Automated Travel Expense & Per Diem Claims
The receipt is photographed on the day the money goes out, and the day allowance is worked out from the times of the trip. Anything inside your policy goes straight through; only the line above a limit reaches a person, with the receipt, the limit and the reason side by side.
A receipt never says what makes it claimable
A restaurant receipt tells you what was spent, when and where. It does not tell you who sat at the table, on what occasion, against which project – or whether this was hospitality for a business partner or a traveller having dinner alone. That distinction decides whether the amount is fully deductible, whether it cuts the day allowance and whether it becomes taxable pay. Reading the receipt is the easy part; the missing information is the rest.
Two rule books apply to every receipt at once: tax law and your own travel policy. Both are valid side by side, and they contradict each other regularly. The day allowance is not negotiable – it follows the hours away per calendar day and is reduced for every meal the employer pays for, whatever was actually eaten. Your policy is yours to set: the nightly hotel ceiling, rail or air, the point at which a self-written receipt stops being acceptable. A room at 149 euros can be sound in tax terms and still breach that ceiling. In a trade fair week it is both, and still the right booking.
The work is not in filling the form in. It is in the queries, and they come back too late. Accounts asks at month end who sat at that table three weeks ago; the traveller no longer remembers, the manager approves without knowing the limit, and one empty mandatory field costs a payroll run. We therefore start at the capture and not at the form: the question is put on the day of the spend, not three weeks after it. That does not make the work disappear, it moves it – off the desk of accounts at month end and onto the person who still remembers, at the moment she still remembers. If you do not want that shift, automation will disappoint you.
Which trips and receipts are worth it
We start with the type of trip that occurs most often at your company and has the clearest rules. Everything else later shares the same capture and the same rule set.
Single-day customer and site visits
The most common starting point: travel, parking, food, no hotel. Hours away is all that matters here – it is the difference between nothing at all and €14.
Multi-day trips with an overnight stay
Arrival and departure days count differently from the full day between them. Breakfast on the hotel bill reduces the allowance, even with no amount printed.
Hospitality for customers and partners
The receipt on its own is not enough. Who was present, what the occasion was and a signature all have to be recorded, or the deduction is at risk.
Journeys in a private vehicle
A mileage rate instead of a receipt, which still needs date, destination, purpose and route. We take those from the appointment, not from memory.
Trips abroad with country rates
Every country carries its own rate, and with several in a day the last place of work decides. Foreign currency receipts come on top.
Small spend and the company card
Parking, baggage, tips: checking each one takes more time than the error it would catch is worth. All that matters is that every card transaction finds exactly one receipt.
One trip, line by line
Three days from Kassel to Leipzig: the day allowance follows from the times, the receipts meet the travel policy. Two lines go through, two do not.
Day allowance – calculated, not claimed
- €0.00single day, under 8 hrs away
- €14.00single day, more than 8 hrs away
- €14.00arrival and departure day with an overnight stay
- €28.00full calendar day, 24 hrs away
| Calendar day | Hours away | Tier | Meal deduction | Allowance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tue 14 Jul | 10 hrs 20 | Arrival day | no meal provided | €14.00 |
| Wed 15 Jul | 24 hrs 00 | Full day | breakfast −€5.60 | €22.40 |
| Thu 16 Jul | 17 hrs 05 | Departure day | breakfast −€5.60 | €8.40 |
| Total allowance, without a single receipt | €44.80 | |||
The mark inside each bar is the eight-hour threshold. It only decides on single-day trips; arrival and departure days earn the half rate with no minimum duration.
Receipts – read out and held against the policy
| Receipt | Amount read | Rule | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rail, Kassel to Leipzigphoto, 14 Jul, named ticket | €118.60 | standard class, no ceiling | goes through |
| Hotel Leipzig, 2 nightsinvoice, breakfast included | €298.002 × €149.00 per night | €120.00 per night maximum | €58.00 over limit |
| Restaurant, 15 Julphoto, amount read with confidence | €96.40attendees and occasion empty | hospitality needs both fields | detail missing |
| Taxi, station to plantself-written, no original | €24.50 | self-written up to €25.00 | goes through |
The breakfast deduction in the allowance comes from the hotel invoice – not from a question put to the traveller. One receipt, two effects.
Nobody recalculates a day allowance in normal working life. It surfaces during a payroll tax audit – and then for every trip in the years under review.
Example data from a domestic German trip. The €14 and €28 are the statutory flat rates; the €120 hotel ceiling and the €25 self-written receipt threshold come from an invented sample policy. Your own limits are yours to set.
From the photo to the payroll run
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Capture the receipt as it happens
A phone photo, a forward to a collection address or an upload – amount, date, merchant, tax and currency are read out, the original stays untouched. Two things are never on a receipt and are asked for at once: purpose and cost centre.
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Create the trip with its times
The trip comes from a calendar entry, a job or a project, with destination, start and end. Those times are the only basis for the day allowance, so they are recorded properly, not estimated at month end.
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Calculate the flat rates and the deductions
Day allowance per calendar day by hours away, abroad at the rate of the last place of work. Every meal the employer pays for reduces it: breakfast by 20 per cent, lunch and dinner by 40 per cent each.
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Check against policy, escalate only the exceptions
Hotel ceiling, hospitality fields, the self-written receipt threshold, card matching and duplicate detection run as one rule set across every line. Each rule writes its result into the audit trail, including the rules that did not bite – that is what makes an approval defensible months later.
