Managing Travel Requisitions in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

A travel request is a business process where the employee/traveler takes a pre-trip approval from their managers or superiors. A travel request/requisition may contain information such as the date, destination, purpose of the travel and also details about  transportation, accommodation, cash advances and overall estimated cost of the travel.

The travel requisition functionality in Microsoft dynamics AX 2012 is a system aided way of managing the submission and approval of business travel trips. This is a source document which contains the details of the expenses which will be incurred on a travel.

In today’s post I will explain the travel requisition process functionality of AX 2012. Before we look at the steps for processing a travel requisition in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, let us  know how it can help organizations to control expenditures, specifically when they work on fixed price projects and the travel expenses must be under the budget of the project.

• It can be made mandatory for employees to get approval of a travel request prior to the travel.
• Several travel request policies can be setup at the Project, customer, and resource levels in terms of expense amounts on different expense categories.
• Travel requisitions can apply in cases whether the employees are charging the expenses to a corporate credit card, using cash from a cash advance or even out-of-pocket expenses which employees may incur and gets reimbursed for those later.

Travel requisition business process:

The first step involved in the travel requisitions management process in AX 2012 is to configure a workflow as desired by the business. Configure this workflow under the Travel and expenses module.

The next step is to set up all required travel request policies as per the business needs. Do the required policies setup under the Travel and expenses module.

If the business needs that pre trip approval is mandatory before employees submit their expenses, optionally enable the required parameter in the travel and expense parameters.

Once the prerequisites are all configured, let us now have an employee submit a travel request.

Navigate to Employee self-service portal > Expenses > Travel Requisitions.

Create new travel request and key in all the required details as shown in screen below.

In this post, the focus is only to highlight the prerequisites and various capabilities of the travel requisition functionality in Microsoft dynamics AX 2012.

You can proceed further in the process to complete the following and see the real-time impacts and results.

1. See the travel request policies and workflow in action when employee submits the travel requisition.
2. Submit the travel requisition.
3. Travel request gets reviewed and approved by Managers.
4. Employee has come back from the travel trip and prepares his expense report for submission.
5.   See the travel request mandatory in action during expense submission.

Feel free to ask any related questions on this and I will be glad to answer.

Thanks

Sandeep