SAP FINANCIALS Travel Management

SAP BUSINESS SUITE VERSION ERP6 EHP5 AND 6

Travel Management

Travel management (FI-TV) is a end-to-end integrated application component that looks after the entire life cycle of

business travel for your organization, integrated with SAP Financials and Human Resources it provides the following

Process online travel booking

Implement effective travel policies across corporate

Use an international travel solution, including taxation and fiscal compliance

Travel management can process pre-trip approval, online booking, expenses reporting and data warehousing, with

process optimization it can help a business reduce indirect travel costs as well as lower travel agency transaction fees.

Travel management from one place can help with the initial request through planning and online booking, to the

submission and settlement of travel expenses. The application can be synchronized with the booking information of the

leading reservation systems, you can easily enforce your travel policy, optimize purchasing agreements or rates,

evaluate travel expenses and perform cost planning and forecasting, the application can use multiple languages and has

pre-defined country support to meet any legal requirements.

You can access the Travel Manager or Travel Expenses wizards via the transaction codes below

Transaction Code Screenshot

Travel Manager

TRIP

Travel Expense Manager

PR05

Process Flow

The process flow covers the requesting and planning of a trip, accounting the travel expenses and taxation (payroll

accounting), posting of the travel expenses (FI accounting) and clearing (controlling or Funds management) according

to the allocation-by-cause principle, there are 11 steps

1. The person submits a travel request (TR) to his/her manager, the TR will contain destination, dates, purpose of

the trip, the transportation, any accommodations, travel advance and the estimate for the entire trip

2. The manage will either approve or reject it (alterations can then be made)

3. The TR is then requested and approved, the traveler can then make use of several payment options, including

cash payment, check, bank transfer for payment of the travel advance amount, the paid amounts are forwarded

for posting to financial accounting.

4. Once the TR has been approved the traveler determines the available travel services such as flight, hotel, train,

etc, and books them using the SAP system, the reservation is made in an external reservation system that is

connected to the SAP system.

5. When the traveler has recorded the travel plan (TP) the booking code (PNR) is entered in the processing queue

of the travel agency, the agency confirms the details and makes any changes necessary which are sent back to the

SAP system

6. The TP is also transferred to the appropriate manager for approval, once approved the tickets are then sent to the

traveler

7. Once the trip has been completed the traveler completes the travel expense report, with any supporting

information, receipts, the company will then perform some checks to make sure that is meets company travel

regulations

8. The report is then sent to an appropriate manage for approval, once approved it can be settled

9. The system determines the travel expense result which may include the amount for reimbursement for the trip,

the system prepares the travel expense results to suit the method of payment chosen by the traveler and makes it

available to the corresponding components (FI, CO, Payroll, etc)

10. The traveler is now paid back any reimbursements through payroll via check, bank transfer

11. The traveler receives a travel expense statement with all the relevant trip details together with the accounting

information

Configuration

You have multiple choices to setup the travel management into HR and accounting (AC)

Travel management HR and AC in one system

The travel management and accounting system can each have a different release status and you can connect to the existing accounting system, you do not need to distribute travel expenses results to payroll accounting but you do need to replicate CO receivers with the travel management system to provide correct input help for CO receivers. To create person related vendors automatically you need to replicate the HR master data in the accounting system via ALE (Application Link Enabling), as this is posted asynchronously you need to validate the posting run before it is sent to accounting.

Travel management and HR in one system separated from AC

The travel management and payroll system can each have a different release status, you can validate the CO receivers locally and you do not need to distribute to the CO receivers, however you need to replicate the travel expense results for payroll accounting via ALE. You can synchronously post travel expense results to accounting, again to create person-related vendors automatically you need to replicate the HR master data in the accounting system via ALE. You need to import both the AC and HR support package into the travel management and/or accounting system.

Travel management and AC in one system separated from HR

This option has the maximum flexibility because payroll, travel management and accounting are in three different systems, they can all have release statuses as well. You can also connect to the existing non-SAP accounting and HR systems, the HR data has to be replicated in travel management system via ALE, you also need to undertake a remote validation of CO receivers, this setup will call for an asynchronous posting of travel expense results to accounting via ALE, you will need to validate the posting run before it is sent to accounting.

before you chose one of the methods above you need to review your company's own travel work flow and trip-check

rules for processing and approving business trips, what other systems you will use, etc. You also need to decide what

processing areas you need to use travel requests or travel planning with travel expenses or just travel expenses alone,

you can even use the travel management independently from the rest of the SAP application environment as ALE can

provide you with any links to earlier releases.

