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A trip report is normally prepared by a business traveller immediately after a business trip. Its primary purpose is to document contacts made and lessons learned, and to summarize overall observations and conclusions; all in a format that can be shared with others in the organization.

A trip report can be a useful document for many people in an organization. For example, even when only one, two, or three people might have been able to take a particular trip, a well prepared trip report can benefit many others in the organization.

The ideal trip report will be a one to three page document written in point-form style. To make it easy to follow, it should be sub-divided into three or four sub-sections such as: Introduction, Main Issues, Key Contacts, and Observations and/or Conclusions. In the Key Contacts section, be sure to provide contact details on each contact made including, full name, title, phone number, e-maill address, etc.

The trip report below was set up in MS-Word and was created based on an actual business trip taken for an agency in the non-profit sector. It contains the key elements that would normally be covered when drafting a typical trip report for most situations.

Trip Report – Sample

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The purpose of travel expense reports is to document actual expenses incurred by the traveler and to ensure that those expenditures were in compliance with the organization’s travel policies. Travel expense reports — to varying levels of detail — are required by most organizations, whether they are in the private sector or the public sector.

Travel expense reports are important accountability documents in most organizations. Although they should not be too onerous to complete, they must record enough details about the business travel to allow third-party verification. When completed, they normally require scrutiny and approval by a number of parties in the hierarchy of an organization.

Anyone who follows current affairs and/or politics knows that it is often the failure of the employees of organizations to properly account for their expenses while traveling on business that results in scandals and negative publicity.

The travel expense report form below was set up in MS-Word and was created for a real-life organization in the non-profit sector. It contains the key elements that would normally be included when designing a travel expense report for most organizations.

Travel Expense Report – Sample

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A time estimate worksheet is a tool that can be used to compare time spent to-date on a project compared with original time estimates.

A time estimate worksheet can be used before a project is undertaken to break down the project into sub-tasks with a time estimate for each sub-task, in order to give an estimate of the total estimated cost in terms of time and money. Once finalized as the agreed plan, the same time estimate worksheet can be used on a regular basis to measure progress to date, timewise and moneywise, against the original estimates.

Time estimate worksheets are often used in professional service types of projects in which most billing is done by the hour. They are a good way to make sure that billing for professional services does not get out of control; something that happens often with these types of projects.

The time estimate worksheet below is one that was prepared for an actual project that involved the provision of professional consulting services. It contains the key info elements that would normally be included when drafting a time estimate worksheet.

Time Estimate Worksheet – Sample