Home / Corporate travel / Reporting
A report that
only shows
good news
is marketing
Most travel reporting is a quarterly deck of numbers that are true, flattering and useless. The test of a report is simple: did anything change because of it? Everything below is built to fail that test loudly if it is not working.
The word that hides the most
Three kinds
of "savings".
Two are real.
When an agency quotes a savings figure, ask which of these three it is. The answer tells you more about the agency than about the number.
| Ref | Type | What it measures | What it is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| NEG | Negotiated savings | The discount your agreements entitle you to, against published rates. A theoretical number that exists whether or not anyone books through the agreement. | Every agency reports this. It always looks good, and on its own it means almost nothing. |
| REAL | Realised savings | What you actually saved on bookings that were actually made. Negotiated rate applied, cheaper permitted routing taken, unused ticket value reapplied. | The only savings figure that corresponds to money you kept. |
| MISS | Missed savings | Where a cheaper compliant option existed and was not taken. Booked late, booked around the programme rate, refundable bought where the trip never moves. | The number that tells you what to change. We report it whether or not you ask. |
We report realised and missed savings side by side, every quarter. The second number is the one that improves your programme, and it is also the one that makes us look worst — which is precisely why an agency that never shows it should be asked why.
What goes in, and what does not
Metrics that
change things.
And filler.
Every metric on the left implies a decision. Every metric on the right is true and leads nowhere, which is why decks are full of them.
Metrics that change behaviour
Each one implies an action- Advance booking lead time, by department — the single largest controllable cost
- Policy compliance rate, with the exceptions named and who approved each
- Realised savings against missed savings, side by side
- Unused ticket value outstanding, and how much expires this quarter
- Spend per trip on your top ten routes, quarter on quarter
- GST input credit claimed against credit available
- Our own missed SLAs and service failures
Metrics that fill a deck
True, and no use to anyone- Total spend — tells you that people travelled, nothing more
- Number of bookings made — a measure of our activity, not your outcome
- Average ticket price — moves with route mix, not with how well you buy
- Savings versus "published fare" with no compliance context
- Top destinations, which you already know
- Satisfaction scores collected from people who did not respond
The reporting pack
Six reports,
each with
one audience
A report written for everybody is read by nobody. Each of these is built for the person who has to act on it.
| Ref | Report | When | What is in it | Written for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | Monthly statement | Monthly | Every booking with cost centre, project code and GSTIN, reconciled to one invoice. Built for your finance team, not for a meeting. | Finance |
| M2 | Exception log | Monthly | Out-of-policy bookings, what the compliant option would have cost, and who approved the exception. No commentary, just the record. | Travel owner |
| Q1 | Savings and leakage review | Quarterly | Realised against missed savings, rate leakage where your negotiated rates were available but unused, and unused ticket value recovered. | Finance & leadership |
| Q2 | Behaviour report | Quarterly | Lead times by department, class and cabin patterns, weekday mix. Where spend is a process problem rather than a price problem. | Travel owner & HR |
| Q3 | Service report | Quarterly | Our response times, escalations, and every SLA we missed — including the ones you did not notice. | You, about us |
| A1 | Duty of care register | On demand | Who is travelling, where, and when — retrievable in minutes during an incident rather than assembled afterwards. | HR & security |
The quarterly review
One hour.
This agenda,
in this order.
The order is the point. Opening with our own failures rather than your savings is the difference between a review and a sales meeting.
Our failures first
Missed SLAs, escalations and service errors, before anything else on the agenda. If we open with savings we are managing the meeting rather than the account.
Lead times and what they cost
Booking behaviour by department, and the specific rupee cost of late bookings. This is usually the largest single number in the room and the most fixable.
Realised, missed, and why
Both savings figures side by side, with the three biggest causes of the missed number named.
Three decisions
Not fourteen recommendations. Three things to change before the next review, each with an owner on your side and a measure attached.
What we owe you
What we will have done by next quarter, written down, and reported against at the top of the next meeting.
Three decisions, not fourteen recommendations. A review that produces a long list produces nothing, because nobody owns fourteen things.
Who sees what
Reporting is
personal data
A travel report names where your employees were and what they spent. Under the DPDP Act that is personal data, and access to it is a decision you should make deliberately at onboarding.
Traveller-level data is restricted by default
Named itineraries and spend are visible to the people your organisation nominates at onboarding, and nobody else. Managers see their own cost centre unless you decide otherwise.
Aggregated where it can be
Behaviour reporting works at department level. It does not need to name individuals to show that one team books three days out, and we do not name them unless you ask.
Duty of care is the exception
Locating travellers in an emergency requires named data, available immediately to your nominated contacts. That access is defined at onboarding and logged when used.
Your data leaves with you
Spend history, traveller profiles, negotiated agreements in your own name and unused ticket records, in a usable format, if you appoint someone else. A programme held together by switching costs is not a programme.
Formats
However your
finance team
already works
- Excel for anything finance will manipulate — reconciliation is not a PDF task
- PDF for the quarterly pack, because it gets forwarded to people who were not in the room
- CSV export to your expense or ERP system, mapped to your cost centre structure
- A live view for duty of care, because a register is useless if it is a month old
- Whatever your finance team already uses, if it saves them re-keying anything
Data protection. Traveller data is processed to run your programme and is not sold or shared for marketing. Access is defined by your organisation at onboarding. See our Privacy Policy.
Exit. On termination we return your spend history, traveller profiles, unused ticket records and rate agreements held in your name, in a usable format.
Related. Corporate travel management · Travel policy management · Duty of care
See it against your own numbers
Send twelve months of invoices.
We will produce a sample quarterly pack from your actual spend — realised savings, missed savings and lead times — so you can judge the reporting before appointing anyone. No charge, no obligation.