The account, in one paragraph
A corporate account with a Toronto black car service holds the company's travellers (with their preferences), bookers (assistants and travel coordinators), cost centres and project codes, policies (the 407, gratuity, meet and greet, vehicle classes by seniority) and payment terms (monthly invoicing on net-30, or a card on file). Every trip is booked against the account and appears on a monthly statement with the traveller, the date and time, the route, the vehicle class, the fare, the HST (recoverable as an input tax credit), any 407 toll at cost, any waiting beyond the allowance, the gratuity if the account sets one, and the cost centre — exportable to the expense system. Negotiated schedules apply for volume. The travel manager gets reports by traveller, cost centre, route and month.
Companies that move people — law firms with partners at Pearson twice a week, consultancies with teams in Toronto Monday to Thursday, banks with visiting clients, film productions with talent, hospitals with visiting surgeons — spend real money on ground transportation and, without an account, see it as a hundred taxi chits and rideshare emails that an assistant tapes to expense forms. The corporate account exists to replace that with one statement, one reconciliation and one set of policies applied automatically. This article explains how ours is set up, what goes on the statement and why each field is there, how HST is recovered, how cost centres and project codes flow through, how the statement reconciles with the expense systems companies actually use, how negotiated schedules and payment terms work, what the travel manager's reports show, and how the account's policies remove the decisions from the traveller at the curb.
Setting up the account
An account opens with a conversation and a form: the company's legal name and HST number (for the invoice), the billing contact and the payment terms, the travellers (names, mobiles, emails, preferences — the front seat, quiet, a newspaper, a preferred chauffeur), the bookers (who may book for whom), the cost centres or project codes the statement should carry, the approvers if bookings need approval above a threshold, and the policies: whether the 407 is approved for all trips, peak trips or none (the 407 article); whether a gratuity is set at a percentage on every trip or left to the traveller (the gratuity guide); whether meet and greet is standard for client and candidate pickups; which vehicle classes each level of traveller may book. The corporate car service page describes the service and the corporate travel policy article what a written policy should say.
Booking against the account
A booker logs into the engine and sees the account's travellers, addresses and policies pre-loaded; a booking is a traveller's name, a flight or an address, a time and a cost centre, and the fare, the HST and any 407 line item appear as they would for anyone, with the account's policies applied — the 407 approved, the gratuity set, the class permitted. Bookings by email and phone go through dispatch and land on the same account. The executive assistants' guide walks the booker's day.
What is on the statement, line by line
Each trip is one line, or one line per leg for an hourly booking: the date and time of pickup; the traveller (and the booker, if different); the route (pickup to destination, or the hourly's start and hours); the vehicle class; the fare (the fixed fare or the hourly total); the HST as its own column; the 407 toll at cost, if used; waiting beyond the allowance, if any, in increments; meet and greet or an extra stop, if any; the gratuity, if the account sets one; the cost centre or project code; and the booking reference. A subtotal by cost centre and a total with HST close the statement. Every line is a trip the booker can find in the engine's history, and the what is included article explains why there are no other columns.
HST recovery
Ontario's 13 per cent HST on ground transportation is an input tax credit for a registered business, and the statement's HST column — with our HST registration number on the invoice — is what the finance department needs to claim it; the Canada Revenue Agency's rules (linked below) require the supplier's number and the amount, and the statement carries both. A company recovering HST on a year's ground transportation recovers 13 per cent of the fares, which is why the column is separate and why a fare quoted "HST included" without the breakdown costs a company money.
Cost centres, project codes and client billing
A law firm bills client matters; a consultancy bills projects; a bank allocates to departments; a production allocates to a show's budget lines. The account carries the codes the company uses, the booker selects one per booking (or the traveller's default applies), and the statement subtotals by code so that the allocation is done before the invoice arrives; for client-billable travel the statement's line can be attached to the client's invoice. The black car service for law firms article covers the matter-coding case and the consulting firms article the project case.
Reconciliation with expense systems
The statement exports as a spreadsheet or a CSV with one row per trip and the columns above, which imports into the expense and accounts-payable systems companies use (Concur, Expensify, SAP, Workday, the accounting package); the booking reference is the key, the traveller's name matches the employee record, and the cost centre matches the ledger. A company that pays by card on file sees the card's monthly charge match the statement's total; a company on invoice pays the invoice. The expense reports article covers the individual traveller's version, where each trip's receipt is uploaded separately.
Negotiated schedules for volume
An account that books a meaningful volume — tens of trips a month — is offered a schedule: a percentage off the walk-up fares, or fixed fares for the company's common routes (the head office to Pearson, the plant to the airport), in exchange for the volume and the predictability; the what drives the fare article explains why volume lowers our cost. The schedule is in the account and the engine applies it; the statement shows the scheduled fares.
