Added in Version 5.5.1

Support Pocket Money for per diem. See Allowance Rule

Support meal deduction percentages based on time out of office. See Deduction Rule

Added in Version 5.5 

This feature allows users to enter the actual time leaving and returning to the office. Similar to the default meals per diem setup, up to four allowance rules may be created for the out of office tracking of the Meal Per Diem expense type. This is done by selecting the minimum and maximum hour ranges for each of the "Out of Office" labels in the Per Diem Hours tab (This tab will not display until Per Diem Hours field is set to Yes and expense type has been saved). For example, if a user is only to be paid a full days meals per diem rate when they are out of office more than 15 hours, a row would be added to the Per diem Hours tab for "All Day" with a minimum of 15.01 and maximum of 24. The hour maximum and minimum must be between 0.00 and 24 and have no overlapping times.

1. In the Per Diem Hours field, select Yes
2. Click Save
3. Click Per Diem Hours in left column of expense type
4. Add up to four ranges for time out of office

See Allowance Rule for managing allowances

Multiple City Same Day Travel

Meals Per Diem expense types with Per Diem Hours enable allows for multiple city same day travel. When this occurs on an expense report the Per Diem allowance will either a single highest or lowest Per Diem rate for this days travel, depending on system setup.

Demo of Per Diem tracking actual hours

This is a "How to" scenario to aid in setting up the new features added to support European Unition (EU) meals per diem requirements. The scenario will provide an example case and demonstrate how the administrator would setup the per diem meals Expense type with hour tracking enabled, the Allowance rules with "pocket money" enabled, and Deduction Rules with a percentage  deduction based on an employees duration out of the office.

Note: The new functionality does on affect existing meals per diem setup and has been added to support meals per diem regulations in EU.

 So whats new in Version 5.5.1 and up? DATABASICS has added functionality to accommodate meals per diem setups that require:

1. The ability to track time for Per Diem Meals expense types (when enabled). This allows tracking of time out-of-office down to the minute on expense entry. Departure and Arrival times are then used to calculate the per diem rate based on user duration out of the office.
2. The ability to apply a percentage deduction per meal provided that is based on the users time out of the office.
3. The ability to support "Pocket Money" an incidental charge that is percentage added on top the per diem rate.

Please note this example is only to aid in the setup of the new meals per diem features added in version 5.5.1. For meals per diem setups that do not require these features please refer to the standard per diem setup outside this example.

The following is an overview of how the meals per diem setup with track actual time, pocket money and meals deduction based on hours may look during setup. These steps demonstrate

• Step 1 the expense type setup with per diem hours tracking enabled

• Step 2 the allowance rule setup with pocket money support

• Step 3 the deduction rule setup with meals deduction percentage based on users time out of office

Example Requirements

Allowance Rule Requirements for example: This will be referenced in (Step1 and Step 2)

          A. If the employee stays over 18 hours abroad

               Employee will be assigned with full per diem rate

          B. If the employee stays over 12 hours abroad and less than 18 hours

               Employee will be assigned with 3/4 or 75% per diem rate

          C. If the employee stays over 4 hour abroad but less than 12 hours

               Employee will be assigned with Half Day or 50% per diem rate

          D. If the employee stays from 1 hour abroad but less than 4 hours

               Employee will be assigned ¼ or 25% per diem rate

Pocket Money Requirements for example: This will be referenced in (Step 2)

          Employee will receive a 20% Pocket Money added to the per diem rate.

          Per diem rate * .20 = Pocket money amount

Meals Deduction Requirements for example: This will be referenced in (Step 3)

 If there is a meal (which is included e.g. in the accommodation costs) provided during the trip, following deduction is made - for each meal provided:

          i. 70% deduction from the per diem rate for each meal provided

             If the employee stays over 1 hour abroad but less than 4 hours

          ii. 50% deduction from per diem rate for each meal provided

             If the employee stay over 4 hours abroad but less than 12 hours

          ii. 35 % deduction from base PDR for each meal provided

             If the employee stays over 12 hours abroad and less than 18 hours

          iii. 25 % deduction from base PDR for each meal provided

             If the employee stays over 18 hours abroad

Step 1:

Hours tracking is an optional setting that is selected on the initial setup, by default hours tracking is set to "No." This step shows hour to configure the hours mapping for "Per Diem Meals Only" expense types that have per diem hours enabled.

1. Click on Expense to expand the menu.
2. Click on Expense Type.
3. Click the Add button in the Expense Type window.
4. In the ID field, enter an ID for the Expense Type.
5. In the Expense Group field, select the expense type group to which the expense type will belong
6. In the Name field, enter a name to identify the expense type.
7. In the Restrict Access field, select Yes or No
8. In the Description field, enter text to further identify the expense type.
9. In the Format Type field, select Meals Per Diem Only.
10. In the City field, select Yes
11. In the Per diem hours field, select Yes. This enable the hours mapping option after the expense type has been saved.
12. In the Meals Provided, select Yes if to enable the meals provided option or No if not applicable. For this example the meals provided will be enabled so Step 3 can be demonstrated.
13. In the Recurring Charge field, select Yes or No. For example the recurring charge will be enabled.
14. Select Save

Once the new Expense type has been saved an additional navigation link will display in the left column named Per diem Hours. This allows entry of the hours mapping for this expense type. For this example the following steps will demonstrate how the "All Day", which is defined in "A" of Allowance Rule Requirements, setup is configured.

