Travel management tools, for a company that runs its trips from the office rather than through a travel manager, are the documents a trip needs turned into things that compute: a policy with caps in it, a request that adds up the fare, the nights, the ground and the allowance, an estimator that shows which cap moves the total, a plan built from the bookings, a checklist counted from the trip, and a register of who is away. Every one of those is a free worksheet on this site, working on the page with no account. This page describes what each tool does, when travel booking tools belong in the set, and what the paid plan adds.
The five worksheets and the job each does
The travel policy worksheet turns caps and a threshold into the two-night ceiling the policy implies. The travel request form costs a trip per traveler and lists the bookings the approval releases. The business travel cost estimator shows what share of a trip is fare and lodging and multiplies to the year. The business trip plan counts the itinerary's entries, the hours in transit and the days to adjust. The business trip checklist and the packing checklist count what has to be confirmed, prepared, packed and filed. Business travel management tools that do less than that are a form; these do the arithmetic.
Where travel booking tools fit
Travel booking tools are the channel the booking is made on: an airline site, a hotel site, a platform with negotiated rates. Corporate travel management tools in the record sense sit either side of the booking: the request before it and the reference filed after it. A small company usually keeps its existing booking channel and adds the record; a company traveling several times a week may add a platform and file its references the same way. The tool set does not change with the channel.
What a corporate travel tool should be judged on
Whether it computes from your figures or publishes its own; whether it works without an account; whether what it produces can be kept; and whether the record exports. A corporate travel tool that needs a login to show the answer is a lead form. The worksheets here compute on the page, print free, and become the record only if you choose to keep them in Pro, where the trip, its approval, its bookings and its documents are one record the whole team sees.
The register is the tool nobody builds first
Every set of business travel tools starts with the request and ends with the register, and most small companies never get to the register because it is a list someone has to maintain. In Pro the register is a view of the trips: approve and book a trip and the traveler, dates, hotel and flights are already on it. That is the tool that answers the phone at nine at night.
Questions people ask about travel management tools
Which travel management tools are free here?
The travel policy, the travel request form, the business travel cost estimator, the business trip plan, the business trip checklist and the packing checklist for travel. All compute on the page with no account.
Are travel booking tools part of the set?
They are the channel, not the tool set. The request comes before the booking and the reference is filed after it; which site or platform makes the booking is the company's choice.
What does the paid plan add to the tools?
The record: the worksheets' outputs kept against the trip with the approver, the booking references, the policy version and the register, exportable any time.