Pre-approvals in Perk let an approver sign off on the reason for a trip before anyone starts booking. Use this article to turn them on in an approval process, decide whether they're mandatory, and choose who approves them.

Note: Pre-approvals are in a closed beta, so you might not see them in your account yet. In accounts that have them, the setting carries a Beta badge. If you'd like to take part in the beta, reach out to your Account Manager.

How pre-approvals work

Pre-approvals in Perk separate two questions that used to be answered at the same moment. A pre-approval request answers "should this person travel for this reason?" before any booking happens. A final booking approval answers "is this specific booking within policy and price?" at checkout. One approved pre-approval request covers every service the traveler needs for that trip—flight, hotel, train, and car—and can be reused across bookings until its end date. 

The first gain from that split is that pre-approval moves out of Jira, forms, or Slack and into the place where the trip actually gets booked. The second is timing: because the "should they travel" decision happens before anyone searches for a flight, it no longer competes with inventory, so fewer trips stall while an approval sits and the fare or the room sells out. 

The split also opens up a lighter approval setup. With the travel decision handled up front, you can let anything within policy through on the pre-approval request alone and keep final booking approval for the out-of-policy exceptions.

Turning on pre-approvals in an approval process

You turn on pre-approvals inside an approval process, the container that holds your approval rules in Perk. An approval process can be scoped to specific employees, specific companies, or your entire account.

1. Go to Settings Travel management Travel approvals.
2. On the Travel approval processes page, select an existing process from the Active tab, or select New approval process.
3. Enter a Name, for example "Sales team travel", then use Who is the approval process for? to choose who it applies to.
4. Turn on Request pre-approval before planning trips.
5. In the Request pre-approval from row, use select approver to choose who decides the requests.
6. Check Pre-approval is optional if you don't want to block booking without a pre-approval request.
7. Select Create approval process for a new process, or Save if you're editing an existing one.

Choosing whether pre-approval is mandatory or optional

Pre-approval is mandatory by default in Perk. Turning on Request pre-approval before planning trips means everyone in scope needs an approved pre-approval request before they can book—if Alex Macdonald is in scope and reaches checkout without one, Perk blocks the booking. 

Turning on Pre-approval is optional relaxes that. Travelers can still send a pre-approval request, but nothing stops them booking without one.

Choosing an approver

Each pre-approval rule in Perk has one approver. In the approver picker, use the Search name field to find someone under Approver groups, which contains Line manager, or under People, which lists individual people by name and email. Cost object owners can't be approvers, and you can't build multi-step chains in the beta.

How pre-approvals work alongside final booking approval

Pre-approvals and booking-level approvals work independently in Perk. A pre-approval request covers the intent to travel; final booking approval covers the specific booking at checkout, and it still fires on bookings that are already covered by a pre-approval request. 

You set it up under Final booking approval in the same editor. Booking-level approvers see a pre-approved ✓ indicator with a link to open the pre-approval request.

What travelers and approvers see

Travelers send a pre-approval request in Perk with the Request pre-approval button, which appears on the Trips page on web and on the itinerary page and at checkout on both web and mobile. The form asks for a title, approximate dates, and a free-text travel request. In beta, they can't request one for someone else, and one request covers one traveler, so bookings with multiple travelers don't ask for a pre-approval request. 

Perk emails the approver you picked when someone in scope makes a request. In the beta that email is the approver's only way in—they open the request from the link, approve or decline it in Perk, and Perk emails the traveler the approvers decision.