepare and estimate business travel expenses. Don’t even risk it. Instead, learn the ins and outs of estimating business travel expenses to know how much money to bring along and what forms of money (credit cards, debit cards, checks, cashier’s checks, or cash) to have on hand.
If you are given an allowance to spend on travel expenses, don’t forget to add in the costs of vaccinations needed for international travel. Talk to your boss about including the gas to drive to the doctor for those vaccinations and other expenses incurred during your travel preparations. No, you don’t want to go overboard and appear to be taking advantage of the company
Get basic information about your destination before you start estimating travel costs. By contacting the local visitor’s bureau at your destination or even a travel agent there, you can be supplied with local brochures and literature that often includes prices of hotel rooms, groceries, restaurants, and other necessities you’ll need on your trip.
Tackling estimations in more exotic or international locales is a bit more complicated, but you can always rely on online conversion calculators. Also, contact the United States embassy of your destination country to see if you need to take any additional precautions or incur any other expenses in order to enter the country and stay for the length of your planned trip.
Make a list of all your anticipated expenses. Add in everything, from the cost of a taxi trip to the airport to the expense of the hotel stay. You want to include both personal and business costs at this point, whether it’s anticipated gifts to a client at your destination or babysitting expenses that are incurred because of your travels.
Use Google Docs to create a free, easy spreadsheet where you can organize all your anticipated travel needs and what they are likely to coat within as many columns as needed. Separate one-time expenses and recurring, daily expenses on separate sheets. Also make an entirely different spreadsheet for personal expenses unless your boss has agreed to cover personal expenses during your trip as well. If you are new to business travel, be sure to consult with experience travelers at your company or ask the National Business Travel Association for help.
When you are estimating expenses for restaurants, whether for personal pleasure or for business lunches and dinners, don’t forget to estimate a 20-percent gratuity. Also add in anticipated gratuities for hotel housekeepers, bellhops, valet workers, and concierges. This is an expense that people neglect to estimate, but it’s one that you can’t neglect. Also, if you’re going to be renting a car, be sure to add in taxes and the cost of gas.
Total the sum of all the columns of each spreadsheet, then add them all together. Round your total costs up to the nearest whole number. For example, if your total costs are $577, simply round up your estimated costs to $580. Review the sheet a few more times as you get closer to your departure date, and modify it when you think of a new expense or even when you have eliminated an expense.
