Expensify Travel policies give admins powerful tools to control booking behavior, define approval workflows, and group travelers under shared rules to simplify company-wide travel management.

How to access Expensify Travel

• In New Expensify: Click the green + button in the bottom-left corner of your screen, then select Book travel.
• In Classic Expensify: Click Travel in the left-hand menu, then select Book or manage travel.

Note: Only Travel Admins can create or manage travel policies in Expensify Travel.

Set approval types and add members

1. Open Expensify Travel.
2. Go to Program > Policies.
3. Select an existing policy or click Add New to create a new one.

General tab settings

• Parent Policy: Select a parent policy to inherit approval and restriction settings.
• Policy Name: Choose a clear, easily identifiable name.
• Approval Type (for Air, Hotel, Car, Rail): Choose a separate approval action for in-policy and out-of-policy bookings.
  • No action: Bookings proceed with no approval.
  • Passive approval: No approval required, but the approver receives an email.
  • Soft approval (Recommended): Booking proceeds unless declined.
  • Hard approval: Booking is canceled unless explicitly approved.
• Approver Type:
  • Manager Approval: Uses the manager from the employee’s Expensify workflow.
  • Designated Approver: Sends bookings to a pre-defined approver.
• Default Approvers: Add up to three backups to handle approval volume, especially when using Hard Approval.

Edit Members tab

Admins assign those who are subject to the policy’s booking rules. Add members by group:

• Individual users - Enter a specific user by name or email to the policy.
• Departments - Add all users with the same department in their travel profile. This could be helpful for a Sales team that needs different travel booking rules compared to another department.
• Legal Entities - Select an Expensify workspace to add all members of the workspace to the travel policy.
• Offices - Adds all users with the same office location in their travel profile.

You can add multiple groups to a travel policy and apply conditions to each group as needed.

Click the green Create Policy button at the bottom to save and activate the travel policy.

FAQ

Can I use the same travel policy across multiple teams?
Yes. Use groups like Departments or Offices to apply the same policy to multiple employee sets.

What’s the benefit of a parent policy?
We recommend configuring the system-provided Default policy with your baseline settings. Use this as a parent policy when creating new ones to speed up setup.

What happens if no approvers are added to a Hard Approval policy?
Travel bookings will be automatically canceled if no approver is assigned.