Streamlined Business Trip Approvals: Simplifying the Process, Minimizing Stress

Contents

• Common challenges in business trip approval
• How to simplify booking control
• How to structure travel approvals

Common challenges in business trip approval

The business travel planning process may vary depending on a company’s size, the complexity of its organizational structure, and its travel policy. Still, the issues employees face are often the same:

• Complex approvals: Participants are forced to switch between different communication channels, platforms, and programs. For example, a spreadsheet with links to selected travel services can be sent in an email, followed by a discussion in a messenger.
• Lost information: In a flood of emails and messages, relevant requests and responses can be overlooked or even impossible to find.
• Obscurity: Business travelers often don’t know the current status of their requests. This leads to unnecessary clarifications that distract everyone from more important tasks.
• Duplicate bookings: Misunderstandings and a lack of clear coordination can lead to duplicate bookings, unnecessary expenses, and wasted time on cancellations and changes.
• Rising prices: During lengthy approval processes, the accommodation and transportation costs for the required dates can increase. This may lead to a new round of discussions and increased spending.

How to simplify booking control

Roundtrip tools will help automate the process of organizing business travel: speed up task completion, reduce errors, and simplify approvals. Here is how to do it:

Set a travel policy

The company’s internal regulations, which define the rules for organizing business trips, can be set on our platform. Suitable offers will then be highlighted in search results, and business travelers booking travel services independently will be able to choose from options that align with the travel policy.

You can set conditions for booking tickets and accommodations, as well as spending limits. For example, for a hotel room, you can set the maximum hotel star rating, daily budget, and number of days before arrival. For air tickets, you can also specify the allowed one-way flight budget, the ratio of the selected ticket price to the most budget-friendly option, and other conditions.

You can also add exceptions to your travel policy — this is useful if the basic restrictions do not apply to specific employees, departments, or stays in particular cities and regions. Detailed instructions for creating and editing policies can be found in the “Knowledge base.”

Set up booking approvals

You can optimize control over bookings for hotel rooms, train and air tickets, and transfers based on your company’s needs. Determine when employees need to request confirmation of a travel service purchase, and when notification of a completed booking is sufficient or approval is not required. This feature conveniently automates the approval process for non-standard situations. For example, an employee selects a hotel priced at €100 per night with a limit of €90. In this case, they can specify the reason for booking a specific hotel and send a request to you.

Benefits of the approval flow

• Faster process: No back-and-forth emails or messaging apps, and no unnecessary approvals — requests can be sent directly from the booking page.
• Centralized control: The approver rejects or approves booking requests in their personal account, where the decision history is also stored.
• Transparent communication: The employee can add a comment to the request, and the approver can add a comment to the decision.
• Flexible settings: You can approve all bookings or just some, add different numbers of approvers, and set the acceptable deviation in the service cost.
• Efficient budget control: Costs are easily tracked before booking.
• Convenient reporting: All order requests can be downloaded in an Excel file.

How to structure travel approvals

Start using approval flows today — save time, reduce stress, and keep everyone on the same page.

Optimize the workflow