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Need to allocate business expenses via separate reports? Lyft just made it easier

Lyft
Image used with permission by copyright holder
As Lyft and Uber duke it out for market share new features for riders, and occasionally drivers, are dropping weekly. The latest Lyft tweak refines its convenience reporting for business travelers, according to Venture Beat.

In April, 2016 Lyft introduced Business Profiles. That program makes it easy for business travelers to switch between business and personal mode rides. Each mode can be assigned to a different credit card, and can be connected to Concur Travel and Expense management accounts to automate expense reporting.

With business profiles, your Lyft app has three tabs, for All, Personal, and Business. When you tap the Business tab, for example, all of your business trips display. The reporting before was all or nothing, which is helpful to an extent, but there was no way to break out trips for separate reports.

Custom reports business expense reporting can come in handy. If you bill by client or by project, you can simply select specific trips for a report. Just tap on Business, tap on the trips you wish to include for a specific report, and tap Send Report.

If your job or business has different profit or business centers with separate accounting, the ability to allocate expenses between them can save a lot of the time involved in going through reports later to differentiate which trips should be charged to which specific accounts.

Uber offers business profiles for its riders. With Uber’s system you can not only switch between personal and business cards for rides, you can also add memos and project codes to differentiate the rides. Business trip receipts are sent to a business email address and you can set up weekly or monthly business travel reports.

Business travelers have largely shifted from taxi to ridesharing services during the past two years. This important market for both Lyft and Uber is expected to receive extra attention and it looks like Lyft and Uber are both trying to provide it.

Bruce Brown
Digital Trends Contributing Editor Bruce Brown is a member of the Smart Homes and Commerce teams. Bruce uses smart devices…
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