Master Policy-Making: Free Policy Templates for Travel, Expense, Invoice and Sustainability

The phrases “I don’t know where to begin” or “we’ll have to start from scratch” may apply when crafting an important policy setting out rules you expect employees to follow. But so does “there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.”

With tips, guidelines, and examples, our popular templates for travel, expense, invoice, and sustainability policies give you a place to start when designing,  implementing, and updating policies in one or more of those areas. Just as a company’s policies should adapt when conditions and priorities shift, we regularly update our policy templates for the times.

Policies reflect each organization’s distinct needs and culture. How you write, communicate, and implement them influences their effectiveness and whether your people can and will follow them. And successful adoption can impact many goals and priorities across your business: productivity, cost control, compliance, efficiency, duty of care, employee experience, and more.

Whether creating guidance for adding personal vacation to business travel or defining acceptable vs. unacceptable expenses, each policy should reflect the same basic content and best practices.

Effective policies:

• Are concise, clear, and written in everyday language, not business jargon.
• Are easily locatable so employees can find and interpret them.
• Tell the why, explaining the policy’s purpose (for example, cost control, employee safety)
• Make clear who the policy affects (for instance, business travelers or employees processing invoices)
• Are designed with input from stakeholders across your organization, from frequent fliers to finance team members.

Travel, expense, invoice, and sustainability are, of course, different but often overlapping areas. Read on for specifics on what you’ll find in each of our policy templates.

Travel policy template

Travel managers constantly perform a balancing act between company priorities and traveler needs. With an updated policy and an automated travel management solution such as Concur Travel, they can manage costs, ensure duty of care, and provide travelers with the booking options they want.

Your travel policy should:

• Examine real-world considerations like ensuring traveler safety, eliminating gray areas, separating essential vs. extravagant in food and entertainment, handling outliers and exceptions, and balancing cost and well-being (think bleisure).
• Devise communication and adoption-fueling strategies using such resources as video messages, games, interactive webinars, and podcasts to support adoption..

Download our free travel policy template, Guidelines for Effective Business Travel Management.

Expense policy template

With travel being a sizable cost for businesses, it makes sense that expense and travel policies are closely related and that many organizations use integrated solutions like Concur Expense to manage them. An expense policy should lean heavily into defining processes and the implications of non-compliance.

Your expense policy should:

• Clearly set expectations regarding timely submittal, approvals, and ethical behavior.
• Be clear on the company’s position on fraud, corruption, and bribery.
• Explain how home office and remote expenses are handled and how travel must be booked
•  List non-allowable expenses and the process for submitting out-of-policy expenses.

Download our free expense policy template,  Tips and Guidelines for creating an Expense Policy.

Invoice policy template

An invoice policy looks outward more than others, as it covers customer-facing aspects of your business. It should get into the nitty-gritty, such as coding, while explaining the costs of not following the processes, from late fees to poor vendor relationships. Crafting the policy is an opportunity to rethink your processes, automate them with an invoice management solution, and free AP teams for value-adding work.

Your invoice policy should:

• List how and where invoices should be submitted, with mailing and email addresses, and how their receipt is recorded.
• State what invoices must include, such as account and department numbers, and how exceptions should be recorded.
• Detail the approval process, including signature and routing requirements.
• Explain the process and responsibilities for file retention and storage.

Download our free invoice policy template, your policies as priorities shift and a world of change demands.