Payment terms
Monthly invoicing on net-30 for established accounts; a card on file charged per trip or monthly for new or smaller accounts; a purchase order number carried on the invoice where the company requires one; payment by EFT, cheque or card. The deposits and payment methods article covers the mechanics and the currencies for a foreign parent company.
The reports a travel manager uses
Spend by month, by traveller, by cost centre, by route and by vehicle class; the share of trips using the 407 and what it cost against the time it saved; waiting charges by traveller (a traveller who is always late to the porte-cochère shows up); no-shows and late cancellations; the airports' split; the average fare per trip against the schedule. The reports come with the statement or on request, and the duty of care article adds the one a risk manager wants: which chauffeurs drove which travellers, with the vetting on file.
Policies applied at the curb, not argued there
The point of the account's policies is that the traveller decides nothing at the curb: the 407 is approved or not by policy, the gratuity is set or not, the class is the class the policy allows, meet and greet is standard for the client pickup, and the receipt goes to the account, not the traveller's pocket. The corporate travel policy article suggests the policies and the etiquette article notes that a traveller on an account with a set gratuity need not think about it.
Standing orders and the account
A traveller who flies every Monday at 7 and returns every Thursday at 6 has a standing order on the account — booked once, adjusted by text, with the same chauffeur — and the statement shows it as eight lines a month with the same cost centre. The account's travel manager pauses it for holidays with one email.
A worked statement: a consultancy's October
Forty-one trips: twenty-eight Pearson transfers for six consultants (Monday out, Thursday back), nine client pickups with meet and greet, three hourly days for a visiting partner, one no-show (a consultant who slept through a 5 a.m. text — the full fare, and the traveller's name on the line). The 407 used on eleven trips (all Markham and Vaughan client sites at the peaks), at cost. HST in its own column, recoverable. Three project codes, subtotalled. The gratuity set at 15 per cent by policy. The CSV imported into Concur in four minutes; the invoice paid on net-30. The travel manager's report showed the Thursday returns costing more in waiting than the Monday departures, and the consultants were told to text from the carousel.
Account statement quick reference
| Column | What it carries | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Date / time | Pickup date and time | Matching to calendars and expense dates |
| Traveller / booker | Who rode; who booked | Employee matching; audit |
| Route / hours | Pickup → destination, or start + hours | The service delivered |
| Class | Sedan, SUV, Sprinter, etc. | Policy compliance |
| Fare | Fixed fare or hourly total (scheduled rate) | The cost |
| HST | 13% as its own column, with our registration number | Input tax credit recovery |
| 407 | Toll at cost, if used | Policy and recovery |
| Waiting / add-ons | Increments; meet & greet; stops | Transparency |
| Gratuity | If set by the account | One line, not ten tips |
| Cost centre / project | The company's code | Allocation before the invoice arrives |
| Reference | Booking reference | The key for reconciliation |
Opening an account
The corporate car service page describes the service and has the contact; an account opens in a day, the bookers are set up the same day, and the first statement arrives at the month's end with every trip on it.
Security, privacy and the traveller's data
The account holds travellers' names, mobiles, addresses and travel patterns, and companies rightly ask how it is protected: access to the account is by named booker with a password and, on request, two-factor authentication; travellers' data is used for the bookings and the statement and for nothing else; the privacy and discretion article describes the standard and our privacy policy the legal framework under PIPEDA. A company that needs a data-processing agreement or a security questionnaire completed gets one; the duty of care article explains why the same companies ask for the chauffeurs' vetting records.
Multi-entity and multi-city accounts
A company with several legal entities, or offices in Toronto and elsewhere, can hold one master account with sub-accounts by entity or office, each with its own cost centres and statement, or one statement with the entity as a column; for travel outside our service area the network page describes the affiliated operators who carry the account's travellers in other cities, with the trips appearing on the same statement where the affiliate's systems allow.
Booking notes for account holders
Three small things. Give dispatch the cost centres before the first booking; a statement recoded after the fact is a statement reconciled twice. Set the 407 and gratuity policies once so bookers never decide them. And name a travel manager who receives the statement and the reports — the reports are useful only to someone who reads them.
Year-end: the annual summary
At the fiscal year's end the account receives an annual summary — spend by month, by cost centre, by traveller, the HST total for the credit claim, the 407 total, the waiting total — in the same CSV format, for the budget and the auditors; a company changing its travel policy uses it to see what the 407 saved and what the waiting cost, and the corporate travel policy article suggests how.
Disputes and corrections
A line the travel manager questions — a waiting charge, a 407 the policy did not approve, a trip a traveller does not recognise — is a reply to the statement's email; dispatch has the log for every trip (the texts, the times, the route) and answers within a business day with the record or a credit on the next statement. Corrections are made as credit lines, never by reissuing a statement, so the ledger stays whole.
