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If you frequently travel for business, you’re aware of how troublesome it can be to keep track of trip details such as flight times and confirmation numbers. Business Trip Buddy, developed by MSCS Technology, is a free iPhone app that aims to help you keep your trips organized so you never lose track of important details.
Business Trip Buddy is pretty easy to set up once you download the app. You do have to create an account using your email address, as the app also has a website where you can access your account and trip details. Once the account is set up, you can begin adding trips.
Initially you have to create a trip profile, which is where you’ll add information such as trip dates, contact information for the person you’re meeting with, and the trip location. Once the trip profile is created, you can add accommodation information for flights, hotels, and rental vehicles.
One of the nice things about Business Trip Buddy is that it allows you to classify the status of a trip by assigning it an active, complete, or cancelled tag. This allows you to keep track of old trips as well as current trips. One downside is that the filter on the trip list screen doesn’t include an “all trips” category, but I’m sure that can be changed in an update.
While manually entering trip data isn’t incredibly difficult, it can become tedious if you have to do so frequently. This is why I believe Business Trip Buddy is great for occasional trips, but you’d need a much more powerful service like TripIt to manage trips on a more frequent basis. TripIt pulls itinerary information directly from confirmation emails so you don’t have to manually enter information (and risk entering the wrong info).
I’m not nullifying the usefulness of Business Trip Buddy by mentioning TripIt. This app is great if you need a quick way to keep track of trip information and accommodations. I’m simply pointing out the fact that there are alternatives if you have to frequently travel for work and you need a more efficient way to keep track of trip information.
Lastly, I wanted to test out the functionality of the website version of the service and found that if you create an account in the app, you have to register as a new user with the same credentials you used when you signed up in the Business Trip Buddy app. Once you’re logged in you can view and edit trips as you please. I was surprised to see an expense tracker on the website, though, as I couldn’t find such a thing in the app.
Overall, Business Trip Buddy is off to a great start when it comes to helping travelers keep track of trip itineraries and important details. There are improvements that can be made, but it’s very functional in its current state. I really like the website version, as well, and hopefully the expense tracker feature on the website can be integrated into the app.
Business Trip Buddy requires iOS 6.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
A small administrative fee was paid by the developer for publication of this review, which did not influence the reviewer’s opinion
