A traveler requests a new budget for their trip or selects an existing one to book flights, hotels, and car rentals anywhere in the world. They can do this with a broad range of choices from unbiased inventory — without influence from GDSs. Brex travel is integrated directly with major airlines. So in addition to more inventory, companies get access to preferred rates and a more personalized shopping experience for employees, including loyalty benefits.

A company's travel policies are built into the budget and are automatically enforced as employees make their reservation for flights, hotels, and other travel. Employee travel preferences and loyalty information is honored at the time of booking — so a traveler with status on their preferred airline can get benefits like premium seats for free.

We keep things simple by making trip information readily accessible to employees in the Brex app. No more rummaging through emails to find that e-ticket or hotel confirmation number. And when changes are needed — to cancel a trip, add loyalty programs or Known Traveler Numbers, or swap seats, dates or locations — employees can make them in the app too, saving valuable time. If travelers need assistance, they can easily contact experienced travel agents, at no cost. We also make it easy for employees to keep all spend related to the business trip mapped to the same budget.

As the trip begins, notifications keep the traveler updated about any changes. When they land at their destination, the app suggests booking an Uber or Lyft to their hotel if they don’t already have transportation planned. And Brex’s powerful receipt automation capabilities ensure most receipts for the trip’s expenditure are auto-attached with memos so that employees don’t have to worry about expenses. In fact, by the time the trip ends and employees get back home, most expenses will be auto-approved. Brex even takes care of sourcing receipts for post-paid hotels.

This is all possible because of the tight integration between cards, travel, and spend management in Empower.

With legacy solutions, managing any budget felt like “out of sight, out of mind.” That’s because it’s hard to manage a budget if you can’t monitor it in real time. That changes with Empower as the platform lets managers and employees see a budget live, making it easy for them to stay within it and control overall T&E cost for their company. Empower enables finance teams to provision pre-approved travel budgets for frequent travelers or group budgets for things like events or offsites, where many employees require travel and accommodations. Infrequent travelers can request a budget for business trips as well, and the app will help employees estimate the amount to request based on where and when they are traveling, and for how long. This ensures business travel is always within policy and budget for companies, and reduces overhead on finance teams.