Travel Expense Report Template
The classic trip grid: one row per travel day, one column per expense type — airfare and transit, lodging, meals and tips, fuel or mileage, parking and tolls, other. In the Excel version the day rows date themselves from your trip dates, every day totals across, every category totals down, and the total reimbursement subtracts whatever was advanced before you left. The PDF prints clean for the folks who do trips on paper.
The travel sheet, however you work.
Do the report during the trip, not after it.
The five minutes at the hotel each evening — filling in today’s row while the receipts are still in your jacket pocket — beats an hour of archaeology the week after. It’s also what the IRS means by a “timely-kept record”: notes made at or near the time of the expense carry more weight than reconstructions, because memory of the business purpose fades faster than the receipt does.
Two receipts people lose on every trip: the hotel folio (ask at checkout — the emailed version routinely lands in spam) and airport parking. Lodging receipts are the one category the IRS requires at any amount, so the folio is the single most important piece of paper the trip produces.