Ride-hailing Applications
Ride-hailing applications, such as Uber, Lyft and others, are in increasingly widespread use in Canada, including within the Canadian public administration or GC. Many departments and agencies have authorized the use of ride hailing applications when on travel, and some have authorized the use of these applications as an alternative to traditional taxi chits. This page is to give an overview of current adoption patterns and best practices.
Ride Hailing Applications on Travel The use of ride hailing applications while on travel is straightforward in most cases. As you might purchase and expense the costs of transportation while on travel, the same process should be undertaken for ride hailing platforms. That is to say that after using a ride-hailing service, you need to safeguard receipts and submit them as part of a comprehensive package of travel related information. No additional measures need to be undertaken in most cases.
Ride Hailing Applications while not on Travel It is possible to use ride hailing applications with not on travel. In most GC departments and agencies, the process for doing so is to use a ride hailing application as one normally would for personal travel and then to expense the travel after the fact in the same manner that one would for any other type of transportation expense.
Several GC departments and agencies have taken this a step further and adopted a dedicated corporate account for ride hailing platforms. This system can be viewed as an alternative to taxi chits and streamlines the process of submitting expenditures with trip details and financial coding being sent automatically to departmental corporate services. This makings the expensing process nearly instantaneous for the user as well as much more rapid and reliable for corporate services as well.