10.5 Configuring Travel Integration: Travel Partners, Itineraries and Trip Expense Reports
Key Takeaways
Enable Travel in Manage Expenses System Options (all or specific business units), and give a travel administrator the Travel Manager job role for the Travel Administration work area.
Expenses integrates with GetThere through the Import Travel Itineraries process and with other travel partners through REST APIs; you can have only one GetThere integration, and partners can't overlap on countries or assignments.
Every travel partner needs at least one booking site; a booking-site link overrides the partner-level default link, which only GetThere can use.
Optional itinerary validation rules, assigned to a partner or booking site, check policy violations, merchants, locations, air class, currency and amount, dates and times, and flight or train numbers.
Enable Expense Report Automatic Creation lets trips generate expense reports; Enable Report Creation for Users Before Card Charges Appear covers bookings whose card charges aren't in the employee's work area.
The published objective is Configure Travel Integration. With integration, Expenses receives each itinerary from the travel partner and creates a trip. Approvers and auditors can then compare booked and actual costs and see booking policy violations and justifications.
What integration does
- The travel partner sends itinerary data, and trips are created for valid itineraries.
- Updates keep flowing until the employee takes the trip.
- A travel administrator corrects itineraries with validation errors.
- Employees manage trips on the Trips tab, which only appears when travel is enabled for their business unit.
- Expense reports can be created from trips, automatically or with Create Report from Trip.
Required setup
| Task | Detail |
|---|---|
| Enable Travel | Yes on Manage Expenses System Options, for all business units or specific ones |
| Travel administrator | Assign the Travel Manager job role (Manage Users) for the Travel Administration work area. The administrator monitors imports, posts itineraries through REST and fixes errors. |
| Travel partner and booking sites | Manage Travel Partner Integrations |
| GetThere only | Schedule Import Travel Itineraries |
| Third-party partners only | Manage itineraries posted through REST APIs, and run the validate-only process |
Optional tasks are itinerary validation rules and automatic trip expense reports.
Travel partners
A travel partner is an online booking provider or travel agency.
- Expenses has a built-in integration with GetThere. Other partners integrate through REST services, shown as Third Party.
- You can use several partners, for example GetThere in the US and an agency in Asia-Pacific. However:
- you can have only one GetThere integration;
- partners must not overlap on countries or employment assignments, so each employee has exactly one booking site.
Prerequisites in the partner's system:
- booking sites;
- travel policies and violations, which are downloaded with itineraries;
- the employee sign-in method;
- employee profiles.
GetThere connection details, at partner level:
- the connection user name and password;
- the super site name;
- the web service (WSDL) locations, if the partner changes them.
Authentication errors usually mean a wrong user name, password or super site name.
Booking sites, links and sign-in
A booking site is an instance of the partner's booking tool for a group of employees, for example by country, language or job level (an executive site allowing first class).
- At least one booking site is required for each partner.
- GetThere gives each site an identifier used for itinerary import.
- For third-party partners, the partner and site names are the identifiers. Itineraries posted through REST must use matching names, or they are rejected.
Booking site links take employees from Book Travel in Expenses to the partner:
- A site-specific link on the booking site overrides the partner-level link.
- A default booking site link at partner level is only for GetThere. Third-party partners need site-specific links.
Sign-in is either single sign-on (the link is the identity provider's SSO URL, and booking site user names should match the identity provider's), or authentication by the travel partner with its own user names and passwords.
Itinerary import and validation
Validations that always run:
- GetThere: itineraries with a null status, a bad last-modified timestamp, a reservation with no confirmation number, or an unexpected error are rejected. They appear under Itinerary Import Failures and are retried for a number of days set by a process parameter.
- Third party: a REST post is rejected if a required field is missing or invalid, for example trip number, record locator, partner and booking site names, traveler names, booking date, status, reservation type, currency and amount, or segment dates and cities. Duplicates are rejected too.
Validations you can enable on Manage Travel Itinerary Validation Rules, assigned to a partner or booking site (sites can override):
| Validation | Setup |
|---|---|
| Policy violations | Partner violation meanings must match lookup codes, such as EXM_POL_VIOLATION_TYPES, including translations. Otherwise the result is Unmatched Value. |
| Merchant | Add missing merchants with Manage Merchant Codes (spreadsheet) in Travel Administration |
| Location | Checked against Trading Community Architecture geographies; add missing ones in Manage Geographies |
| Air class | Checked against an air class lookup on Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types; add the partner's class meanings |
| Currency code and amount, date and time, flight or train number | No setup: GL currencies, standard date checks, and presence of the number |
Failures of these enabled validations, usually Unmatched Value, still create trips. The travel administrator corrects them in the Travel Administration work area.
Trips and trip expense reports
On the Trips tab, employees see the trip name, dates, reservation types and total. They change bookings in the partner's site, and the updated itinerary is fetched again. They can consolidate separately booked items with Add Travel Item to Trip.
Automatic trip expense reports:
- The administrator sets Enable Expense Report Automatic Creation to Yes in system options (Processing Options for Expense Report).
- Each employee chooses the timing on their Expenses Preferences page.
What the report contains:
- Card holders: Expenses matches reservations to corporate card transactions within the trip dates.
- Cash-only employees: a cash line for each reservation. Non-travel cash expenses aren't included.
Centrally billed bookings. Charges on a travel card never appear in the employee's work area. Set Enable Report Creation for Users Before Card Charges Appear to Yes (default No):
- matched card charges are used, and their amounts can't be edited;
- otherwise cash lines are created and marked prepaid when the itinerary says so. Employees can adjust them.
A company uses GetThere for US employees and a regional travel agency for Asia-Pacific. How do the agency's itineraries reach Expenses?
A second GetThere integration, set up just for the Asia-Pacific region
The scheduled Import Travel Itineraries process, using that agency's super site name
The corporate card feed, which creates trips from the matched reservations
The agency posts them through REST, using the configured partner and site names
An employee's flight and hotel were booked on a centrally billed travel card, so no card charges appear in their Expenses work area. The company still wants an expense report created from the trip. Which setting does this?
Set Enable Report Creation for Users Before Card Charges Appear to Yes
Turn Enable Travel off so trips are treated as ordinary cash expenses
Give the employee the Travel Manager role so they can create trip reports
Change the company account's payment option from Company Pay to Individual Pay
Imported itineraries are failing validation because of unmatched policy violation values. Who corrects them, and what access do they need?
A travel administrator, who has the Travel Manager job role
An expense auditor, working on the Audit Expense Report page
The employee, by editing the trip directly on the Edit Trip page
A corporate card administrator, on Review Corporate Card Transactions
Sections you finish are checked off in the contents.