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Hand over and reimburse
Posting record, original receipt and audit trail go to DATEV, the ERP system or payroll. Tax-free and taxable portions are separated, and the money moves with the next payroll run.
What changes day to day
Today
- Receipts sit in a jacket pocket until month end
- Someone recalculates the allowance in a spreadsheet
- The breakfast deduction is forgotten or guessed at
- Hospitality arrives without attendees or occasion
- The reimbursement misses one payroll run
With automated checking
- Receipts are photographed on the day of the spend
- The day allowance follows from the times of the trip
- Every meal provided is deducted automatically
- Mandatory fields are asked for before submission
- Complete claims reach the payroll run
Where the automation stops
Four points we work through before quoting. The first one decides whether the project is worth doing for you at all:
- With few trips this does not pay for itself. If two people travel in a quarter and a month never brings in thirty travel receipts, a decent template and a deadline people actually keep will get you further than a budget of €1,490. The sums work when several people travel regularly, when hospitality and trips abroad occur, and when accounts routinely has to send claims back for missing details. If that is not you, we say so in the intro call rather than after it.
- The tax judgement stays with your tax adviser. Whether a meal counts as business hospitality, whether the three-month rule bites when someone works the same site for a long stretch, and how a second household is treated are not questions the automation answers. It calculates with the rates you enter and has no way of noticing that one of them is wrong: a transposed digit in the country rate table runs unopposed through every claim until somebody goes looking for it, and then retrospectively through all of them. Who maintains that table, and who reads a change back, has to be settled before we start.
- Reading a receipt does not replace having one. Thermal paper fades, a fuel receipt left in a car is blank within weeks, and a photo taken in poor light reads an 8 where a 3 was printed. A share of the lines therefore goes for visual inspection permanently: it falls as the photos get better, it never reaches zero, and budgeting for a hundred per cent straight-through rate is budgeting for fiction. A missing receipt stays missing; whether a self-written one will do is your company's call, not a setting.
- No software makes people submit on time. Reminders, a firm deadline ahead of the payroll run and a manager view of what is still outstanding help noticeably. Anyone who has collected receipts for three months will carry on collecting them for three months. What shifts the behaviour is a rule with a consequence – late claims paid with the run after next, for instance – and that is a management decision, not a system setting.
Fits your finance systems
Scope and price
The entry price covers domestic trips with one policy, one approval route and one target system. What moves the price, we say before the quote.
- Receipt capture by photo plus a collection address for email
- Amount, date, merchant, tax rate and currency read out
- Day allowance and overnight rate by hours away, with meal deductions
- Your travel policy as a rule set: limits, mandatory fields, exceptions
- One approval route by your amount thresholds and cost centres, with a deputy
- Handover to one system with original receipt and audit trail
- Documentation, a handover session and 30 days of support
What increases the price
- Country rates and foreign currency receipts
- Matching against company cards or agency statements
- Mileage claims with mileage log requirements
- Several entities or clients with policies of their own
- Connection to payroll and to an audit-proof archive
Trips abroad with country rates, company card matching and several legal entities with policies of their own typically land in the range of our Workflow Advanced package from €2,490. We quote the binding fixed price after the intro call.
All prices excl. VAT · operation and further development optionally via a support package
What you get
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A production claim flow
Set up from photo to handover, signed off with a real trip
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Your travel policy as a rule set
Limits, mandatory fields and exceptions documented, changeable later
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An audit trail per claim
Which rate was calculated how, who approved when, what was handed over
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A briefing for three roles
Travellers, managers and accounts each get one short guide
Frequently asked questions about expense claims
These solutions fit alongside
Approval Workflows
The same approval logic elsewhere: purchases, contracts, exceptions.
Accounts Payable Automation
The bigger sibling: invoices with an order and goods receipt behind them.
AI Document Processing
The technology underneath, if other document types need reading out too.
Leave Request Automation
The same route through the manager, only with days instead of amounts.
Do you know what one expense claim costs you?
In the free intro call we work through one real claim from the last few weeks – receipts, times and your policy side by side. You leave with a number: how many queries that single claim cost, and how many of them a written rule would have spared you.
Book a free intro callWhere automated travel and expense processing creates value in everyday work
Receipts, travel data and approvals are captured centrally, checked against policy and prepared completely for accounting.
Three concrete operating scenarios to compare with your own process.Capture receipts on mobile
Photo, amount, date and merchant are assigned directly to a trip or cost centre.
Apply expense policy
Limits, required fields and receipt types are checked before approval.
Prepare accounting handoff
Approved records move to the target system with the original receipt and validation status.
A strong fit when …
Documents, amounts and approvals follow explicit rules; exceptions must remain visible instead of being decided silently.
- You handle recurring expense receipts using repeatable rules.
- The intake, target system and accountable business role can be named clearly.
- Exceptions are allowed to remain visible and move to people deliberately.
Deliberate automation boundary
Unclear hospitality purposes, missing receipts, policy deviations and tax exceptions are not approved automatically.
Explore the technical approach and platformsEstimate time savings with your own volume
The calculator uses 8 minutes today and 2 minutes after automation as fixed example assumptions. It does not replace process analysis.
Illustrative estimate based on the visible assumptions — not a guarantee.