Tips for Reducing Business Travel Costs for CPA Firms

​As an accounting firm, one of your biggest expenses would be the money spent on travelling, to meet clients face-to-face. You must travel to the client’s location when doing an audit, for example. That requires a hands-on involvement.

Even so, there are things you can do to minimize business travel costs. For too long, accounting firms have lost tens of thousands of dollars on traveling costs every year as employees use business travel as an excuse to get free time. Now CPA firms are trying their best to avoid wasteful expense.

​Here, we give you tips on how your CPA firm can reduce your business travel costs.

1: Make your business “local” even as you expand

With many accounting firms, there is a temptation to branch off into other areas and to latch on to new clients. Some of the biggest accounting firms have offices in multiple locations around the world.
So, if you’re going to serve clients in different cities, don’t waste any time in getting your offices up and running in those cities. You cannot just have your employees travelling to and fro in between cities.

2: Take advantage of the “sharing economy” 

There are many apps such as Uber and Lyft that allow you to hire a taxi cab service from your smartphone. Such apps are very easy to use and they leave behind a paper trail, so you can use them to create an email receipt, for example, which you will need as a part of the paperwork to show your expenses.
Airbnb is another popular app that helps people rent out rooms in their home to lodgers. Airbnb has now added business services to serve business travelers. This is something you can take advantage of. Make sure that your team gets access to a home with a kitchen, where they can cook for themselves instead of going out every time. This can save a lot of money.

3: Stick around for longer on the trip 

If you are going to send out your team to visit clients or for audit related work, make sure they stay there longer and complete as much of the work as possible in quick time, without having to visit multiple times for every task. This way you will be able to keep their travel costs to a minimum and not have to worry about picking the tab for the airfare.

4: Offer incentives to your staff for saving 

​You can offer rewards and incentives to your staff for saving, by allowing them to pocket extra cash for having an inexpensive meal, for example, or staying in cheap hotels or motels. You can provide them with Amazon Gift Cards, for example, every time they forego a meal at an expensive restaurant. This will incentivize them to save more.

5: Switch to cloud-based accounting services 

Cloud accounting services such as QuickBooks Hosting and Tax Software Hosting. These services provide your staff with an anytime, anywhere access, which means they can work from virtually anywhere and on any device. This saves both time and money.