Submitting travel expenses
Please submit receipts and invoices for travel expenses such as transportation tickets, train tickets and airline tickets via the expense reimbursement form. The travel expenses form only calculates the flat-rate travel expenses, such as per diems, accommodation allowances and mileage allowances directly related to a completed assignment.
Travel expenses are paid out with the salary and can be submitted after the end of the trip. Travel expenses submitted by the 15th of the month can still be included in the salary payment for the current month. Travel expenses received later will not be taken into account until the following month.
In the "Reimbursement of expenses" menu item, there is a button with several options for creating new expense reimbursements at the top right. Travel expenses can also be found here.
SCREENSHOT
Travel expenses step by step:
Choose a budget
The first step is to select the budget that will manage your employment and the order for your trip.
SCREENSHOT
As soon as you have selected the budget, you can also see what amount is currently available. As travel expenses are part of salary payments, an exception applies here. Travel expenses can also be requested if the budget is insufficient.
Country of departure and country of destination
As the business trip should always start from Germany, the country of departure will be Germany at the beginning. In the case of a tour, it may be that the next part of the trip has a different departure country.
The destination country of your trip is always the country to which the trip is going. For example, you have a business trip Berlin-Vienna-Berlin, then the country of arrival would be Austria. If the business trip is within Germany, the destination country is Germany.
It is not possible to choose multiple destinations in one travel expenses form. In case you want to add a reimbursement of a tour with mutliple stops on the way, please fill out a separate travel expense form for each part of your trip.
The countries are sorted alphabetically and some cities are also in the list, as different travel expense rates apply there than in the rest of the country.
Destination
As the dropdown for the country of arrival may only indicate the country, the exact destination is entered here. Enter the city here, e.g. Stuttgart or Salzburg.
Start and end of the trip and reason for travel
Here you enter the departure time from home and the exact time and place from which the journey begins. The same applies to the end of the trip (when you return home or end the business trip).
In the case of a business trip from which you go on vacation immediately, the business trip would end at the end of work on the assignment.
Write a reason for the trip under "Reason for the trip" if this is not clear from the combined order.
Border crossings
If you are traveling abroad, the form additionally includes fields for border crossings, which are used for the accurate calculation of daily allowances.
Border crossing by car and train: Time of the actual border crossing.
Border crossing by airplane: Time of departure in the departure country and time of landing in the departure country.
Mode of transportation
The selection of bicycle and motor vehicle/car enables the calculation of mileage reimbursement. We recommend keeping a travel log, even though your inputs here will be incorporated into an unalterable PDF.
Food and Drink
Smart can only reimburse you for daily allowances if your meal expenses have not already been covered elsewhere.
Regular activities at the same location: For instance, if you work at the same location every Monday, you can only receive daily allowances for the first five days. After that, it is considered another workplace.
Irregular activities: If you work irregularly at a location, you can claim daily allowances for up to 15 days per year.
Outside the local area: If it is not reasonable to travel home (over 120 km distance), overnight allowances are also applicable. It is also possible, under certain conditions, to receive daily allowances for a longer period in this case.
Order
The form can only be submitted if the assignment to which these travel expenses belong is selected. This is a control mechanism to verify that it is indeed a business trip with Smart.