Travel request form

The travel request form costs a trip before it is booked from the figures the traveler already has: the return fare quoted, the nights away, the hotel rate, the ground transport for the whole trip, the days including travel days, the company's daily allowance and how many people are going. It returns the estimated cost per request, which is the figure the approver signs, with the lodging and allowance lines shown separately, the cost per traveler per day, the ten fields the request carries and the bookings the approval releases. It is the form most small companies do in an email, done as arithmetic.

Why the request carries a figure and not a description

'Two days in Denver for the client review' tells the approver nothing about cost, and the cost is what they are approving. The form makes the traveler find the fare and the rate before asking, which is itself most of the discipline: a request with a $1,044 total is read against the policy's threshold in a second, and the conversation is about whether the trip is worth $1,044, not about whether it is a good idea.

The lines the form keeps apart

Fare, lodging, ground and allowance are kept as separate lines because they are controlled by different clauses of the policy and booked in different places. Lodging is nights times rate, the allowance is days times the company's figure, and the total is per traveler times the number going. The cost per day is the number an approver uses to compare this request with the last one.

What happens after the yes

The approval releases three bookings per traveler on the worked example: the fare, the hotel and the ground. The form lists them so nothing is booked before the yes and nothing is forgotten after it. Perdiemo Pro keeps the approved request as the first entry on the trip, with the approver's name and the date, and files the booking references against it as they are made.