Making a Travel Expense Policy Flexible During Emergencies

Running any business comes with unforeseen risks, especially when travel is a core element of your business’s mission. When organizations employ mobile workers who use their personal vehicles to perform their jobs, anything from a car accident on the freeway to a global pandemic can throw a serious wrench into operations. There isn’t exactly an app that will tell you when the next pandemic or infrastructure-destroying hurricane will hit; how do you plan for something you can’t anticipate? You can’t, but you can do the next best thing! Create a strong, flexible travel and expense policy, so that your business and employees will be as prepared as possible, no matter what happens. 

Why is Flexibility Essential?

Most policies related to travel and other company expenses are created with business-as-usual situations in mind. But business, like everything else, is subject to the whims of the world, and common emergency scenarios can easily affect business travel. Global crises like pandemics or severe economic downturns can seriously impact travel plans, as can natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, or snowstorms. Even minor local disruptions, like power outages or car accidents, can hinder or prevent employees’ usual work-related travel.

When events disrupt travel, there is a financial impact, and unplanned expenses may also be incurred, such as in a situation where a worker has to unexpectedly extend a hotel stay or book an emergency flight. Employees will have difficulty securing quick approvals for unexpected purchases if a company’s expense policy has no stipulations for unexpected contingencies.

Flexibility is especially essential for businesses with mobile employees. If your organization has a high number of mobile workers, they will likely be traveling in the field when they encounter a disruption or incur an unplanned expense. Your organization should support them as best it can, and having a travel expense policy that addresses the management of crisis-related costs helps facilitate that support. 

How Can You Expense Emergencies?

A travel and expense policy is essentially a guideline of do’s and don’ts for a company’s employees to follow when incurring expenses, especially related to work-related travel. T&E policies help streamline expenses for employees, laying out ground rules so they don’t have to spend time negotiating every work-related purchase. 

But what about when unexpected situations arise? Your organization’s expense policy needs to be able to stand up against things you couldn’t have known to plan for in advance. 

Trip Cancellations and Changes

Emergencies can arise unexpectedly, requiring trips to be cut short, postponed, or canceled altogether. While these disruptions are sometimes unavoidable, they often come with significant costs. Fees for canceling flights, hotels, or car rentals can add up quickly. Even taking an alternate route by car may result in additional, unplanned expenses, such as tolls or extra fuel costs.

Businesses should also consider the financial impact of rebooking travel—whether it’s securing a last-minute flight, arranging alternative transportation, or extending hotel stays due to delays. Without a flexible expense policy, employees may struggle to get timely approvals for these necessary changes, potentially leading to unnecessary out-of-pocket costs.

Unbudgeted Items 

Beyond travel adjustments, unexpected emergencies can introduce entirely new categories of expenses that a company may not have previously budgeted for. These costs often stem from employee safety needs, operational continuity, and emergency response efforts. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, companies found themselves scrambling to purchase personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gloves, or sanitizers. 

If employees must unexpectedly work remotey due to office closures or unsafe conditions, they may require reimbursements for home internet upgrades, office equipment, or software subscriptions. Or, they may opt to use a coworking space, which comes with subscription fees, as well.  

Building an Adaptive Travel Expense Policy

Take a closer look at your organization’s expense policy, and consider what role it plays within the greater operations of your organization, as well as what employees and departments its language covers.

Next, evaluate whether your existing expense policy includes the key elements needed for adaptability. A well-structured T&E policy should provide flexibility in approval processes during crises, ensuring employees can quickly secure necessary funds. It should also establish clear rules for handling emergency-related expenses and outline guidelines for reimbursing unbudgeted, work-related costs. By addressing these elements, your policy can better support employees while maintaining financial oversight during unexpected situations.

If your business’s current travel and expense policy does not contain any of these considerations, it might be time for an update, or even a rewrite. 

Structuring a Flexible Travel & Expense Policy

Whether it’s a global pandemic, a hurricane, a wildfire, or a snowstorm, accepting that unexpected events could happen is the first step in preparing your expense policy for unanticipated costs. After acceptance, here are a few other ways to use your company’s expense policy to make your organization more adaptable in emergencies. 

For Travel

Make it company policy to always know the whereabouts of employees while they’re in the field. Even for routine routes, having real-time location awareness can be crucial in an emergency. Stay informed on local travel advisories in areas where your mobile workers operate. If an employee faces potential exposure to a public threat, your organization must be prepared to take immediate action to ensure their safety.

