16 ways I use Evernote on business travel

I'm writing this post on an Amtrak train, heading home from a trip to New York City. Like most of my trips, this one was made more efficient and even fun by using Evernote before, during and after the trip. Here are the 16 ways I've been using Evernote on business travel of late:

1. Can't-lose travel documents: I didn't need a passport on this trip, but Evernote's become the place I store all those documents they tell you to make a back-and-front copy of before you travel, like credit cards, government-issued ID, birth certificate, credit cards, and more.You can password-protect that note, too.
2. City sense:  I keep a notebook in Evernote for major cities to which I travel frequently, New York City among them. My NYC notebook holds everything from saved maps of the area around my hotel and my confirmation emails for travel, car rental and lodging to clipped web pages of stores, restaurants and services I think I might visit or need on a trip. 
3. Travel awards and discounts:  I keep all my passwords in a protected note in Evernote, and my travel award accounts and their updates in another notebook, so I'm never fumbling for them when they're needed. A discounts notebook keeps current discount options available, which came in handy this trip when I needed to book a car I hadn't planned on. I'd also stored a discount my hotel promoted only on Twitter, and another for a local store discount. Because you can copy notes into more than one notebook, I sometimes pull notes from, say, the discounts notebook and put it into a notebook for a particular city or trip, to be sure they're all in one place.
4. Eats: I found a takeout delivery service menu slid under my door at the hotel, so it got scanned into Evernote for future use on a return trip. If I want to know the menu from a favorite restaurant, consult reviews of new-to-me eateries or capture discounts, they go into Evernote for use on a trip. When I'm out eating, if the waiter or bartender shows me the label on a wine bottle, I snap it and save it in Evernote (the label text is searchable, too). In New York, this means I get to eat well, avoiding tourist traps and favoring recommended neighborhood restaurants whenever possible.
5. Itinerary turned travel expense summary: If a client's reimbursing me for travel, I keep a note for each trip's itinerary, from the journey to specific meetings. Then as the trip progresses, I add expenses to it to make sure I'm keeping track of everything, including cab rides and tips. The result is easily turned into a summary for an expense report.
6. Receipts:  I save trip receipts in Evernote, either by scanning them in my hotel using the compatible Doxie portable scanner or by tossing them in a Shoeboxed envelope I carry with me; Shoeboxed gets my envelope of receipts once a month, scans them into a web interface and recycles the paper. From there, I can download the receipts into Evernote or an accounting program. I take no paper home with me.
7. Conference materials: Nothing weighs your suitcase down like paper. I use Evernote's mobile app photo-capture feature to take photos of pages in printed conference materials--from QR codes to actual pages of text. (I can also use the scanner or Shoeboxed to save them and store them.) Once they're in Evernote, they're searchable. I save lists of speakers, summaries of panels, or advance warning of future events for later reference; while on the ground, I capture the agenda for each day in a separate note, so it's in my phone app when I need it. I take no paper home with me.
8. Contacts:  Some client organizations get their own notebooks, where I keep contracts, needs lists, invoices and all correspondence. Syncing that to my phone allows me a quick way to refresh my memory right before a meeting; the notes can be updated on the trip home. At conferences, I can snap a photo of a fellow participant with her nametag on, making the text searchable; if I forget her name later, I just need to search for the conference name. The photo gives me a bonus name-to-the-face link as a reminder. (Shoeboxed will scan and save business cards, then let you import them into Evernote.)
9. Travel data:  Beyond expense receipts, I capture receipt-less data--mileage, for example, or tips--by pulling out my phone and dictating them into Evernote's audio record feature, or the photo-capture feature, where applicable. The audio clip can be sent to a compatible transcribing service or given to my assistant to enter. I also keep notebooks with all receipts and a summary spreadsheet of expenses in Evernote, pulled together from travel data and receipts.
10. Meeting notes: If I need to take notes in a meeting, Evernote's the trap for them. I can enter them on a laptop or on my phone, share the notebook with fellow participants or email it elsewhere.  Emails about the meeting that I need to save get forwarded via email into Evernote, using my unique Evernote address.
11. Read-later materials: You've heard that everything takes twice as long when you're traveling, which  often means I have less time to scan all my news and feeds.  I scan and forward read-later materials into Evernote, either directing them to a particular notebook or into my default notebook for later sorting. You can do this by emailing anything to your unique Evernote address, adding a couple of tags at the end of the subject line, such as "@Notebook name" to send the item into a particular notebook or "#subject" to tag it for faster searching. Anything you don't tag in this way gets emailed into your default notebook; once in Evernote, you can indicate the notebook where you want it saved.   This is a daily habit, and the way I stay on top of my RSS reader--something I've been doing on this return train trip. So far this morning, my RSS reader has yielded material I put in an Evernote notebook shared with one of my freelance writers, so she'll find it for a project she's working on; some editorials and articles I'll read during travel delays before I get home; and a few events that will go on my calendar. 
12. Side trips: Just in case I have time--whether it's a half-hour or two extra days--for some non-work entertainment, I save options in the Evernote notebook for a particular city or region. If a good tour, new-to-me restaurant, unique shop or don't miss attraction comes across in my feeds, it gets emailed right into Evernote, or clipped from the web using the Chrome Evernote app. On this trip, I used information about two stores I've wanted to check out, the calendar of events for a museum in New York to which I belong, and maps and public transportation information to get me to all these locations quickly. Family members in town made some recommendations  for things to try on my next trip, so I've entered those in the New York City file. 
13. Write-later content: Travel's a wonderful way to generate new ideas for writing and blogging, even on a business trip. I snapped and saved photos in Evernote to use on my blogs, and emailed other materials into Evernote notebooks for each of my blogs so they're available when I need to write. I'm never short of ideas this way.
14. Future trips: Never rains but it pours: On this trip I've just accepted a future speaking engagement in Portland, Oregon, so I've opened a new notebook for Portland. I found an article in my RSS reader this morning about a possible side trip I can take while in Arizona for a conference later this year, so Arizona has its own notebook now.
15. Delays, complaints and correspondence: My train was delayed and my hotel fell short in a couple of key service areas. The correspondence is getting saved in Evernote, along with documentation, so I can follow up.
16. Social conversations I want to catch up on or use during travel:  I've set Evernote up to capture my Twitter favorites and put them in the DGC blog notebook automatically, another great source of links for blog posts. And on Google+, I've made a circle with only my Evernote email address in it. When I share posts with that circle, they go into my default notebook for use later. Both options also give me material for later blogging or followup. When I have trips coming up, relevant posts get favorited in Twitter or copied to my Evernote circle in Google+, and sorted into the trip or city notebook.

Use the Evernote clip button, above, to save this post in an Evernote notebook or start an Evernote account. Subscribe to For Communications Directors, my free monthly newsletter, which features content before it appears here on the blog.