Navan is a next-generation corporate travel management and expense management software. This AI-powered cloud-based corporate travel platform simplifies travel and expense management for businesses of all sizes.
One of the common misconceptions is that corporate travel management software is needed only for large enterprises. But, let me tell you, that is not correct. With the advancement of SaaS, you can leverage Navan as a startup or small business. And the good news is you can get started for FREE.
While Navan is an all-in-one solution to manage travel booking and expenses, does it actually save you time and money while improving your efficiency? Is it capable of handling your company’s travel needs? In this unbiased Navan review, I will look into its product offerings, features, and use cases.
Features
-
Global inventory for booking flights, trains, hotels, and cars.
-
Expense categorization for easy reimbursement and reconciliation.
-
Automatic reconciliation through linking with existing cards.
-
Set up custom policies to protect the company budget.
-
Integration with accounting and calendar tools.
Pros
-
Carbon footprint calculator.
-
Reward points and loyalty programs.
-
Email, SMS, and mobile push notifications.
-
Available in 9 languages.
Cons
-
Reward points are valid for only one year.
-
The web app is a bit slow.
You can trust Geekflare
Geekflare tested Navan travel and expense management platform. We explored its AI-driven features, ease of use, booking flow experience, analytics. Combining practical usage and users feedback, we deliver an unbiased review of its capabilities. Learn how we test.
Navan integrates travel and expense management by combining booking, expense reporting, and reconciliation. When you book travel through Navan, it automatically captures your itineraries and receipts. Additional expenses, like meals, can be added by capturing the receipt via the mobile app. You can even add your expense policy, and Navan implements them when someone attempts to book a hotel or flight.
With Navan, booking is an easy and straightforward process. As you search for a ticket or hotel, it generates personalized results based on availability and your eligibility under company policies, allowing you to book a tentative itinerary. In-policy bookings are automatically approved, while out-of-policy ones are sent to the designated approver or rejected as per company settings. You can track your booking from the dashboard.
Navan’s AI-powered personalization through Ava helps you get improved booking suggestions based on your profile history and other factors like feedback from previous employees, distance to the place of work/event etc. It enables strict compliance with company policies. During each booking, it shows you a personalized expense policy. If your company turns on dynamic policies, it will adapt to market conditions like surge in hotel prices during peak season+. Otherwise, Navan will reject your out-of-policy bookings or flag them for review.
Navan offers two dedicated products for travel booking and expense management. Let’s learn about these solutions.
Business Travel
Navan’s Business Travel solution is way more than a booking tool. It has a global travel inventory for a smooth user experience, while its 24/7 support for employees makes traveling less challenging. Its top features include:
- Global inventory for flights, hotels, trains, and cars.
- Dynamic and personalized policy implementation.
- Economic travel incentive program.
- Personalized support from in-house agents.
- Integration with Slack, Gmail, Outlook, and calendars.
- Booking for guests and groups.
- Easy modification and cancellation of booking.
- Automated payment reconciliation.
Though Business Travel software is suitable for companies of all sizes, it is particularly useful for large enterprises with frequent travel needs, SMBs that do not have dedicated travel departments, frequent business travelers, executive assistants, and travel managers.
Expense Management
Expense Management of Navan ensures maximum savings for your company and better employee productivity. As it offers real-time visibility into your company’s expense trend, you have more control over it. Highlighted features of this solution are:
- End-to-end expense management with real-time tracking.
- Receipt upload using Navan mobile app.
- Employee reimbursement directly or via payroll.
- Predefined spend policies with out-of-policy transaction flagging.
- Seamless reconciliation linking corporate cards.
- Insights and reports on spending and saving opportunities.
Expense Management solution is primarily used by CFOs, accounting teams, and finance teams. However, all general employees of your organization and travel managers can use it.
Below are the highlighted features of Navan.
AI-Powered Travel Recommendations
Navan users get recommendations about their travel decisions from Ava, a virtual assistant powered by generative AI. It functions like a hotel concierge to suggest the most relevant options. To do so, it learns about user preferences, travel history, and membership status. Navan also analyzes additional information, such as user reviews of the facility and the distance between the hotel and the event venue, in order to offer you a curated list of available hotels.
