The Travel Management scenario provides an overview of the business processes involved when business trips are planned and approved, and travel expenses are settled. Interfaces to Payroll and Financial Accounting ensure that the travel expenses to be reimbursed are properly posted, taxed, and paid.

If an employee plans to go on a business trip, he or she enters the anticipated trip facts in the system. These include the dates on which the trip starts and ends, the destinations, the reason for the trip, the chosen means of transportation, the expected accommodation costs, possibly an advance, and the CO objects (costs centers, orders, and so on) to which the travel expenses are to be debited.

After the employee has entered all of the required data, he or she releases the planned trip for approval.

The employee’s superior is responsible for approving the trip. He or she checks the planned trip and decides whether it can be approved as it is, or if it should be corrected, or rejected. The employee is informed about the superior’s decision.

After the trip has been approved, a trip advance is paid to the employee by check or bank transfer. The trip advance can consist of several amounts in different currencies. Paid amounts are transferred to Financial Accounting for posting.

After the employee has taken the planned business trip, the anticipated trip facts are replaced and supplemented with the actual trip facts. They are then released with the original documents for checking.

The expenses department is responsible for verifying the trip facts. It determines whether the trip facts entered are plausible and comply with the statutory or enterprise-specific travel regulations. Furthermore, consistency with the original (or facsimile) documents is checked. The original (or facsimile) documents are transferred to the optical archive. If the trip facts are consistent, the trip is transferred to the employee’s superior for approval.

The superior checks the trip facts. The superior checks the trip facts and decides whether the trip can be approved as it is, and released for settlement, or that the reimbursement of the travel expenses has to be rejected.

After the superior has approved the trip facts, the expense department settles the travel expenses. The travel expenses settlement results are determined on the basis of the employee’s Travel Privileges, the trip provisions, and the trip facts. They include, above all, the reimbursement amounts.

After the travel expense results have been determined, they are transferred to Financial Accounting for posting. The reimbursement amounts can be paid to the employee by check, by bank transfer, or via Payroll. Depending on the chosen payment method, the amounts are written with the required additional information to the appropriate application components (Payroll /Financial Accounting). If the calculation of reimbursement amounts results in amounts that are liable for employment tax, they are transferred to Payroll.

The employee can request a travel expenses statement, which contains the trip facts and all of the relevant settlement results.