Trend: How Non-Employee Travel Is Transforming T&E Management

A shift in travel and expense (T&E) management is becoming too big to ignore, and it centers around non-employee travel expenses.

Traditionally, T&E management programs were intended to support internal staff like sales reps, field techs and executives. But now, companies are finding themselves footing the travel bills for people outside that employee category (think job candidates, contractors, interns, vendors, board members, and even family members of employees).

If your finance systems aren’t built to handle those non-employees efficiently, you could be facing compliance issues, missed reporting opportunities, and a poor brand experience.

T&E Management: A Growing Priority

What was once a niche concern is now a mainstream issue. According to a 2024 study by the Global Business Travel Association, 68-70% of finance and HR professionals in the US and Europe said their organization has seen an increase in non-employee travel over the past year. 41% expect it to increase even more in 2025.

Companies that want to stay competitive, especially those hiring remote talent or working with independent contractors, need to make non-employee T&E management a key part of their financial operations.

Why It’s Still Such a Pain

Many organizations still run two separate tracks, one for employees and another, less formal one for non-employees. This sort of division creates friction, especially when it comes to issuing payments, maintaining compliance, and tracking spending.

As Steve Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer at Emburse, noted in a 2024 interview, enterprise travel leaders are facing increasing pressure on their travel budgets. As such, they’re looking for new ways to make their budgets go further without degrading the traveler experience.

On top of that, your brand is on the line. A poor travel experience for a prospective hire or key vendor can have ripple effects, from pushing away great candidates to straining professional relationships with suppliers.

Examining the Latest Tools

Though companies used to resort to workarounds or reimbursements, newer T&E management platforms offer built-in workflows for non-employee travel. For example:

• Navan (formerly TripActions) launched a dedicated contractor and guest travel solution in late 2024.
• SAP Concur added features for “guest traveler” expense tracking in early 2025. This allowed for streamlined approvals without requiring full employee onboarding.
• TravelBank (acquired by US Bank) now offers simple itineraries and payments for non-employees tied to project codes or one-time use profiles.
• Pana was one of the first companies to focus on managing non-employee travel, and it was acquired by Coupa in 2021. Since then, the need for this type of solution has only increased, and now other software providers are stepping in to fill the gap Pana helped identify.

Here’s a quick video rundown of the current T&E management landscape: Top 5 Best Practices for T&E Compliance in 15 Minutes.

What To Do Now

Your response should be based on your organization’s volume of non-employee travel. Start with a simple audit:

• How many non-employees did your company pay travel expenses for last year?
• Were those handled through employee reimbursement workarounds, prepaid cards, or something else?
• How much manual lifting does your finance or HR team handle to get that done?

If the numbers are growing and the friction is increasing, it may be time to introduce a guest traveler module in your existing T&E management tool. That, or you might invest in a lightweight external platform that supports secure travel for guests.

What’s Ahead?

Nonemployee travel isn’t going away any time soon. It’s expanding as more companies rely on project-based workers, remote hiring, and decentralized teams. As T&E management gets more strategic in 2025, bringing non-employee travel onto the team is the next step in building a modern finance operation.