How to Create a Smart Business Travel Policy with Ramp

Introduction

If managing corporate travel feels like a full-time job-you're not alone. From finding reasonable flights and hotels to enforcing travel budgets, overseeing team travel often means dealing with last-minute bookings, policy exceptions, and a mountain of receipts.

That’s exactly why Ramp built Ramp Travel - a seamless, policy-driven platform designed to automate and simplify business travel and expense management. In this guide, we’ll walk through how to use Ramp to create a clear, scalable business travel policy, reduce costs, and give employees the tools they need to travel efficiently - without blowing the budget.

TL;DR

• Ramp Travel helps companies enforce a smart, flexible business travel policy at scale
• Employees see what’s in vs. out-of-policy while booking
• Trips average $145 saved per booking compared to unmanaged travel
• No booking fees, native policy enforcement, real-time spend visibility

The Pain Points of Managing Business Travel

If you manage travel for your company, you likely roll your eyes and groan with challenges like:

• Sifting through hundreds of flight and hotel options
• Comparing costs across platforms while trying to stay within policy
• Creating manual spreadsheets or email threads to track trips
• Chasing down receipts and reimbursements
• Managing per diems and approvals on a case-by-case basis

What’s missing in most organizations isn’t effort: it’s automation.

Introducing Ramp Travel: A Smarter Way to Manage Business Trips

Ramp Travel is a free tool built directly into the Ramp platform. There are no booking fees, and it integrates natively with your company cards, expense controls, and reporting.

Ramp Travel allows you to set a business travel policy once, and the system takes care of the rest:

• Employees only see in-policy flights and hotels while booking
• Travel data auto-syncs with expenses - no receipt uploads
• Policy violations are flagged instantly and routed for approval
• Admins and managers get visibility into every upcoming and past trip

Ramp Travel saves companies an average of $145 per trip by encouraging early booking, eliminating booking fees, and preventing policy violations before they happen.

Building Your Travel Policy in Ramp

Ramp makes it easy to build your travel policy by offering granular controls for:

Flights

• Enable Market Rate Pricing to dynamically determine if a flight is in-policy based on live rates
• Apply a percentage buffer (e.g. 15%) for employee flexibility
• Set maximum prices per flight leg
• Enforce advance booking windows (e.g. must book 7+ days out)
• Set cabin class restrictions based on flight duration

Hotels

• Define max nightly rates
• Enforce refundable room preferences
• Require bookings a certain number of days in advance
• Enable Market Rate logic to dynamically define in-policy hotels

Per Diem

• Set flat per diem rates by role, department, or location
• Use GSA-based per diem rates to dynamically adjust by geography
• Add custom multipliers for flexibility (e.g. 10% buffer for high-cost cities)

Assigning Travel Policies by Role or Department

Ramp lets you assign different travel policies to:

• Executives (higher flexibility or no caps)
• Managers
• ICs or interns
• Remote or field-based employees

This gives you control where needed and autonomy where appropriate.

Booking Flow: What Employees See

Once policies are set, employees:

• Book directly within Ramp Travel (no need to jump between apps)
• See in-policy options clearly labeled during search
• Are notified if they attempt to book out-of-policy options

No micro-management required! Out-of-policy bookings trigger automated notifications to approvers. Ramp doesn’t block the booking but ensures the right people review it before or after purchase.

Approvals and Admin Settings

Ramp provides three options for booking approvals:

1. No approval required (recommended for smoother booking)
2. Approval only for out-of-policy bookings
3. Manual approval for all bookings (most restrictive)

Admins can customize approvals by department, role, or booking type.

Additionally, employees can request funds during the booking flow. If they don’t have enough balance or need a budget exception, Ramp routes the request automatically to their manager or finance approver.

Travel and Expense Management in One Place

Ramp connects every trip with its associated spend automatically:

• Travel costs appear in real-time on expense dashboards
• Managers can review expenses grouped by trip
• Admins can download CSV reports or audit individual expenses
• No more guessing which meal or flight belongs to which trip

This makes travel and expense management seamless, accurate, and auditable.

Reporting & Spend Visibility

Ramp provides real-time visibility into:

• Upcoming, active, and completed trips
• Policy violations
• Total travel spend by employee, department, or vendor
• Average trip cost and savings over time

You can filter, group, and export data to drive smarter travel decisions and optimize budget planning.

Why Finance Teams Love Ramp Travel

• Saves $145 per trip (on average)
• Zero booking fees
• Automated receipt collection
• Enforced policies reduce off-platform spend and repeating yourself incessantly
• Visibility helps manage budget and headcount planning

Final Thoughts: Rethink Your Business Travel Policy

If you’re still relying on travel spreadsheets, manual bookings, or generic corporate card workflows, Ramp Travel can change the game. By embedding your travel policy directly into the booking and expense flow, you reduce admin work, increase compliance, and gain control - without slowing your team down.

Ramp Travel is completely free and available to all Ramp users. Ready to streamline your company’s business travel?