You can set up Perk to automatically create trip expenses from a booked trip, meaning travelers don’t have to manually create a trip expense in Perk for expense submission. This allows travelers to group travel expenses with other trip expenses, such as taxis, meals, etc.

Creating trip expenses from travel bookings

When the booking of your flights (and hotels) in Perk is confirmed, a new trip expense is created. If you have set up your account to approve travel bookings, trip expenses are only created once the trip has been approved.

Trip expenses are created in draft status in real time and assigned to the person or the people stated as travelers in the booking. Where the trip includes several travelers, a trip is created for each traveler identified.

If your company allows employees to manage travel expenses, then the travel expenses are also included in the trip expense. Employees can choose to submit travel expenses before submitting their trip expense or submit the entire trip expense after their trip.

If travel expenses are managed by the travel spend processor, then the travel expenses are not imported into the trip expense. Perk creates an empty trip expense for the employee

Note: If you have configured the travel booking settings to assign any invoices to the traveler rather than the travel spend processor, and there are multiple travelers listed in the trip, then travel expenses are included in the trip expense of the first traveler.

If you have set up the company to automatically generate per diems for trips, when a trip expense is created in Perk based on a booked trip, Perk automatically generates the corresponding per diems for each day of the trip.

Setting up Perk to create trip expenses from travel bookings

You determine whether trip expenses are created in Perk at the company (legal entity) level.

To enable this feature:

1. Go to Settings > Expense settings > Travel bookings.
2. Select the Manage travel booking expenses by trip checkbox.

Managing trip expenses created automatically from travel bookings

Since trip expenses are created in draft status, employees are responsible for including any additional expenses required (i.e. taxi receipts, meals, etc.) before submitting the trip expense for approval.

Caution: Any updates in the booked trip are not reflected in the trip expense. For example, if you cancel a travel booking, you need to manually delete the trip expense. Similarly, if you change the booking dates or add extra charges, you need to manually adjust the trip expense.

If employees accidentally delete the trip expense in Perk, they need to create the trip expense manually and attach the travel expenses again. When you delete a trip expense, only automatically generated expenses (i.e. per diem and mileage) are deleted. Other expenses, such as travel expenses, are treated as single expenses and can be manually added to the trip expense again.

While travel spend processors can reassign travel expenses to other people, trip expenses can’t be reassigned. The trip expense must be deleted.