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What expense category does travel fall under?

Sarah Mitchell, VP of Finance, NovaTech Solutions

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Wondering how to categorize your travel expenses? Properly classifying this cost can help keep your financial records straight and make tax time easier.

Classifying Travel expenses

Here's how you can categorize your travel expenses:

  • Office supplies: If you use travel mainly for daily operations, it can be considered an office supply.
  • Operating expenses: Since this is a recurring business cost, you might classify it as an operating expense.
  • Miscellaneous expenses: If it serves multiple purposes or doesn't fit neatly into one category, you can categorize it as miscellaneous.
Smartbills Insight

On Smartbills, the majority of travel transactions are categorized as operating expenses.

Examples of Travel expenses

Depending on your business, here are some examples of how you might classify your travel expenses:

  • Small business using it for daily operations: Office supplies.
  • E-commerce store with recurring costs: Operating expenses.
  • Consultant with occasional use: Miscellaneous expenses.
Smartbills Spend Insight

Based on Smartbills transaction data, travel spend averages $500 per month across our business users.

Tax implications of Travel expenses

When it comes to taxes, properly classifying your travel expenses can help with deductions:

  • Deductible business expense: Generally deductible as ordinary and necessary business expenses.
  • Recordkeeping: Keep receipts and records of your payments to support your deductions.
  • Consult a tax professional: Classification can vary, so check with a tax advisor.

Categorize expenses as they come in

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“As we scale we need tools that are built to scale with us. We need to see expenses real time, we need to see duplicate spend. These types of insights are important to the health of our business.”

Steve Padis, SVP Finance & Strategy

This article is general information only and isn't legal or financial advice. Check with a lawyer or accountant before acting on anything in it.

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What expense category is Travel? | Smartbills