Travel Management (FI-TV)

Purpose

The Travel Management (FI-TV) component supports all processes involved in handling business trips. Its comprehensive functionality is integrated with settlement, taxation, and payment processes. Travel Management enables you to request, plan, and book trips, create expense reports, and transfer expense results to other business function areas.

Implementation Considerations

To ensure optimum use of Travel Management, you should analyze the travel processes in the company. How do you realize the approval workflow for business trips? Which travel policy should apply to which employee subgroup? Must you first define the travel policy? Are there any agreements with external travel service providers that the system needs to take into account? What should the reimbursement process look like, and which organizational units are involved?

Based on an analysis, you can systematically derive which business tasks you can change and configure to increase efficiency in Travel Management and which subcomponents you need to do so.

Travel Management Subcomponents

In coordination with individual requirements and the organizational structure of the company, you can combine any of the following Travel Management components with one another.

  • Travel Request

  • Travel Planning

  • Travel Expense Report

    Note Note

    You can also use the Travel Expense Report subcomponent for expense reports that are not related to trips. The usual Travel Management applications and documentation use the term Travel Expense Report for travel expense reports and expense reports that are not related to trips. The new applications of Web Dynpro ABAP-based user interface and the corresponding documentation alternately use the term Expense Report .

    End of the note.

    Possible Combinations of the Travel Management Subcomponents

    Travel Request

    Travel Planning

    Travel Expense Report

    1

    X

    X

    X

    2

    X

    X

    3

    X

    X

    4

    X

The Travel Expense Report/Expense Report is the anchor component. You can use this completely independent of Travel Request and Travel Planning.

Cross-Release Use

You can implement the current release of Travel Management separate from the usual SAP applications. SAP ALE technology (Application Link Enabling) provides the necessary communication links to SAP applications from earlier releases. You therefore only need to maintain the data once.

For more information, see Transfer Travel Expenses to Accounting .

Task-Related Processing

To support a task-related use of the system, you can assign different (pre-defined and individually adjustable) roles or activity groups to users. The users can then use only those Travel Management functions that are relevant for completing their business tasks.

Integration

Due to the integration with Payroll and Financial Accounting , the system transfers the data of Travel Planning and Travel Expenses/Expense Reports to these components object by object as changes occur.

Another advantage of Travel Management is the integration of its subcomponents. In this way, for example, all three subcomponents use the same HR master data.

Travel Planning is linked to one or more External Reservation Systems , which the user can use to book the required travel services online.

Features

The following diagram illustrates the integrated functions of Travel Planning and Travel Expense Report/Expense Report :

Travel Management allows you to efficiently and reliably perform all business travel processes from Travel Request and Travel Planning to Travel Expense Report/Expense Report and the transfer of travel expenses/expenses to other business function areas.

Travel Request

  • Input of general trip data, required travel services, and cost estimates

  • Transfer to manager for approval

Travel Planning

  • Access to the following provider-independent information and booking services:

    • Flight

    • Hotel

    • Rental cars

    • Rail

    • Other travel services

  • Application of travel policies for queries and bookings

  • Option of setting up a custom hotel catalog

  • Consideration of agreements made with travel service providers

  • Consideration of travelers' personal preferences

Travel Expense Report/Expense Report

  • Creating general data for the Travel Expense Report/Expense Report (central/decentral)

  • Settlement of travel expenses/expenses

  • Payment of expenses via Financial Accounting (FI), Payroll (HR) or via data medium exchange with banks (DME)

  • Optical archiving of receipts

  • Full integration in Financial Accounting (FI), Payroll (HR) and Controlling (CO)

  • Option of credit card clearing

Information Systems

  • Reports for trips taken to analyze the trip behavior of the employees or to aid negotiations with travel service providers

  • Analyses of expenses for cost control and transparency

Request and Approval

  • Requesting business trips

  • Approving business trips with or without SAP Business Workflow

International Use

Travel Management provides you with an international standard version that you can set to meet country-specific requirements. You can also use special country versions that are preconfigured with the applicable statutory and tax regulations.

For more information, see Country and Industry Versions of Travel Expenses .

ESS

Employee Self Services (ESS) Trips and Expenses supports decentralized processing of trip data from planning to expense reporting. Employees can enter their own trip and document data direct from their workplace using the Internet or intranet.

For more information, see ESS in Travel Management .

See also:

Travel Request

Travel Planning

Travel Expense Report/Expense Report