Travel, cash advances, mileage and company cards

Ask for a trip before you go, get a cash advance, log kilometres driven in your own vehicle, and match company card charges to expense claims. Everything ends up in your expense claims, so you are reimbursed in one place.

Contents: Who can use it · My travel · Travel and advances (HR and finance) · Travel rates · Card statements · Example · FAQ

Who can use it

• My travel: every employee, for their own trips, advances and mileage. No permission is needed. Open HR → Self service → My travel.
• Travel and advances: staff with the travel or advance List permission. Approving trips and advances needs the Approve permission; paying and settling an advance needs the Settle permission.
• Travel rates: staff with the mileage List permission (adding or changing rates needs the Create permissions).
• Card statements: staff with the card statement List permission; importing and matching are separate permissions.

Where: HR → Expenses → Travel and advances, Card statements and Travel rates.

My travel

Three tabs: Trips, Advances and Mileage. Each is a list of cards that also works on a phone.

Plan a trip

1. On Trips, click New trip.
2. Fill in Purpose, Destination, Country and City (these find the daily allowance), the dates in From and Until, and your expected Budget.
3. Click Save and send to send it for approval, or Save draft to finish later.

After you save, the card shows the Daily allowance for the days of the trip when your organization has a rate for that destination. If a flow is set up in Approvals, the request goes to your approvers; if there is none, someone with the Approve permission decides it. You cannot decide your own request.

Status	Meaning
Draft	Saved, not sent. You can edit or delete it.
Waiting	Sent. You can take it back with Recall to change it.
Approved	You may travel. You can still Cancel it.
Sent back	Declined. The reason is on the card. Edit it and send it again.

Once a trip is approved you can pick it when you start an expense claim or ask for an advance, so the costs stay together.

Ask for a cash advance

1. On Advances, click New advance.
2. Enter Purpose and Amount. Pick the approved trip in For trip if it is for one.
3. Click Save and send.

When finance pays it, the card shows Paid, to settle and the Balance you still hold. It is settled against your expense claims (see below) or by handing the rest back.

Log mileage

1. On Mileage, click Log a trip.
2. Enter the date, From, To, Distance (km) and the Vehicle. Turn on Round trip to count both ways.
3. The form shows the estimate. Click Save.

A trip is paid at the rate in force on its date, and a later rate change does not change it. If there is no rate for your vehicle, the form says so: ask HR to add one.

To claim the kilometres, tick the trips, pick a draft claim in Pick a draft claim and click Add to claim. Each trip becomes one expense in the Mileage category. Take the expense off the claim and the trip is free again. A trip already on a claim cannot be edited or deleted.

Travel and advances (HR and finance)

Three tabs: Trips, Advances and Mileage.

• Trips opens on requests waiting for a decision. Approve or Send back (a reason is needed to send back). When an approval flow applies, the row says In approvals and is decided in the approvals inbox.
• Advances opens on requests waiting. After approval, click View to open the advance.
  1. Approved: hand over the money, click Mark as paid and record how it was paid (method, company account, the person's account, reference, date, note, proof). See Marking payments paid. Advances are paid directly; nothing is taken from payroll and they are not loans.
  2. Paid: under Set against an expense claim, pick one of the person's approved claims in the same currency and click Settle. Leave Amount empty to use as much as both allow. The claim then pays out only the rest. If the advance covers the whole claim, the claim is closed as paid.
  3. Cash handed back: record cash the person returned, with an amount or empty for the whole balance. When the balance reaches zero the advance is Settled.
• Mileage lists the trips people logged, with distance, rate and amount.

Travel rates

Daily allowance by destination. Add a row with a country and city (a city rate beats its country's rate), a country only, or neither (Everywhere else), with a currency and Per day amount. A trip uses the most specific active rate. Only one active rate can exist for a destination. Switch a row off to keep it without using it.

Rate per kilometre. Add a vehicle, currency, Per km amount and the date it starts. The newest rate that has started applies. If you add no rate, the rate from your country pack is used when it has one, so most organizations only add a rate when they pay something different.

Card statements

1. Click Import statement. Name the card (for example "Company Visa 4821"), choose the currency, and pick the CSV file.
2. The first row of the file must be headings: date, merchant (or description) and amount. These are optional: employee (the employee code of the cardholder), currency and reference.
3. Click Import. A message tells you how many charges were imported, matched and skipped.

Payments and refunds (amounts of zero or less) and rows that cannot be read are skipped and listed. Importing the same file twice adds nothing.

Charges that belong to a known employee are matched automatically when exactly one of their expenses has the same currency and amount within three days. When two fit, the charge is left for you.

Open a statement to see its charges. Find expense lists matching expenses with the closest amount and date first (Same amount marks an exact one); click Match. Set aside is for charges that need no expense. Undo reopens a matched or set-aside charge. Match again repeats the automatic matching. An expense can match only one charge.

Example scenario

Rafi is going to Berlin for three days. He plans the trip with a budget of 900 and the allowance for Berlin adds 300. His manager approves it. He asks for a 300 advance for the trip, and finance pays it with transfer reference TRF-88. After the trip he files an expense claim of 450 for the trip; it is approved. Finance opens the advance and settles it against the claim. The claim now pays out 150, and the advance is Settled.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

I cannot pick my trip on a claim or an advance. Only approved trips can be picked.

The trip has no daily allowance. There is no rate for that destination and no general rate. Ask HR to add one under Travel rates.

"There is no mileage rate for this vehicle." Your organization has no rate and the country pack has none. Ask HR to add one.

I cannot settle an advance against a claim. The advance must be paid, and the claim must be approved, not yet paid, in the same currency and the same person's.

A card charge has no suggestion. No expense of that person has the same currency within a month. Ask the cardholder to add it to a claim, then try Find expense again.

Does an advance reduce my salary? No. It is settled against your claims or handed back.