ERPTravelExpenses
Travel and Expenses
Travel and Expense module manages all business trip orders and expenses in an efficient paperless manner. The travel workflow, including steps like approving, submitting and expensing the business trip is very intuitive. Many features improve the efficiency and significantly save your time e.g. automatic currency conversion (link to Forex web services), reusable travel templates, automatic calculation of daily allowances, advance payments and final balances for payout.
The main menu of ERP contains, as shown on the image bellow, three consoles for managing travel requests and travel expenses: My trips, Search trips and New trip.
By starting "My trips", you can see all of your trips in a one place. You can search, filter them and open each of them for more details. See Want list of your Business trips? - Use „My trips“.
Want list of your Business trips? Use „My trips“
Under “My trips”, the system shows a list with all Business trips of current user.
The print version of the results from the list can easily be retrieved in PDF or Excel, by one single click on one of the icons in the top right corner (see image above). Arrange list by ID, Business trip number, Employee, Departure date, Country or Status.
Looking for your Business Trip Request or Report? – Use „Search trip“
This console helps you to keep track of your own business trips, or of the employees that you are in charge of.
Going to a business trip? Make a new request for a business trip (Employee)
Get familiar with Business Trip process workflow
The picture below shows the workflow of requesting a new business trip. An employee has to enter the request before the business trip has started and the line Manager (person in charge of the employee) has to approve it or reject it. If request is approved, the employee can get an advance payment. After the return from business trip, the employee has to go back to a Business Trip Request document, to enter all details such as trip timetable and costs, to have all necessary proofs e.g. oroginal receipts etc, for the Financial/Accounting department. When the Business Trip is processed, the responsible person in an financial/accounting department has to close it.
Workflow of a new business trip
Step-by-step instruction to make a request for business trip (Employee)
Clik on “New trip”, and you will create a new Request for a business trip. Enter Departure date, Return date and Destination country. The system will automatically calculate Trip duration and Advance payment, according to Travel allowance amount for given country and number of days between Departure and Return date.
Press the “Save“ button in order to save the Request. The request is now in the status ENTERED. To submit request to your line manager, click the „Edit“ then go to “Submit“ button.
If you are not planned on a task for at least 3 hours per day for date range you have chosen, the following error message will pop-up when pressed „Submit“.
In this example, where the business trip duration is 6 days, an employee must be planned for at least 18 hours in total. This means that the employee can be planned the first day for 5 hours, the second day for 8 hours, etc., and the last day for 0 hours (e.g. because of traveling).
Enter the reason of the Status change and then press the “Submit“ button.
The Request is now in the status REQ. SUBMITTED. The system will send the Request to Line manager for approval. Line Manager will get an email about the request pending approval.
Approving request (Line manager)
Line manager can check what Business trip requests are pending for approval in "Search Trips" console. After selecting the Request, Line manager can either Approve it or Reject it. After the Request is rejected it is not editable anymore.
How to make a report after returned from business travel? (Employee)
After the request is approved, and the employee returns from the trip he/she needs to enter the travel details into a “Trip Segments” and Trip Expenses data table.
Step 1 - Enter trip segments
First, go to "Trip Segments" and choose a Mode of Travel (airplane, personal car, company car, bus, taxi, etc)Depending on Mode of Travel, the system requires certain information about the vehicle, as described in the following
If you traveled by airplane
When traveling to another country the employee needs to enter the time when he crossed the border. In case of traveling by Airplane, the border crossing time in departing trip is the time when the airplane is taking-off, and in the return trip, it is the time when the airplane is landing. The click on the““Trip segments“ tab enables the entry of exact time.
If you traveled by car
In case of traveling by car, the car details need to be entered (Car model and registration plate). If the mode of transport is personal car or company car, then the Odometer information is also required. User can enter the readings of odometer at the beginning of the trip, or enter the readings at the end (and the traveled km would be calculated), or enter traveled at the end the number of traveled kms. All these fields are mandatory and appear marked in red on the “Trips segments“ tab.
After entering all the mandatory data, press the “Save“ button. The data is automatically stored and appears on the Trip segments form. When a user comes to the “Trip segments” tab, most of the information will be already entered, but the user needs to specify the time of departure and the time of arrival.
You traveled to a different country by crossing several other borders?
When traveling through several countries, employee needs to enter all border crossings between the departure and arrival because that information is needed for the Travel allowance calculation. After the travel details are entered and saved, the system calculates the Travel allowance based on the information entered. The travel details are entered on the “Trip segment” tab and appear immediately after pressing the save button. By clicking the “+” button, you can easily add as many border crossing as required.
Step 2 - Enter trip expenses/costs and request a reimbursement
In the expenses tab, employee enters all his expenses from the Business trip. Travel allowance is automatically calculated by the system, and the same goes for Personal car expense. When the expense is in foreign currency, the system automatically converts it to kunas by retrieving the exchange rate from Croatian National Bank. To do that, the user needs to enter the date for the receipt, because it is important for retrieving the correct exchange rate. To enter expense, go to „Edit“, then select the Expense type from the dropdown list and enter all related data, including currency, amount, description, etc. After entering all the necessary data for all the costs/expenses, press the Save button. All the expenses and totals will appear on the console immediately after.
Submitting and printing Business Trip Report (Employee)
After the employee has entered all the relevant information, the Travel order has to be sent to Accounting by clicking the button Submit. Also, the Travel order has to be signed and given further to Accounting department. To print it or save it in PDF format press the button 'Print report'.
Frequent Traveler ? - Copy Business Trips Requests and Reports
If you are traveling on weekly or monthly basis, e.g. every Monday from Zagreb to Rijeka, search a Business Trip where you requested or reported your previous trip to that destination. Open the Business Trip, go to „Edit“, and then press the button 'Copy business trip'. All details will be entered automatically, you just have to choose the new date on the calendar. The button 'Create new request from this' can be used when you want to copy all details on a new request but also do some small changes, e.g. name, destination, mode of transport, etc.
What is the status of my business trip request?
See - "Looking for your Business Trip Request or Report?", OK, now you found the Business Trip. Open it and you can consult the status of the request and its respective workflow, from the moment it was entered by switching to tab 'Status log'.
Countries, Currencies, Exchange Rates and Business trip allowances
This menu contains code lists for countries, currencies, exchange rates and country allowances rates. Those code lists are mostly used at business trips, but also on other modules (HR, Finance, etc.).
Country
Like on other forms, country form allows typical Search, View, Create(New), Delete, Edit actions. On create or edit county it is posible to add related currency.
Currencies
Curency form allows typical Search, View, Create(New), Delete, Edit actions.
Country allowance rates
Country allowance rates form allows typical Search, View, Create(New), Delete, Edit actions. One notice, valid from and valid to dates, are used for define which allowance is valid in some time period / interval. There can be few records for same country allowance, but the valid one is one that have valid to set to null. For example, if we are creating some business trip in past, calculation for business trip allowance will get allowance valid for that date.
Exchange rates
Exchange rates form allows typical Search, View, Create(New), Delete, Edit actions. It is possible to add exchange rate manualy for some currency. Currency must be previously defined on currency form. Button "Get exchange rate per day" gets exchange rates for previously defined currencies from national bank exchange rates service. Also, it is possible to get exchange rates on date in past if date is specified on exch.rate date input box.