How do I set up a travel budget for my trip with Brex travel?

Note: If your team doesn't have access to Brex travel, an account or card admin can go to Settings > Product Configuration in the dashboard. From here, you can click on Enable travel, or Schedule a call to learn more.

Create/request a travel budget

Step 1: Request a travel budget by following the steps in How do I create or request a budget?.

Note: You won’t be able to modify the existing fields.

Step 2: Under How you are traveling, select either round trip air, one-way air, or other.

Step 3: Under From, enter in your departing airport. Under To, enter in your arrival airport.

Step 4: Under Depart on, enter in your departing date. Under Return on, enter in your arrival date.

Step 5: Under Location of stay, enter your city of stay.

Step 6: Toggle I don’t know my travel dates to either on or off. If you do not know your travel dates or if your trip involves multiple cities, toggle the button on. If you do know your travel dates or if your travel does not involve multiple cities, leave the toggle off.

Regardless if the toggle is on or off, you can still manually enter the budget amount you think you need to take your trip under Budget limit to request.

Pick a travel budget amount

If you’re not sure how much your travel budget needs to be for any given trip you’re booking through Brex travel, your dashboard can generate a suggested dollar amount after you enter your trip details.

Assign your travel budget

You’ll want your Brex card to be assigned to your travel budget prior to your trip so that your current and future incurred travel expenses map correctly. To do this, follow the steps in How do I spend on a different budget?.

Before your trip begins, we’ll send a push notification to your mobile device reminding you to switch your card to the correct travel budget. By tapping the notification and following the in-app instructions, you can select the right travel budget. You can also press and hold the notification directly to activate your travel budget.

Travel budgets generally aren’t relevant anymore after your trip ends, so we’ll send you another push notification reminder to reassign your card to your original budget. You can tap the notification to follow the in-app instructions and select the right budget. You can also press and hold the notification directly to change your budget.

Manage travel budget requests

To manage and view travel budget requests, the budget approver will see approval requests in their dashboard.

When a budget is given a soft limit, employees can spend above their limit threshold but the transaction will be flagged for review.

By default, account, card, and travel admins are set as approvers of these transactions. However, one of these admins can either designate another user (such as a department manager) to be the final approver or add another approver alongside them so both need to approve the transaction. Choosing the second option creates a chain of approvals that will go to the designated approver first and the admin second.

Approvers — either account, card, or travel admins themselves or someone that the admin has designated — can view, manage, and approve trip budget requests or soft budget overages in their dashboard Inbox.