    15. Select Per diem hours from the left navigation
    16. Select Add
    17. In new row select the Out of Office cell, then select All Day from the drop-down list
    18. In Minimum Hour cell, enter the minimum hour "18.00" for All Day mapping.
       (Refer to "A" in Allowance Requirements for this example)
    19. In Maximum Hour cell, enter the maximum hour "24.00" for All Day mapping.
       (Refer to "A" in Allowance Requirements for the example)
    20. In Description cell, enter description for out of office
    21. Select Save All

These steps would need to be repeated for example allowance requirements B, C, and D to complete expense type hours mapping.

This completes the Expense type setup for this example. Next the Allowance Rule will need to be configured.

Step 2:

Please note the only change to the Allowance setup is the addition of the "Pocket Money" column. By default the Pocket Money column will be set to "0.00" for all new and existing per diem allowances. Below we have listed the Pocket Money requirements for this example and the steps will show how to set this allowance up for an example Operating Unit name "EUROPE"

Pocket Money Requirements
          Employee in the "EUROPE" operating unit will receive a 20% Pocket Money added to the per diem rate.

          Per diem rate * .20 = Pocket money amount

1. Expand Expense
2. Expand Per Diem Setup
3. Click Allowance Rule
4. Click the Add button
5. In the Effective Date field, select when this allowance rule will become effective. For this example and effective date of "01/01/2014"
6. In the Operating Unit field, select an operating unit if the allowance will only apply to one home operating unit. For this example the allowance rule will only apply to the operating unit named "EUROPE".
7. The next 3 fields Country, State and City allow the allowance setup to be restricted to specific location(s). For this example the Country, City and State fields will be set to "---", this applies the allowance rule to all countries, states and cities for the "EUROPE" home operating unit.
8. In the Out Of Office field, select All Day.
9. In the Per Diem Type field, select Meals Per Diem Rate
10. In the Rate Type field, select Percentage of per diem
11. In the Currency field, select currency if needed. For this example the currency field will be left empty
12. In the Value/Percentage field, set value to "100," since All day in step "A" is 100% of the per diem rate
13. In the Pocket Money field, select the incidental amount the user will receive on top of the per diem rate. For this example the Pocket Money we changed from the default "0.00" to 20 so the employee will receive an additional 20% on top of the per diem rate.
14. Select Save

To complete the Allowance rule setup for this example the steps would be repeated cases B, C, and D of the Allowance rule requirements listed above.
This completes the Allowance rule setup with a 20% addition of Pocket Money. The next and final setup for the example is to setup the Deduction Rule.

Step 3:

As listed in example the Meals Deduction Requirements are as follows:

          i. 70% deduction from the per diem rate for each meal provided

             If the employee stays over 1 hour abroad but less than 4 hours

          ii. 50% deduction from per diem rate for each meal provided

             If the employee stay over 4 hours abroad but less than 12 hours

          ii. 35 % deduction from base PDR for each meal provided

             If the employee stays over 12 hours abroad and less than 18 hours

          iii. 25 % deduction from base PDR for each meal provided

             If the employee stays over 18 hours abroad

The example requirements call for a percentage deduction to be applied per meal that is provided to the user, but as listed above the percentage will change depending of the users amount of time out of office. For example, if we look at requirement "i" we can see that a 25% deduction is applied for each meal that is provided if a user is out of the office a full day. So if a user takes 2 meals there would be a deduction of 50% applied to the per diem rate (25% for meal 1 and 25% for meal 2 = 50%)
The following steps will show how the deduction rules are setup for requirement "i" when a "Breakfast" meal is provided to a user and that user has enough hours for an "full day" per diem rate.

1. Expand the Expense menu
2. Expand the Per Diem Setup menu
3. Click Per Diem Deduction
4. Click the Add button
5. In the Effective Date field, enter date from which this deduction will be effective. For this example the effective date will be "01/01/2014"
6. For this example the Country, City and State fields will be set to "---", this applies the deduction rule to all countries, states and cities.
7. In the ID field, select [Breakfast Provided Rule Based]. This tells the system to apply this deduction for the breakfast provided check box on the expense type.
8. In the Value Type field, select % of original rate for full day. This tells the system to apply this deduction if the user was out of the office for a full day.
9. In the Breakout Type, select Yes, apply to adjusted per diem rate
10. In the Value/Percentage, enter "25". This applies the 25% deduction for this meal as state in "i" of example requirements.
11. For the example the Currency field left empty.
12. In the Per Diem Type field, select Meals Per Diem Rate
13. Select Save

These steps will need to be repeated for all meals provided options (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner) and for all of the out of office options (*% of original rate for full day, % of original rate for ¾ day, % of original rate for ½ day, % of original rate for ¼ day*) to complete the Deduction rule step.

This completes the example of the Hours Tracking and Pocket Money Example.

Once the setup is completed an additional setup change will need to be made by DATABASICS to allow incidentals, if applicable.