A travel request approval workflow is among the most imperative businesses processes a company should have. It is specifically needed by companies that permit employees to travel for business. Without a flawless workflow, you can expect to see one or all of these challenges. First, effectivity of business travel management in your company will depend on spreadsheet and email for your travel request management tasks. Spreadsheets can produce errors while email approvals can delay ticketing and trigger additional fees. Another disadvantage is that you could make your travel plans at the last minute and this could raise your ticket costs. Without a properly-run approval workflow, you might find that you no longer have control over your employees’ travel costs, travel request approvals and budget limits.
What’s the solution for reliable travel request management?
The way out of the challenges discussed above is the automation of your travel request approval workflow. In other words, you need a HRM software that could track your employees’ travel requests with ease and a high degree of accuracy. Consider choosing online solutions for automation of a request management process, which ensure better system availability and lower maintenance cost.
From the time a travel request is created, to the time it’s approved, an online travel request system will control the entire process. It will ensure that there is no room for errors and then speed up the process. As a result of using an automated business travel request form, you can expect the following advantages:
- Pre-defined approval patterns and notifications
- Reduce the costs related to late travel request approvals
- Enforce logical travel policies
- Easier tracking of employees’ travel patterns
- Regulate and rectify your travel request approval workflow
- Meet your legal requirements.
It is usually easy to automatically approve your travel request. As long as certain requirements are met, the approval process is easy and quick. First, make sure that the corporate travel management requests for estimated travel expenditure from the employee who wants to travel. Second, ensure that the stated travel expenditure is lower than the maximum allowed cost. Finally, the travel advance requested by the employee should be lower than a pre-set value. If there is a condition that is not satisfactory, your travel request management should receive the travel request.
The travel request process
- The requester submits a travel request.
- The manager in charge reviews and approves the request.
- The request is received by the rules driven management department for further review.
- Final approval is done
- Notifications are sent.
After the corporate travel management approval process pushes through, the team responsible for making travel arrangements will be consulted. Then the finance department will provide the requested travel advance. It is not all travel requests that are approved fast. Those requiring international travel might be vetted twice. Still, there may be employees in your company that doesn’t have to be approved before they travel. For instance, senior management staff could travel without further delay. If there are late travel request submissions, further consulting to know why this happened might be done prior to approval.
Building your travel request approval workflow
- First, you should make travel request capability accessible to all employees. But if it’s only members of a certain department that travel often, you should assign access to travel request to them only. Just specify the lists of people who can use the travel request feature.
- Next, ensure that you have well-designed business travel request form for employees. It should have blank spaces where users can add their names, travel details, project details, itinerary, accommodation needs and ticket costs. Users’ travel ID and traveler’s name are automatically updated via software formulas. Itinerary details are so imperative, especially data on departure and return dates, travel allowances, accommodation and so on.
Business travel request form template created with drag and drop simplicity in a workflow software by Comindware.
- Third, you should define your travel request workflow. The best workflow should follow the process/steps we enumerated above. The software is already set to carry out all the steps effectively and send notifications at the end. Visibility permissions of the business travel request form should also be configured. By default, the whole form should be seen by all users. But the approvers could view it in a read-only format.
Business travel request form template created with drag and drop simplicity in a workflow software by Comindware.
As for the expenses section, access and visibility could be granted only to the travel team, although “book tickets” option should be shown to users. Finally, you should publish the travel request workflow so it can be seen by all the designated people within the company.
Benefits of automated travel request approval workflows
Companies or HR departments which automate approval request processing usually report the following benefits:
- Effective travel requests collection and routing.
- Easy task hand-overs.
- Convenient management of related data and documents.
- Easy approval status tracking for both requestor and workflow stakeholders.
- Ability to evaluate workflows performance and optimize them.
In a nutshell, travel approval request automation significantly increases the accuracy, transparency, and handling speed of your business travel related workflows.
What to do now?
If you are ready to automate your travel request management with Comindware Tracker. This workflow management software makes it easy to create business travel request forms and processes travel requests in an error-free and quick manner, allowing you to save time and money. So, you should request your 30-day trial period from us now.