For instances when employees are uncomfortable with or unable to travel, allow them the leniency to alter their work plans to accommodate their situation. In some cases, this may involve cancelling appointments or reservations, or allowing that employee to telecommute.

Your travel expense policy should also account for the financial impact of trip cancellations and unexpected travel changes. Establish a system for tracking cancellation fees and additional costs, ensuring visibility into how these disruptions affect company expenses. To help offset these losses, consider postponing non-essential travel during uncertain periods or investing in business travel insurance to cover unforeseen cancellations.

For Unbudgeted Purchases

Unexpected events—such as evacuations, power outages, or stay-at-home orders—can disrupt normal work routines and require employees to make unplanned purchases to stay productive. Your expense policy should account for these situations, offering reimbursement for necessary expenses like taking toll roads when no other reasonable option is available, purchasing remote work equipment (e.g., headsets, webcams), or buying additional PPE.

Requiring employees to seek approval for every emergency expense can create unnecessary delays during critical moments. To avoid bottlenecks, your policy should clearly define which unbudgeted purchases are eligible for reimbursement and establish a streamlined approval process for urgent situations. This proactive approach not only keeps employees equipped to do their jobs but also helps prevent uncontrolled spending when a crisis arises.

For Employee Safety

During crises like the hurricanes in the southern US in 2024, or during the COVID-19 outbreak, everyone can struggle with hardships, including your employees. In the event that employees need to make sudden business-related purchases to contend with outside factors, policy should dictate that the company expedite expense reimbursements during emergencies, and make exceptions as to what can be expensed. 

When emergencies arise while employees are in the field, clear communication is essential to ensure they understand how to proceed under the company’s travel and expense policy. Your policy should outline approved actions and reimbursement guidelines for unexpected situations.

For example, if an employee’s personal vehicle breaks down during a work-related trip, the policy might cover towing services, taxi or rideshare costs, or temporary vehicle rentals. By establishing predefined expense guidelines, you can help employees make informed decisions in the moment—without unnecessary delays or financial strain.

Leveraging Technology to Manage Crisis-Related Expenses

Another way to strengthen your travel expense policy against crises and unexpected disruptions is by leveraging digital solutions. Expense management software can play a crucial role in simplifying and automating travel-related costs, especially during emergencies. By digitizing key processes—such as expense tracking, report submission, and approval workflows—this software ensures that employees can quickly and efficiently request reimbursements, even in urgent situations.

If an emergency requires an employee or supervisor to change or cancel travel plans or prevents access to their usual workstation, expense management software ensures they can still create, submit, and approve expense reports from anywhere—even directly from their smartphone or mobile device. This digital flexibility streamlines the reimbursement process, minimizing delays and ensuring employees receive timely compensation regardless of travel disruptions or unforeseen complications.

Automating expense management reduces the need for manual intervention in reimbursement processing, minimizing errors inherent in manual data entry and calculations. By streamlining these tasks, automation frees up employees’ time and energy, allowing them to focus on their primary work responsibilities rather than administrative paperwork.

Additionally, software can be configured to help you identify and flag noncompliant behaviors—such as duplicate reports or ineligible mileage claims—ensuring adherence to company policies.This proactive approach not only safeguards compliance with emergency expense procedures but also enhances accuracy, efficiency, and financial oversight within the organization.

Strengthen Your Travel Expense Policy With CompanyMileage

A clear, adaptive, flexible expense policy is the first step to making sure your business expense processes don’t fail or falter in times of emergency, whether they’re major or minor. The next step is to bolster that policy with CompanyMileage and our suite of software products for streamlining, automating, and perfecting business travel and expense management. 

SureMileage, our reimbursement software, manages your organization’s travel and expense needs, while taking the onus of tracking and recording work-related mileage off of your employees. Instead, SureMileage employs a point-to-point calculation system, using the starting and ending points of a work trip to automatically calculate the best distance between those two points and from there, the best route for reimbursement. 

Employees simply need to take five minutes at the end of their shift to edit or review trips and document relevant receipts. Once ready, they can submit reports for review from anywhere—directly from their smartphones using our mobile app, SureMobile. 

After they’re submitted, expense reports automatically move through a digital approval workflow, easily customizable to complement the structure of your business. Our software also integrates with all major accounting and payroll systems, ensuring a smooth, worry-free and hands-off reimbursement process from start to finish. 

At CompanyMileage, we know that you can never plan for everything. That’s why we’ve created the perfect tools to manage mileage and expense reimbursement as easily and efficiently as possible, no matter what happens. To learn more about how we can enhance your travel and expense efforts while saving you money in the process, contact us to request a demo today!