Number Ranges

All trips are assigned a unique number either externally or internally (we have covered number ranges in multiple

sections), we will use the IMG,

I have created the following personnel areas

Once the personnel areas have been created we can create the number ranges using transaction code PR10,

Travel Request

The travel request is a unit of information that is submitted by a traveler and then approved by a manager, you use it to

book a trip or for requesting advanced travel payments, from the managers view it contains all the travel information

(trip date and time, destination, reason, estimated cost, advanced amount required, etc) that is required to approve the

trip. Already configured in the systems are travel service relating to flights, car rental and train, you can add additional

travel services such as ferry, shuttle, etc. You can use the IMG

In the below screenshot you can see the other travel services that I have configured

grouping ID - for sales office determination that will allow you to assign different users and employees to

different sales offices for booking travel services

code: other service - a category for the travel service

PNR - use if you want to integrate this travel service with a PNR of the reservation system, you need to

implement the BAdI FITP_TRAVEL_PLANNING

field control - select whatever you need and the requirement level

Next we define the travel medium and estimated costs to be approved; we will use the IMG,

In the configuration screen you can see the list of travel services, by double-clicking on a service you can see the details

of that service

to be approved - you will see the travel request (in the Web DynPro ABAP user interface) showing the

particular travel medium (rental car, hotel, etc) under means of transportation or types of accommodations as an

indicator that the user can set

enter estimated costs - this is similar to the above

type - type has two category accommodation or transportation

category - further categories the type

sorting - the travel medium at the appropriate position in the means of transportation or accommodation to be

approved in the travel request, for example if you enter 1 for the medium hotel, then the hotel will be displayed

at the top of the to-be approved list that is displayed in the Web Dynpro ABAP user interface.

Travel Planning

Travel planning can help with reducing costs since it can be integrated into an external reservation system, users will be

able to view price information, availability, etc. You will need to sign up to this service to a company that can supply a

reservation system, for example Amadeus, SABRE, BIBE, HRS, Galileo, etc.

We start by define the reservation service providers using the IMG,

When you sign up to a reservation system you need to obtain the GDS codes and map them to the SAP codes, you can

then synchronize the two systems and even compare the travel preferences of SAP and GDS

Next we need to maintain the identifiers for the sales office, using the IMG,

Next we setup the ticketing and booking for each of the sales office

The next few configuration can all be accessed via the IMG in the below paths

Then we setup the parameters to access the external reservation system, you have to setup a RFC connection (use

transaction code SM59) and then link the RFC to the sales office, use the IMG to access this configuration

You can then define the groupings for accessing external travel reservation system then maintain the categories for

each grouping keys that you have defined, again use the IMG,

Now that we have configured the technical parameters you can configure the geographical situation which can be an

IATA (International Air Transport Association) location for maintaining the company-specific trip rules, the SAP

system comes with some delivered, use the IMG

You can maintain additional information relating to travel service providers (flights, hotels, car rentals), you can

maintain specific exceptions from determining the cabin class (for example) for each of the airline carriers for specific

routes, you can use the IMG,

You can setup rates and discount that you have agreed with the service provider, these rates and discount will then be

apply during reservation and queries, you first define contracts (that can be used in the global reservation system during

best-price flight query) for company specific flights, you can also configure the airline programs (frequent flier miles or

rewards) for corporate customers, this can also be applied to hotels and car rental., we can use the transaction

code S_AHR_61000623, when the usage is mandatory is selected the system searches in the entry transactions of

travel planning for flights with the negotiated rate as per the below, in order to arrive at the airfare, the system will

always use this rate even if there are cheaper rates.

Next we can define the discounts using transaction code S_AHR_61000645, most of below is self explaining

disc type - it is possible to have a discount amount and a percentage as well

apply discount during price determination - if selected the discount is applied during the reservation process

otherwise the system will calculate the discount for all reservations but the discount will be applied during year-

end settlement between your company and the service provider

Next we will look at the trip rules and profiles, I will list all the paths from the IMG below, you can then create a trip

rule as per on the right hand screenshot

Then we can define the evaluation criteria for the query result, the rule below is for all flights between the US and

Japan using the Japan Airlines Intl service, you can also define low-cost airlines for specific routes, etc

Now we define the class using transaction code S_AHR_61000601,

Next we specify the class rules using transaction code S_AHR_61006688, the class rules with the trips will be used in

the profile later

The travel policy defines a number of specifications for the traveler, it brings together the trip rules and the class rules,

first we need to setup the activity types, which determine who is going to pay for the trip your company or you can bill

to another company, we will use transaction code S_AHR_61000689 to setup the activity type

