Some employees cannot afford to pay for air-fares and / or hotels up front and then get reimbursed some time later, even if they have a credit card to help with payment scheduling into the future. For this reason it can be helpful for companies to provide cash advances.

Cash advances in iBE are expense claim items but for cash "in advance". They are approved and reimbursed as normal and then when the trip is taken, other expense items such as airfares, lodging, meals and ground transportation are added to the trip's claim. When the completed trip expense report or claim is finally approved and reimbursed the value of money to be reimbursed is calculated as the total for normal reimbursable (employee paid) claim items minus the sum of any reimbursed cash advances.