Make travel easier for your whole organization with Uber’s T&E playbook

Managing T&E (travel and expenses) isn’t just a finance problem—it also affects the whole company. Whether you’re a 30-person startup or a 30,000-person global organization, the pain points are surprisingly similar: lost receipts, policy violations, scattered data, and constant cleanup.

At Uber, we’ve seen the impact of these issues firsthand, and we’ve moved away from manual, time-consuming processes to create a system that eliminates friction, enforces compliance automatically, and scales with growth.

In a recent webinar with Uber T&E experts Justin Reyhl and Dennis Fowler, we explored how these automated workflows operate and how they benefit everyone involved.

Ditching manual, time-consuming T&E processes

The goal is simple: eliminate the repetitive, manual steps that pull your team away from higher-value work. With Uber for Business, transportation and meal expenses flow directly into back-end systems—no receipt chasing, no manual entry, no post-trip paperwork.

Here’s what that looks like in real life for 3 different groups of people in your organization: employees, managers, and finance and T&E teams.

For employees: eliminating the travel experience friction

Moving away from manual T&E processes means fewer distractions on the road. When expenses are automated, business travel becomes more intuitive—and employees can stay focused on their actual job, not the admin work surrounding it.

Zero expense-report submissions for transportation and meals

Traditional T&E workflows force employees to be part-time accountants: collecting receipts, filling out forms, and waiting on approvals. But with Uber for Business, there’s no need to submit ride or meal expenses at all. Employees simply request a ride in the Uber app through their business profile, and the rest happens automatically behind the scenes.

As Reyhl explains, Uber has fully removed these transactions from its own expense platform: “Employees simply request their Uber ride on the centralized Uber account.… We have fully automated the expense portion of that responsibility for the employee.”

No receipt collection or manual entry required

Manual processes slow people down and can lead to costly mistakes. Mis-typed data, duplicate entries, or missing receipts—the administrative overhead adds up fast.

“We’ve really focused on trying to reduce as much touch on an expense—and even fully automating an expense,” says Reyhl. With Uber for Business, transaction details flow directly into back-end systems, eliminating the need for employees to enter data or chase down documentation.

Faster, more predictable travel experiences

Clunky T&E expensing creates drag for everyone and frustrates finance teams. That’s why Uber for Business built a system where employees don’t have to second-guess every expense and what’s permitted. Fowler explains: “We allow certain classes of service based on employee. If you're an executive, you're allowed certain ride types, for example—all managed behind the scenes within the Uber system.”

When employees use their Uber for Business profile, they’re only shown the ride types that are available to them through approved policies.

The result? Employees can confidently request acceptable rides without needing to memorize the rules. They just get where they’re going, then get back to work.

For managers: protecting valuable time and improving oversight

When managers lack visibility, they often end up reacting to problems after they’ve already happened. Uber for Business helps managers stay ahead of spending issues without getting bogged down in manual review.

Real-time visibility into team spending patterns

Without an early warning system, overspending can go unnoticed until it’s too late to course correct. As Fowler shared, “Managers are surprised when they see those budgets being exceeded, and employees don’t know what’s allowed.” That disconnect leads to budget creep and confusion on all sides.

Uber for Business gives managers direct access to dashboards that show spending as it happens. From travel volume to ride type to policy compliance, managers can quickly spot anything out of the ordinary and address it immediately.

More time focused on core responsibilities

Managers are best used for leading teams and driving strategy—not combing through receipts or resolving T&E errors. But legacy systems often require just that: manual reviews of expense reports, one-off policy clarifications, and follow-ups with employees.

With Uber for Business, those tasks largely disappear. “We’ve streamlined the manager approval process,” says Reyhl. “We simply give them a snapshot of their employees' activity at the end of the month versus asking them to review transaction by transaction.” That shift frees up a lot of time each month for managers to spend where they’re needed most.

For finance and T&E teams: from reactive to proactive management

Finance and T&E leaders can’t afford to wait until the end of the month to discover issues. With Uber for Business, they get real-time access to spending data and automated controls that reduce errors, speed up reconciliation, and enforce compliance before problems arise.

Real-time spending visibility across all locations

When data is scattered across systems—or buried in spreadsheets—finance teams have to waste time chasing it down. That delay makes it hard to spot trends, manage budgets, or answer questions quickly.

Uber for Business brings all that information into one place. “We’ve integrated our Uber for Business data into our data aggregator tools to help drive compliance and give visibility on overall spending,” says Reyhl. Finance teams can immediately track where money is going, when, and why—by region, by employee, and by time period.

Automated compliance monitoring

Manual audits only catch what they’re looking for—and often too late. That’s risky when policy violations or fraud can quietly slip through, potentially for months.

With Uber for Business, policy rules are enforced automatically when booking. Restrictions based on employee role, ride type, and geography are built into the system. That automation dramatically reduces the risk of noncompliant or duplicate charges ever making it into the system.

Streamlined month-end close processes

Manual reconciliation drains time and delays reporting. From chasing receipts to correcting coding errors, the old way of closing the books was slow and error-prone.

Uber for Business eliminates much of that work. Transactions are pre-coded, automatically linked to employee profiles, and flowed directly into expense systems. As Reyhl explains, “You could pay for a thousand rides with a single … credit card, and then perform the accounting on the back end.” The result: faster close cycles and more accurate forecasting, with far less manual lift.