A trip expense report serves as a container of expenses, which may include several different types of expenses that occurred during a business trip (e.g. accommodation, transport, per diems, mileage). This provides great benefits for both submitters and managers. By compiling all expenses that occurred during a trip into a single trip expense report:

To create a new trip expense report:

If you can claim per diems and/or mileage at your company, Yokoy can create mileage and per diems expenses automatically by selecting active stops (to determine the per diem rate applicable), choosing to calculate mileage, and/or to generate per diems. You can subsequently edit any mileage allowances and per diems generated automatically by Yokoy. You can sort the expenses by group, displaying all per diems or mileage expenses together.

By default, Yokoy chooses the mileage rate and per diem rates that match the trip information (locations, dates, and time entered in the trip).

If you have already created a trip, you can use it as a template to create a new trip.

You create a new trip by clicking on the Airplane icon in the Web app or tapping the + icon and then the Airplane icon in the mobile app.

Yokoy classifies trips into three types:

You can change the trip type at any stage. Departure dates, destination/stopover, and return information are still kept if you change the trip type. For example, if you choose a return trip type and then realize that you need to select a multi-stop trip, you can switch the trip type without losing any details.

With a return trip, the trip start and end locations are identical. For example, you travel from your office/home to a single customer location and return to home/to the office (i.e. Berlin → London → Berlin). A return trip consists of three locations:

Yokoy proposes either your office location or your home address as the start and end location of the trip, depending on your company settings. However, you can select another location if desired.

With a multi-stop trip, the trip start and end location may or may not be identical. There are usually several destinations (stops) between the start and end location. For example, you travel to several destinations from your home/office. (i.e. Berlin → London → Madrid → Lisbon → Rome).

A multi-stop trip consists of at least three locations, but there may be more:

In the same way as for return trips, Yokoy proposes either your office location or your home address as the start and end point of your trip. However, you can select another location if desired.

By default, you must have at least one destination in a multi-stop trip.

In a one-way trip, the trip start location is different to the trip end location. For example, an employee travels to a single destination and doesn’t plan on returning to the start location (i.e. Berlin → London).

In addition, there usually isn‘t any mid-way point. A one-way trip consists of two locations:

However, you can still add stopovers (temporary locations) in between, if needed. For example, you can add stopovers to indicate places you stopped while traveling by private car to assist when calculating mileage expenses.

After selecting the trip type, enter the itinerary data. The itinerary contains the trip locations you visit on your business trip, as well as the time you spent there.

In addition, for per diems, you can determine whether the location is an active stop or not. An active stop is defined as a location at which you fulfil a business purpose.

If you use your private vehicle and can claim mileage expenses at your company, Yokoy can automatically calculate mileage based on your trip locations.

Regardless of whether the location is the departure, destination, stopover, or return, you need to enter the addresses of the locations that you travel to and from during your business trip.

Depending on your company settings, addresses can be entered as:

In some cases, you may be required to enter a precise address, rather than just a city or country, as Yokoy uses this information to determine the per diem rate to apply for per diem allowances.

You need to enter the times at which you arrived or departed to/from each location.

You may need to specify different times such as trip start or time, departure time (local), time of border crossing, arrival time (local), etc. Generally speaking, all trips require a trip start date/time and a trip end date/time when you start and end your trip.

If your company requires per diems, times are used to break down the trip into segments when calculating per diems. For example, if your company policy requires border crossing times to determine applicable per diem policies, you may be asked to enter a trip start time, a departure time and arrival time for each location, and an trip end time, as well as time of border crossing in the case of foreign travel.

All times should be specified in the local timezone. You must select a time that falls after the time entered in the previous section. For example, the destination time must fall after the trip start time.

Depending on your company‘s settings, you may see an active stop toggle. Stops may be considered active or passing. An active stop is a location at which you fulfil a business purpose.

When you select a location as an active stop, Yokoy uses this location as the basis to calculate the applicable per diem rate. Usually, it takes the last active stop on your trip.

For example, on your two-day business trip, you travel through three different countries (Amsterdam, NL; Zurich, CH and Milan, IT). In the second country (Zurich, CH), you have a business meeting; this is an active stop as you are in Zurich for doing business. On the same day, you arrive in the third country (Milan, IT) at 11 PM, where you directly go to sleep. This is not an active stop as you didn‘t work in Milan on that day. Therefore, the per diem allowance is calculated using the rate for Zurich.

Depending on the next point in your trip, you can select this toggle to automatically generate mileage claims (if your company reimburses mileage when using your private vehicle) for the distance to the next point on your journey.

Once you have entered the Itinerary, proceed to the next page where you need to fill in trip details.

In the trip details section, the information displayed may vary depending on your company‘s settings. The Trip name field is auto-populated based on the details entered in the itinerary page, but you can change it.

In addition, the trip details page may contain these fields:

Cost object to be used when creating expenses for the trip. This cost object is assigned to any mileage and per diems generated automatically by Yokoy. By default, your default cost object is pre-selected.

If you receive per diems for business trips, you can choose to automatically generate per diem claims for the locations and times entered as part of the trip.

Your company may have set up additional fields to collect data for determining where and how expenses are posted in your company‘s finance and accounting system or to describe the purpose of the trip in greater depth.

For more information on how to fill these fields, consult your Yokoy admin.

Once you have completed all mandatory fields, click Next to continue to the next step, the trip summary. Here you can view all details of the trip. You can review or make changes (by clicking the pencil icon). When you edit a section, you return to the previous section in the process. Click the Create trip button to save the trip and continue to the trip overview.

In the trip overview, you can select the corresponding additions or deductions for the per diems, as appropriate.

Depending on your company settings, you may be able to edit per diems. To edit a per diem, select the per diem for a specific date and adjust the expense country, per diem allowance, per diem modification (addition/deduction), and cost object(s). You can also add additional comments and supporting documents, if required.

Alternatively, if you want to apply per diem additions/deductions directly, select the corresponding symbol next to the per diem. Each symbol represents a specific per diem addition or deduction concept. The addition and deduction concepts available depend on your company policies and/or location.

By selecting Add expense, you can add additional expenses to the trip. There are other ways to add expenses to your trip, but this is the easiest way if you already have the expenses ready when you are creating your trip.

Depending on the type of expense you want to add (and depending on your company policies), select one of the following options:

For example, you want add a receipt of your taxi trip, so you select the paperclip icon and upload the correct receipt. It is automatically added to your trip.

After you checked your trip expense report for correctness and added all separate expenses to it, which may have occurred before, during, or after the trip, select Submit to send your trip for approval.

If you take the same trip repeatedly, you can use an existing trip as a template to draft and create another trip. All trip information is copied from the original trip.

When you copy a trip, you copy the trip itinerary, adjusting the start and end dates only. Once confirmed, any automatically generated expenses (i.e. per diems and mileage) are automatically generated. Single expenses are not copied.

To do this in the web app, click the Copy trip button in the Actions column in the Trip expenses table. A popup window appears in which you can adjust the name and start date/time of the new trip. Click Next to continue to the draft of your new trip. In the mobile app, swipe left and tap the copy icon.

The values of all fields other than the start date and time fields are copied from the original trip. For example, all stops, cost objects, the time difference between stops, and any other information present in the original trip are copied to the new trip.