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Power Tools & Policy 
For step-by-step Power Tools and Policy instruction and other resources,please see the Travel Manager Resource Center.
POLICY
The travel policies for your company include things like preferred airline carriers, limits on car rentals, preferences for certain hotel chains. When you set a policy for your whole company or a traveler group within it, those preferences are taken into account when you create itineraries. For example, you can limit flights to having a maximum of 3 connections, and those will be the flights you are shown when you do a search.
In your search results, preferred vendors are marked with a medallion icon You can set policy in two ways: across your entire company and by traveler group. For example, you can require that all travelers fly on United Airlines, but allow only executives to fly first-class.
Is there a glossary of policy terms? AIR Advance Purchase — The Advance Purchase policy is how you define what fare purchase date is accepted as in-policy for advance purchase status. You may establish a minimum and maximum number of days in advance of travel the client may purchase his or her ticket and be in-policy. Class of Service — The Class of Service policy is how you define what is accepted in-policy for first-class and business-class flights. You can restrict flights on whether are domestic or international, or if the flight time exceeds a limit you specify. There are no restrictions on coach class. Low Fare — You can establish a Low Fare policy that will mark all flights that exceed the lowest logical fare by a specified threshhold as out-of-policy. Preferred Airlines — Encourage travel on your preferred carriers. You can give more than one airline preferred status. When you specify that flights between two specific airports be given preferred airline status, those flights will take precedence over airlines you label as preferred for all flights. You can also allow inexpensive non-preferred carrier flights to be in-policy by setting a Savings Tolerance (i.e., allow non-preferred carrier flights to be in-policy so long as they are less expensive than the lowest preferred carrier option by a specified threshhold). Out-of-Policy Airlines — Discourage travel on specified carriers. Reasonable Flights — The Reasonable Flights policy is how you define what flights are most desirable for Travelers. You specify a departure time window (number of minutes before or after the traveler-specified departure time that travelers should consider), a maximum trip duration, and a maximum number of connections. Web Fares — Promotional Web fares might be cheaper than "standard" fares but usually come with tight or costly restrictions on changes, cancellations, etc. Your company can put limits on whether or not (or under which circumstances) travelers can purchase Web fares. Alternative Airports — Choose a base airport and specify the alternate airports you want travelers to consider. ("When the user searches for ____, also search for these nearby airports ____ | ____ | ____.") Help travelers find alternative airports for flights to a given metro area. Control costs and provide more choices. Maximize savings and ensure that travelers review alternative airport options in key markets. HOTEL Lodging Per Diem — The hotel per diem applies to the base rate of the hotel stay, minus any taxes and fees. Per diem limits are set by international hotel rates and domestic hotel rates, and allow any number of per-region overrides. Hotel per diem values may be adjusted by Traveler Group. Hotel rates exceeding the specified per diem will be marked as out of policy in the search results display. Negotiated Property — The Negotiated Rate policy is your policy for booking preferred hotels. Preferred properties are hotels with which your company has negotiated a discounted rate. You can set the policy so that both preferred and non-preferred hotels are allowed as in-policy, or you can allow only negotiated hotels to be in-policy. Preferred hotels will be highlighted as such, but any specific non-negotiated room rates at those same properties or at other non-preferred properties will be marked as being "out of policy", as these bookings would not count toward your negotiated contract volumes. CAR Car Class — Encourage booking within your car class (full-size, luxury, etc.) guidelines.
Preferred Vendor — Encourage car rentals from your preferred vendors.
Out-of-policy bookings are reservations that fall outside of your company's stated policy. For example: company policy states that travelers can only rent midsize-class cars, but a traveler on a certain trip must transport multiple guests plus special equipment and therefore requests a full-size car or utility vehicle. He would be allowed to do so, but might need to get approval or enter a reason code for this request; his Travel Manager might also receive automatic notification. Out-of-policy refers to anything outside the named parameters (or search filters) of a company's policy settings. In the case of airlines, you can not only name preferred carriers, but also restrict specific others.
In your search results, preferred vendors are marked with red policy flag This option can be set on both the individual level and the traveler group level. Travel Managers can require travelers to enter reason codes at the time of purchase to record why they made out-of-policy purchases. They can also have an e-mail be sent to a selected party each time policy is broken by a member of a given group; the notification e-mail contains the given itinerary and the reason code (and the policy broken). And for air travel, it also shows the best in-policy option that was passed up. What are out-of-policy Reason Codes? Travel Managers define custom reason codes for Air, Hotel and Car for their companies. Users purchasing out-of-policy travel may be required to select a code from their company's list. Examples of Reason Codes for hotel exceptions:
Where do I set up company reward and affiliation programs? Company-wide corporate car or airline affiliation program information is entered in the Company Profile section.
Company rewards programs, offered to small businesses by certain airlines, allow companies to earn reward credits for purchases made with a specific airline by that company's employees, within certain specified program parameters. See the relevant airlines for these terms and conditions.
No, personal travel rewards programs are set up in an individual traveler's own User Profile. How are Expedia Corporate Rates different from standard Expedia Special Rates?
Our policy is to book fully-refundable airfares — how do I do this on Expedia? You will need to click both the Avoid most change penalties and the No advance purchase option while doing a fare search to return the best selection of fully refundable fares. Otherwise, our non-filtered search will return the fares with the best prices, which will include many non-refundable tickets. What is the Lowest Logical Fare? The Lowest Logical Fare is lowest possible fare based on a company's Reasonable Flight policy. This takes into account preferred airlines, departure time windows (number of minutes before or after the traveler-specified departure time that travelers should consider), maximum trip duration, and a maximum number of connections.
TRAVELER GROUPS . . . . .
What are Traveler Groups and how do I create them? Traveler groups can be organized along many lines: by department, by rank, etc. You might split your travelers into Sales, Marketing, IS, Development; or you could group them as Executives, Engineers and All Other, respectively.
Many policy settings and other options can be set specifically by traveler group. (See chart above.)
Simply create one group and assign it as the default. CUSTOM DATA FIELDS & DEPARTMENT CODES . . . . .
What are Custom Data Fields and how do I use them? Use custom fields to collect any additional information you need from travelers. You can add the fields to the user profile page, or collect the data during travel purchases. You may elect to include this data in reports. For example, additional information might include: spouse name or employee ID. They are also used to help track travel expenses — such as job code, cost center or reason for travel. These fields can be viewed by Travel Managers and Egencia Travel Consultants. Department codes allow you to track and report on travel purchases in a way that suits your business. If you prefer travel reports by department, enter a list of department codes. If you prefer travel reports to be broken down by cost center, enter a list of cost centers instead. From the homepage, go to Power Tools — Department Codes.
This option appears as an entry field on user profile pages. You may choose to prohibit users from overriding their department code during travel purchase.
No, department codes work independently of traveler groups. Department codes are assigned by individual. For example, a traveler who is an executive in Sales would have a sales team department code, but be in the executive traveler group (or the West Coast traveler group, etc). When would a traveler need to override a Department Code? By default, when a traveler makes a purchase, it is associated with the department code assigned in the user's profile, and is included as such in the reports. Overriding allows the traveler to assign the purchase to a different department code, which can be useful for cross-department cost reporting. |
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and yellow bar.
, which you can mouse over to see the policy you're violating.