Help & FAQ / Approvals

What are approvals?

If you require approvals to be taken before making a booking, you no longer have to get approvals verbally, by emails or using multiple systems. You just have to complete your approval settings here and then as usual select a trip, enter the traveller details and the trip will automatically be sent for approvals to the approvers of the travellers in the trip. The trip can be booked only after all the approvers have approved the trip. If even one approver rejects the trip, the trip will be rejected. You just have to give us a call on 022-40554954 and we will activate the feature for you.

Now pre trip approvals are integrated in your account and you can easily send trips for approvals, keep track of the approval status of your trips and book only approved trips. You just have to complete company level approval settings and if required department and user/ traveller level approval settings.

If you are a company with only one approver for all the employees, you just have to setup company level approval settings. If you are a company where department heads approve for the employees of their respective departments, then you have to setup company level and department level approval settings. If you are a company where there are different approvers for each of the employees, then you will have to setup company level, department level and also traveller/ user level approval settings.

Any user can send a trip for approval. If the default approver does not approve the trip in 24 hours from the time it was sent, the system will automatically escalate the trip to the alternate approver setup in company level approval settings page. If the alternate approver also does not approve in 48 hours from the time it was sent, the trip will get expired. You can also manually escalate the trip from the trip details page within the first 24 hours from the time it was sent for approval.

You can also see the status of all trips (pending approval, approved and rejected) in the Trips page. The Approvers/ Bookers will be able to see the trips pending for their approval/ booking in the Tasks page, which will be visible only to them. Approvers can approve via email directly from their mobile without even logging into the system; or they can navigate to the Tasks page and approve/ reject the trip from the trip details page. You can also view the approval related data for each trip such as request sent date, approved date, approver names, initiator name, escalated date, emergency booking (Y/N), reason for emergency booking, approved fare and booked fare in your booking detail report.

How do I setup company level approval settings?
You have to select a default approver (companywide, product wise or amount based), alternate approver and companywide booker. You can setup the value for the price threshold beyond which if the approved fare increases, the booking is not allowed. You can also setup whether you want to bypass approval process by selecting emergency booking option. Default approver, alternate approver, companywide booker are mandatory fields in this page.
How do I select a default approver?

Are you a company with just one approver for all the employees?

You just have to setup company level approval settings and start using the approvals feature. Select the person responsible for the approval of the travel requests for all employees (default approver).

Are you a company where there are different approvers for flight/ hotel/ train bookings?

You don't have to enter a companywide approver; just click on 'Advanced Settings' link. If approval is required for a product, just select an approver from the dropdown list of all users. If approval is not required for say Trains, you just have to click 'No' for Trains. Now, if you click on 'Back to basic settings' link, the data you had entered in advanced settings will vanish and you will be able to select a companywide approver again.

Are you a company where there are different approvers based on the amount of the trip?

You don't have to enter a companywide approver; just click on 'Advanced Settings' link to view product wise approval settings. Now, click on 'Advanced Settings' link for each product, which will open up the amount based approval settings. For each product, you can now set up an approver for any amount greater than a particular value and another approver for the rest of the amount.

Whom to setup as an alternate approver and booker?
After selecting the default approver, you can now select a person responsible for approving the trips when the default approver is on holiday (alternate approver). Then, select a person responsible for booking all the approved trips (companywide booker).
Why should I setup an x% price threshold?
Assume that the trip is approved by all the approvers and the booker tries to book the trip. If the fare has increased more than a fixed percentage compared to the approved fare, the system will not allow the booker to book the trip. In this case, the trip will be dropped and the user will have to select an alternate trip within the price range allowed and send it for approval again. This fixed percentage has to be setup here, and the default value is setup as 75%.
Do you want to bypass the approval process in case of emergencies?
If so, click on 'Allow emergency bookings' checkbox and any user who is allowed to book will be able to bypass the approval process by entering the reason for doing an emergency booking in step 2 of the booking process. The system will anyways send an email to the approvers to notify them that an emergency booking was done.
How do I setup department level approval settings?

Are you a company where there are different approvers for flight/ hotel/ train bookings?
You don't have to enter a companywide approver; just click on 'Advanced Settings' link. If approval is required for a product, just select an approver from the dropdown list of all users. If approval is not required for say Trains, you just have to click 'No' for Trains. Now, if you click on 'Back to basic settings' link, the data you had entered in advanced settings will vanish and you will be able to select a companywide approver again.

Are you a company where there are different approvers based on the amount of the trip?
You don't have to enter a companywide approver; just click on 'Advanced Settings' link to view product wise approval settings. Now, click on 'Advanced Settings' link for each product, which will open up the amount based approval settings. For each product, you can now set up an approver for any amount greater than a particular value and another approver for the rest of the amount.