How to set up automatic daily allowance calculation?
Open the Daily Allowance Calculation section and click Create. In the panel that opens on the right, enter the allowance amounts for domestic and international trips. For international travel, you can choose the currency for calculation. Zero daily allowance amounts are permitted if needed.
You can also set up flexible exceptions, selecting a city or an entire country to apply specific allowance rates.
The calculation rule can be applied to all company employees, to one or several departments or to individual employees.
The configured daily allowance rules will be automatically applied when creating a travel expense report.
If you want to keep the option to edit the allowance, go to the Company settings and click on the check mark ✔ in the “Automated calculation of daily allowance” checkbox.
How do we calculate the daily allowance?
1. If pre-approval is enabled:
- daily allowance is calculated based on known cities and travel dates.
- as services are added to the trip, the daily allowance is recalculated after each booking, cancellation or annulment.
2. If pre-approval is not enabled:
- when travel dates are known, daily allowance is calculated using the minimum rate.
- recalculation happens after every transaction — booking, cancellation, annulment.
Key calculation rules
- Always the lower rate
We apply the lower applicable rate so the employee doesn’t have to return money to the company. Example: If services are booked in both New York ($150) and Boston ($100) for the same day, the Boston rate will be applied.
- Hotel bookings take priority
When hotel and transport bookings point to different cities, the hotel location determines the daily allowance rate. Example: If there’s a flight to Boston but the hotel is in New York, we’ll use the New York rate.
- If daily allowance is “empty”
When services are not added yet, the daily allowance is calculated at the lowest rate from the cities in the trip. If no cities are listed, we use the client’s lowest available rate.
In case this rate is in a foreign currency, it’s converted to the company’s default currency at the exchange rate on the calculation day.
Manual adjustments
- After a trip, employees can manually adjust the daily allowance if the auto-calculated values don’t reflect actual travel.
- If a manual correction is made and a service is later booked or canceled, the daily allowance will be recalculated automatically and the manual changes will be erased.
- Best practice: make manual edits only after the trip is closed.
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