Uber Revamps Expense Management Application for Business

Most people think of Uber as a provider of a mobile application that makes it handy to book a car service. But Uber has been providing organizations with access to an Uber for Business application as a cloud service that enables them to manage how their employees book those services.

Uber today for the first time since launching that application three years ago unfurled a completely rearchitected implementation of Uber for Business that, in addition to sporting a more modern user interface, allows organizations to implement a much finer level of granular control over who in the organization can book what kind of car service at any given time.

Greg Greiner, head of product for Uber for Business, says more than 65,000 organizations already make use of Uber for Business to eliminate the need to process individual expense reports for every employee picked up by an Uber driver. The new release adds the ability to set up different use case scenarios for allowing certain classes of employees to call for specific types of Uber car services, in addition to limiting how much can be spent.

“Businesses can now set policies and forget it,” says Greiner.

In addition, Greiner says, Uber for Business provides analytics to organizations that make it simpler to discover how Uber services are being engaged over a specific amount of time.

Greiner says that, in time, Uber will be incorporating other Uber services such as Uber Eats into the Uber for Business application. Uber is working on an application programming interface (API) to integrate Uber for Business with third-party applications and services, says Greiner.

Not every organization is making extensive use of car services, but those organizations that do usually discover that the percentage of the travel and entertainment budget allocated to care services is significant.