In my opinion, the best part of Ava is that it is integrated into the booking flow. Hence, when you ask it to book a hotel, it fills in all the necessary fields in the Navan app, allowing you to perform one less step in the process.
Unified Travel and Expense Platform
Navan is a unified platform that lets you manage your travel bookings and expenses from the same place. It not only simplifies the processes but also improves compliance and cost-effectiveness. It ensures better cross-departmental visibility and accountability while letting you have complete control over the operations.
Using its real-time dashboard, you get a clear view of company expenses and budget. By choosing from available options, Navan users can earn loyalty points from their favorite brands. While traveling, it lets you automatically submit expense reports, sparing you from submitting them manually. The platform lets your employees earn personal travel rewards at no cost to their organization.
Global Travel Support
Navan facilitates traveling and accommodation facilities across the world by sourcing information from corporate providers, partner customer sites, and direct connections. Its extensive inventory and negotiated rates for flights, trains, hotels, and cars let your team travel at cost-effective rates, benefiting your company. Here, making changes in schedule and flight cancellations takes only a few clicks.
I like how you get additional data such as flight stats, hotel reviews, distance between hotel and office, and the booking history of your colleagues on Navan. The company hotel policy can be viewed in one click and ensures business travelers book in-policy hotels and flights. The Group Travel feature helps teams coordinate bookings, manage events, and secure bulk discounts, making corporate trips more organized and cost-effective.
Moreover, in-house travel agents of Navan are available 24/7 via chat or call to offer personalized support.
You can also book personal travels via the Navan app, and use the loyalty points earned if your company policy allows redeeming them for personal travel.
Policy Compliance Automation
With Navan, you don’t have to manually supervise the implementation of your expense and travel policies. Set up your policy, and Navan will ensure its compliance. It automatically shows travelers their personalized limits and options. As they book hotels, flights, and cars, the policy shows the options within the policy limit.
You can even enable dynamic policies that automatically adapt to market conditions, saving you time and offering convenience. It lets your team members get their expenses approved for automatic reconciliation and reimbursements even when they are working from home or on some business trips.
Real-Time Reporting and Analytics
Navan is equipped with powerful reporting and analytics tools. Its comprehensive travel reports enable you to compare your performance with similar companies. You can create, save, and schedule reports for stakeholders.
As a user, you can easily submit expense reports because it takes less time to fill them. Its data analytics allows real-time visibility into different finance aspects, such as saving opportunities and spending trends of different teams.
Vendor Partnerships for Cost Savings
Navan’s extensive partnership with vendors helps you save big time as you book flights, hotels, or cars. Its partnership with consumer sites enables you to get the best rates at the time of booking. Moreover, the partnership also enables you to get reward points as you opt for the services from various hotels and airlines.
Apart from travel suppliers, Navan partners with other service and solution providers. Hence, you have access to the pre-negotiated price that automates the procurement process and reduces operational costs.
Multi-Currency Support
Even if you don’t use common global currencies such as USD, Euro, or GBP, Navan’s multi-currency support helps you manage your company expenses in your local currency. You can choose from 26 currencies in the Admin dashboard, and it shows you the converted cost according to the conversion rate at the time of the booking.
While issuing a Navan card, it determines the issuing currency between USD, GBP, and EUR depending on the location of your legal entity. Currently, Navan supports these three currencies as issuing currency. However, you get the freedom to set and implement policies in local currencies for more convenience.
You can use Navan for several travel management and expense tracking tasks. Some of its common use cases are:
Corporate Travel Management
As business travel management software, the most common use case of Navan is in managing travel for corporate houses. It automates travel booking and approvals with its easy-to-use interface and pre-set company policies. You can easily browse, compare, and find the best deals for booking flights, hotels, and rental cars.
Navan automates the approval process, eliminating email chains and delays. Thus, it saves time for both travelers and administrators without compromising compliance and expense.
Expense Reporting for Remote Teams
Expense reporting can be a major hassle for remote teams but Navan simplifies this process. Its OCR technology allows your team members to capture receipts using their mobile apps and extracts necessary information from there to store in the software.