We next need to setup the priorities using transaction code S_AHR_61000654,

Now we can define the travel profile which will bring together the category, trip rules, the class rules and priority using

transaction code S_AHR_61000691,

Then we use transaction code S_AHR_61006705, on the initial screen make sure you select the travel profile, you are

then taken to the change/view screen

To add to the profile use the new entries button and you can add any number of combinations

Once you have defined the profile it time to assign employees using transaction code S_AHR_61000669, the TRVCP

for travel planning is in a tree-like structure for assigning the individual employees to the travel profiles

Process control parameters enable you to customize the system settings for dialog and planning control, as well as

payments methods and payment method groups, they also maintain the travel agency's processing statuses. First we

will define the groupings for the travel planning control using transaction code S_AHR_61000728,

Next we define the groups from the payment methods using the IMG,

Next we assign the payment methods to the payment groups using transaction code S_AHR_61006706, you can pay by

personal credit card, company credit card, cash or invoice (external companies).

Travel Expenses

Travel expenses enable you to settle all the travel related costs of a traveler, you can have two models centralized or

decentralized in your company, this helps in checking, processing (receipts) and other documents centrally, you can use

country-specific travel expense functionality as SAP provides you with the statutory trip regulations and per diem

limits stored in specific versions to meet the requirements of various countries. We now to to configure several settings

we start with the master data using transaction code S_AHR_61009946, on the initial screen you can copy/restore,

delete of define the trip provision variant, this helps to classify the trip provisions based on country-specific accounting

methods, for example 81 - US accounting (M&IE) is used for accounting meals and incidental expenses while 10 - US

accounting (docs) is used in receipt accounting or area of validity (such as the public sector), basically the variant

contains the rules for determine taxes regarding expenses

SAP already has a number of variants configured, if you don't have them configured then copy them from client (000)

Then you assign this variant to your organizational areas using the IMG, notice that GB has 08 and USA has 10 which

was what we saw above

The global settings which are defined for each of the trip provision variants contain country grouping of SAP payroll

applicable for the wage types

Trip currency ( 1- company code currency, 2 - Official currency as specified by public authorities or 3 - specified

country)

Settlement currency for trips in foreign currency ( 1 - trip currency, 2 - reimbursement of foreign currency

receipts in trip currency but all other advances or receipts settled in trip currency, 3 - trip or hard currency)

Type of input tax, exchange rate type (M - translation at the average rate, is the default option)

Unit for distance

You can use transaction code S_AHR_61009923,

You can also maintain valid entry values for the control parameters for trip costs accounting (vehicle types, vehicle

classes, statutory meals, accommodation reimbursement groups, employee groupings for travel expense types, and

travel management) which can be stored for each employee within his/her master data in Infotype travel privileges, you

can also define the control parameters for travel privileges 9trip areas, statutory trip types, service provider). Every

travel receipt in the system will be stored with the valid expense type (representing expenses towards meals, telephone

charges, mobile call charges, magazines, taxi fare, etc), you will need to define the required expense type per trip

provision variant that you will be using, you can use transaction code S_AHR_61009843,

Next we define the maximum rates and default values for expense types for individual receipts for all the required trip

provision variants we can use transaction code S_AHR_61010087, from the initial screen you can see all the

configured options, use the new entries button to create a new configuration

You can also define if you want to allow simultaneous accounting of individual receipts and per diem (daily allowance)

or flat rates for the expense category like meals, accommodation, travel costs, etc, we can use transaction

code S_AHR_61010078,

Next we can configure the reimbursement amounts for travel costs, accommodation, meals, etc besides configuring the

per diem deductions, we start with defining the miles/km's cumulation (per trip, yearly cumulation with the period as

specified by the employee, etc) which determines when you need to reimburse a employee for the amount he/her has

traveled using there own transportation, this can also be a flat rate across all vehicle types and classes, we can use

transaction code S_AHR_61010022,

Next we define the flat rates for traveling costs using transaction code S_AHR_61009998, you can see that an number

of of flat rates have been configured, on the right hand screenshot you can see a flat rate for cars up to 1000 cc capacity

The vehicle classes and reimbursement groups can be seen below

Next we will define and assign the required wage types for each of the expense types, the wage type is a payroll term

that is made up of characteristics that are dependent on the tasks carried out by that wage type, these characteristics will

determine how to process the wage type, we will use transaction code S_AHR_61006702, SAP comes with many wage

types already configured, the first wage type contains the total receipt amount in a receipt, if you split the meal receipt

amount into taxable and non-table portion, then the first wage type will denote the tax-free portion and the second wage

type will denote the taxable component, you can have only the first wage type.

