A Business Trip to Helsinki: Company Billing, Receipts and Expense Reports

This page is about the paperwork rather than the car. If you are booking a ride for yourself, for a colleague or for a guest your company is hosting, three questions decide how much of your week it costs: who pays, what document comes back, and what the person in the car has to do about it. Here is how each one works.

Three ways the ride gets paid

Card at the time of booking. The card is charged securely through Stripe when you book, which confirms the transfer immediately. We never see or store the card number. This is what most travellers use, including those who expense the ride afterwards.

Reserve now, pay later. We confirm the booking, then send a secure payment link. This is the practical option when the traveller books the ride but somebody else in the company pays for it — the link goes to whoever holds the card, and the booking is already confirmed while that happens.

Invoice or account billing for companies. For firms that move people through Helsinki regularly, invoicing can be arranged instead of a card charge. Ask for it before you book rather than after the ride: it is set up once, by agreement, and then applies to everything you book afterwards. Write to us from the contact page with the billing details and we will confirm what is possible for your case. The full wording is on the payment terms page.

In all three cases the amount is the same figure you saw when booking. What changes is only who pays it and when the button gets pressed.

What you get for the expense report

• A booking confirmation by email, before the trip: date, time, flight number, pickup point, destination, vehicle class, passenger name and the fixed price. Most expense systems will take this as the approval document, because it exists before the money moves rather than after.
• A receipt for the payment, suitable for expense reporting — that is part of every fare, in every class.
• An invoice addressed to the company where invoicing has been agreed. If your accounts department needs a purchase-order number, a cost-centre code or a specific legal name on it, send us the exact wording when you book and it goes on the document.

If a document is lost between the trip and the report, ask us — we can send it again. That is a two-minute email to a company that still has your booking, not an appeal to a call centre about a ride that happened in a car you cannot identify.

Why a fixed price beats a meter on a business trip

Finland's taxi market is deregulated: there is no single city tariff, and two cars at the same rank may charge quite different amounts for the same road. For a tourist that is a minor annoyance. For a traveller filing an expense report, it is a number that cannot be forecast, cannot be pre-approved, and cannot be explained to anybody who was not in the car.

The practical value is not the saving. It is that a €111 line item agreed a week in advance never becomes a conversation. If you are budgeting a whole trip rather than one ride, our free trip budget helper puts the usual Helsinki costs in one place.

The guest never touches the payment

When you are hosting someone, the point of a pre-booked transfer is that nothing is asked of the passenger. The driver waits inside the arrivals hall with a name sign — and the sign can carry your company name, the guest's name, or any wording you request. No fare is discussed, no card comes out, no receipt is handed over in the car. The driver has the name, the flight and the destination; the commercial side of the booking stays between you and us.

That also means the ride survives the things that usually break a guest pickup. The flight is tracked, so a two-hour delay simply moves the pickup — the fare includes 60 minutes of free waiting counted from the actual landing, not from the scheduled time. Your guest walks out and finds their name, which is the entire experience they need to have. What happens after the doors open is described step by step in our arrival instructions.

A day of meetings: book hours, not rides

If the visit involves several stops — an office, a lunch, a site visit, back to the airport — chaining separate transfers produces separate line items and a lot of waiting on the pavement between them. Hourly hire keeps the same car and driver at your disposal instead: from €74 an hour in the E-Class (Business sedan), €80 for the Vito (Business van) or V-Class (First class van), €110 for the S-Class (First Class). One booking, one driver who already has the day's plan, one figure on the expense report. The details are on the chauffeur service page, and a private driver by the hour or day works the same way for longer visits.

Which class to book

• E-Class (Business sedan) — Mercedes-Benz E-Class, EQE or BMW 5 Series, up to 3 passengers with 3 suitcases. €99 to the airport, €111 from it. This is the standard business trip, and it is what we recommend unless there is a reason to go further.
• S-Class (First Class) — Mercedes-Benz S-Class or EQS, €186 in either direction, for the arrivals where the car is part of the impression. In the S-Class you get exactly the model stated, not "or similar".
• Vito (Business van) or V-Class (First class van) — €105 to the airport, €116 from it. The Vito seats up to 8 and the V-Class up to 6 with individual seats and a table. A delegation with luggage arrives together in one car rather than in a convoy of sedans.

Every class includes the same service: an English-speaking driver, meet and greet with a name sign, flight tracking, 60 minutes of free waiting and a fixed price agreed before the trip. The prices page lists every class and route, the city-centre run and the Messukeskus route have their own pages with times and distances, and if the arrival has to be flawless there is our VIP airport transfer.

Before you book for somebody else

• Book in the passenger's name, and give the passenger's mobile number — that is the number we use if anything needs to be said on the day. A booker's desk phone in another country does not help at 23:40 in Helsinki.
• Add the flight number. Without it, the pickup runs on the timetable instead of the aeroplane.
• Say what should appear on the name sign if it is not the passenger's own name.
• Note the billing wording you need on the invoice.
• Remember the cancellation window: free cancellation up to 24 hours before pickup, which covers almost every meeting that moves.

Everything else is our problem. Booking takes about a minute, and how it works end to end is one short page.

Frequently asked questions