Basic Concepts

When settling business trips with the Webdesk EWP Travel module, the following definitions work together:

  • Trip types
  • Settlement
  • Per diem
  • Regions
  • Mileage allowance

Trip types

Trip types are designations for trips of the same kind, which share certain functions and options during settlement. When a trip is requested or settled, the trip type must be selected right after entering the period, and it determines the further options and functions in the form itself.
In principle, at least one trip type must exist in a system. A common practice is to distinguish between domestic and international trips and to make this differentiation in the trip type.

In the trip type, various characteristics of the travel request and travel expense report form can be influenced, such as

  • whether address search should be supported by Google Maps Geocomplete
  • whether it should be possible to specify international legs
  • how receipts are to be processed with regard to attachments and which additional fields, if any, are to be displayed
  • which standard and additional fields are to be displayed for mileage allowance settlements
  • whether and how integration with time tracking is to take place.

The possible trip types per travel request or travel expense report are controlled in the process definition via the extended attribute TravelTypes in which the short names of the trip types to be used are entered, separated by commas.

The offered receipt types are also tied to the trip type and can be assigned with a time limit in the Receipt types tab.

Settlement definition

The settlement definition defines how the daily meal allowances (also called allowances, daily allowance or per diem) are calculated. These flat rates are generally specified as a monetary value for the full day and are then prorated using a table for the individual hours for parts of a day. How the travel time of a multi-day trip is distributed across the calculation slots is determined by the calculation rule, which is based either on calendar days or on 24-hour periods.

The per diem factors table determines how large the prorated share of the meal allowance to be paid is when the trip duration reaches a certain number of hours. This table is usually maintained in an hourly grid and the factor is specified as a twelfth or as a percentage. There is one table with the per diem factor hourly grid for domestic portions and a second table for international portions (regardless of region).

For meals paid for by the company, deductions from the daily meal allowances can be defined, either as a flat number of days across the trip, or as day-specific deductions with definitions for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Per diem definition

The per diem defines the monetary value of the daily meal allowance for a specific region. At the same time, this per diem definition must be linked to the traveler by assigning it to a tuple consisting of an (optional) trip type and the user object (person, group, role or client).

It is also possible to classify a per diem definition as "default" in order to assign it to all trips as a "fallback", i.e. in case no definition is found that was assigned to the traveler more directly (i.e. via their client, one of their roles, a group or directly).

The definition type indicates which view of the monetary value is defined here. Per trip there are potentially at least 2 per diem values per region that are relevant:

  1. the monetary value that the company pays out (according to individual agreement, works agreement or tariff/collective agreement)
  2. the monetary value that may be paid to the employee tax-free according to the applicable income tax rules.

With the definition type you can specify whether only the company view (according to individual agreement, works agreement or tariff/collective agreement), only the tax view, or both views are to be maintained. The definition type "Legacy (Old Style)" only exists for compatibility reasons and should no longer be used.

Regions

The daily meal allowances for travelers differ by country, since the additional meal costs differ by country. Usually the state defines a specific per diem rate per region (country or city) in the income tax guidelines, which is then normally adopted by the company or exceeded in its monetary value.

It is therefore important to define, once, all possible destination regions for business trips in accordance with the national income tax guidelines, so that the correct per diem can then be assigned to these regions per group of travelers or trip type.

Normally these regions correspond to countries, but they can also refer to specific cities in countries where the additional meal costs deviate too much from the rest of the country. This division into regions, however, differs from legislation to legislation. For trips to Australia, for example, German legislation distinguishes whether the trip went to Sydney, Canberra or any other place in Australia and has correspondingly different rates, while Austria defines a uniform rate for every place for trips to Australia.

Mileage allowance

If the traveler is on the road for the company with their private vehicle, they are entitled to a specified monetary value for each kilometer driven, which in turn - similar to the per diem - is to be defined from the company's view and from the tax view. Cars and motorcycles are supported as vehicle types. In addition, a monetary value per passenger and kilometer can be specified if the trip is (also) used to transport colleagues.

Analogous to the per diem, the mileage allowance definition should likewise be assigned to a tuple consisting of an (optional) trip type and a user object (person, group, role or client), or, if it is the only mileage allowance definition in the system, the option "default mileage allowance" can be selected.

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