Through seamless integration with accounting software, Navan enables automated reimbursement, expense categorization, and submission for approval. Moreover, it benefits remote teams by handling currency conversions and local regulatory compliance.
Event and Group Travel
You can also use Navan to plan corporate events, conferences, or team offsites. It simplifies complex logistic arrangements by managing group bookings for flights and accommodations during corporate events. Navan provides essential travel information and updates to the attendees and helps them manage registration and track travel arrangements. Its reports contain valuable insights into event and travel spending for budget management.
Navan is giving a $500 free reward when you spend $500 on first hotel booking.
Navan offers transparent subscription tiers for its customers. You can use its free plan if your company has less than 200 employees. For large-sized organizations, Navan Enterprise is the right fit as it offers comprehensive features and dedicated support.
Though it does not have any free trial, you can always try the free plan first to see if this platform is suitable for your needs. Find below the difference between the features offered by these plans.
| Plans | Features |
|---|---|
| Navan Business | 30+ seamless HRIS integrations, global travel inventory, 24/7 travel support agents, custom reports, free expense features such as receipt scanning, expense management, connecting corporate cards, and ERP integration for the first 5 users. |
| Navan Enterprise | Traveler profile, loyalty points for booking, calendar sync, traveler wellbeing dashboard, budget tracking, global reimbursement, mileage log, automatic reconciliation, and approval flow. |
To make your expense management easier, Navan offers integration support with ERP systems, allowing seamless data sync. Using these integrations, you will have better control over your company expenses, automate various processes, and generate accurate financial reporting. Navan supports NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Xero to integrate with its expense management module. You can export custom CSV files and integrate with most human resource systems. Apart from these, it integrates with all major calendar apps.
Navan offers multi-channel customer support for its users. Clients can send their queries via email or call any of its local or toll-free numbers to talk to customer service team from the US (toll-free,)North America, the UK, and Europe. Apart from these, you will have 24/7 access to travel support agents.
To learn about setting up the accounts and managing your team’s travel and expenses, you can check out its Knowledge Base. Moreover, it has AI-powered chat support Ava is accessible from the Admin dashboard and can answer your questions instantly. It tracks all the conversations to continuously learn and become a trusted source of Navan-related information.
Below are some other apps you can use instead of Navan. Their features are compared for your reference.
 |  |  |  | |
Trip booking, cards, event management, expense management | Travel assistance, group booking, expense management, central invoicing | Expense management, travel booking, corporate cards | Expense management, travel processing, invoicing, budgeting | |
Easy | Easy | Somewhat difficult | Moderately difficult | |
Free | Free | $5/member | Custom | |
Geekflare’s editorial team determines ratings based on factors such as key features, ease of use, pricing, and customer support to help you choose the right business software. | ||||
Navan is the perfect choice for you if your company belongs to any of the following:
- SMBs looking for an all-in-one solution: Small to medium size businesses that want to have a consolidated solution for travel booking, corporate card management, and expense reports will find Navan ideal.
- Enterprises with high travel volumes: Larger companies that want to automate bulk travel processes and improve efficiency should use Navan for its automation and integration features.
- Businesses seeking seamless expense management: Go for Navan if your company wants to automate expense reporting, receipt capture, and reconciliation features.
Navan is not the best fit in the following scenarios:
- Companies with minimal travel requirements: Companies with infrequent or very basic travel needs should avoid Navan and choose a simpler and more affordable solution.
- Companies with a strong preference for direct booking: Some organizations prefer booking directly with different airlines and agencies. Navan is not suitable for them as it encourages you to book through its platform.
- Organizations with limited technical expertise: Since Navan requires some level of technical proficiency to manage the platform effectively, companies lacking the necessary technical resources won’t find it helpful.
US-based Navan was founded in 2015 by Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig. Currently, it boasts a team of, 2900+ employees and has offices in 12 countries. I like how Navan has made corporate travel management accessible for small businesses. Navan receives Geekflare Innovation Award.
In my opinion, its real-time visibility into expenses and AI-powered assistant Ava are its biggest strengths. Navan is a good choice for SMBs looking for a cost-effective travel and expense solution that want a unified platform to manage their bookings and business expenses.