As a Payhawk administrator, once you enable the Travel Agent, the system will create a travel request type. You can then configure the settings of the travel request for business trips directly within the Payhawk portal.
Based on the defined settings, the Travel Agent will collect all the required details from your employees, display all available options (flagging the ones that are out-of-policy), and trigger an approval workflow.
Configuring fields settings
You can configure all the information you want the Travel Agent to collect from your employees, for example, dates and destination, before triggering an approval workflow.
To configure fields settings:
Go to Settings > Requests > Travel > Fields tab.
Under Request details, fill out the information for each of the built-in fields:
Description
Summary
Trip details
Payment method
Click on the Preview button to review the details.
Click on Save.
Configuring travel policies
By default, Payhawk suggests a travel policy, which you can modify according to the requirements of your company.
To configure travel policies:
Go to Settings > Requests > Travel > Policy tab.
Under Policy Description, enter the desired details of your company travel policy in plain text format.
For example, you can define a travel policy that allows for a maximum flight cost of 300 EUR with British Airways and Lufthansa as preferred airlines, and maximum hotel rate of 200 EUR for stays in specified hotel chains with preferred ratings.
Click on Save.
Configuring workflows
You can configure approval workflows for the travel requests of your employees.
To configure workflows:
Go to Settings > Requests > Travel > Workflow tab.
Click on Edit workflow. Alternatively, click on Go to workflows and you'll be redirected to the Settings > Workflows screen to view and manage all travel request workflows in one place.
Create an approval workflow that suits your requirements by following the steps for defining custom workflows and noting the following specifics that are valid for travel requests:
The Submit step is always present. During this step, the Travel Agent must gather the needed information to fill out all the request fields, create, and submit a travel request.
The Approve step is for you to define. For example, you can set the corresponding Team manager as an approver. This step will trigger an approval request in their Inbox in the Payhawk web portal, mobile app, and Slack.
The Pay step is always present. Once there's a successful approval, the Travel Agent automatically tops up the employee's card and books the business trip.
The Close step is also always visible by default. It includes predefined rules for automatically closing requests when the auto-close option is activated and also specifies the default roles authorized to manually close requests if auto-close is not used.