Skip to main content

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.

Recommended Videos

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.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

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
Bruce Brown Contributing Editor   As a Contributing Editor to the Auto teams at Digital Trends and TheManual.com, Bruce…
Mini’s infotainment system is very charming, but still needs work
Main screen of the Mini infotainment system

When you think Mini, you probably don’t think of infotainment. Personally, I think of the British flag taillights, the distinct exterior, and the surprising room on the inside. But after driving the Mini John Cooper Works Countryman over the past week, infotainment might well be something I think of more often when it comes to Mini. It’s charming.

It also, however, suffers from all the traps that other legacy automakers fall into when it comes to software design. Mini has something on its hands here — but it still needs some work.
Bringing the charm
The first thing that stood out to me about the system when I got in the car was how fun it was. That all starts with the display. It’s round! No, it’s not curved — the screen is a big, round display sits in at 9.4 inches, and I found it plenty large enough for day-to-day use.

Read more
Plug-in hybrids are becoming more popular. Why? And will it continue?
Kia Niro EV Charging Port

There's a lot of talk about the idea that the growth in electric car sales has kind of slowed a little. It's not all that surprising -- EVs are still expensive, early adopters all have one by now, and they're still new enough to where there aren't too many ultra-affordable used EVs available. But plenty of people still want a greener vehicle, and that has given rise to an explosion in hybrid vehicle sales.

That's especially true of plug-in hybrid vehicles, which can be charged like an EV and driven in all-electric mode for short distances, and have a gas engine as a backup for longer distances or to be used in combination with electric mode for more efficient driving.

Read more
EV drivers are not going back to gas cars, global survey says
ev drivers are not going back to gas cars global survey says screenshot

Nearly all current owners of electric vehicles (EVs) are either satisfied or very satisfied with the experience, and 92% of them plan to buy another EV, according to a survey by the Global EV Drivers Alliance.

The survey of 23,000 EV drivers worldwide found that only 1% would return to a petrol or diesel car, while 4% would opt for a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) if they had to replace their car.

Read more