You can assign wage types to travel expense types for per diems/flat rates using transaction code S_AHR_61006692,

this screen describes the wage type a bit better you can see the tax free and the taxable more clearly

To transfer the result from travel expense to FI, you need to maintain the connection between wage types and the G/L

accounts in FI through symbolic accounts, you then assign the symbolic account to the G/L account, this help in that

you don't need to change the wage type-symbolic account assignments when changing the G/L account, we start by

using transaction code S_AHR_61006691,

wage type - the wage type which we discussed earlier

symb.Expense account - an identifier for the symbolic expense account, the first position means will be a + or -

which represent if it is a debit (+) or a credit (-) entry is to be made in the G/L account, the second and third

positions denote the name of the symbolic account assigned to the wage type

w/o CO Recevr - Indicator for accounts that are not cost elements in Controlling

sym.acct.offset.entry - Symbolic account for offsetting entry for expense account posting, If you have not

specified an explicit symbolic account, the symbolic account RR is used.

2nd sym.acct.offset.entry - used if credit data needs to be transferred to FI

Next we convert the symbolic account to the expense account so you need to assign the symbolic accounts to the

expense G/L in the logical system for FI to post the trip costs, you also need to define how an employee account will be

determined as customer or vendor accounts, we start by using transactionPRT3, select HRT on the initial screen,

The left hand screenshot details the trip costs postings and expense accounts, the right hand screenshot determines

whether the employee is a vendor or a customer, in this case it is as a vendor, here we maintain a search entry *KP in

the account field for general modification 1RR, for customer search maintain that entry as *DD.

You also need to maintain the number ranges posting runs (transaction code PR12 - left hand screenshot) and trip

transfer documents (transaction code PR11 - right hand screenshot ) to transfer the travel expenses results to FI.

Employee Self-Service (ESS)

The EES (Employee Self Service) is a package that allows employees themselves creating, changing or display their

own data using the enterprise portal, you will enable access to employee personal data, compensation related

information, working time including applying and tracking leave, travel planning and reimbursement of expenses, etc. I

will only be giving you a high level introduction on ESS and will leave you to SAP's document on how to setup ESS. If

setup ESS you need to perform the following

download and install the business package for ESS from SAP

You then need to create the ESS users and provide them with the necessary authorizations to access ESS, create

and assign ESS roles to the employee who will be using ESS

Connect the ESS homepage to the individual business area like working time, compensation and personal data

Make technical settings including transporting entries in client 000 that will all be handled by the basis team

Integrate of Travel Planning and Expenses

Once integrated you will be able to transfer the date (trip specific date, cost distribution, receipts, etc) from travel plan

(for a trip) to the travel expense report that will help in generating the required expense receipts, we will using

the IMG,

Now we can activate integration using transaction S_AHR_61000660,

Integration into Payroll

You can transfer travel accounting results into payroll accounting, when both travel management and payroll

accounting are on separate systems (connected via ALE) or in the same logical system again we using the IMG,

You will also need to use transaction code PE01, to enable the transfer you need to include the schema UREI in the

payroll accounting logical system in the country-specific accounting schema U000( for US accounting), GREI in the

payroll accounting logical system in the country-specific accounting schema G000 (for UK), etc.

Reports

As with components of FI there are a number of reports that can be used, I have listed the most common ones used in

the table below,

Report Description Transaction Code

Business volume with car rental companies S_AHR_61016286

Business volume with hotel chains, hierarchical S_AHR_61016283

Cost assignment for trip S_AHR_61016404

determination of employees with exceeded trip days S_AHR_61016411

General trip data/totals/receipts/cost assignment S_AHR_61016405

General trip data/trip totals S_AHR_61016401

Hierarchical overview of flights by airline S_AHR_61016279

Overview of flights by airline S_AHR_61016280

Overview of planned trips S_AHR_61016288

Ticket information for flights S_AHR_61016282

Travel expense reporting by period S_AHR_61016408

Trip receipts S_AHR_61016402

Trip receipts with general trip data S_AHR_61016403

Who is where? search for trip destination S_AHR_61016406

All the reports can be accessed via the SAP menu as per the below screenshot