Under Administration > Travel, you find the central master settings for travel expense management — divided into Subsistence costs (calculation logic), Cost accounting (output format and level of detail), and the master data Vehicles and Locations.

Here you configure how ZEP calculates the daily flat rates for subsistence costs (also known as per diem or daily allowance). The settings apply company-wide for all employees.

How to record trips and travel times is described in the article Recording Travel Times and Travel Expenses.

The calculation method determines which method is used to calculate subsistence costs — according to German or Austrian tax rules, calendar-day or 24-hour rule, or without an automatic subsistence cost calculation. The choice controls which additional fields become visible in the form.

Under the "Germany" method, the statutory flat-rate rules apply: for an absence of more than 8 hours, ZEP applies the lower daily allowance, and from 24 hours onward, the full daily allowance.

If employees received a complimentary breakfast, lunch, or dinner on a travel day, ZEP deducts a fixed percentage from the daily allowance for each meal. Employees indicate which meals were provided directly in time recording for that travel day.

When the German procedure is active, two time-limit options can be enabled: the three-month rule for prolonged work at the same project or at the same customer. When the limit is exceeded, ZEP automatically switches to taxable reimbursement.

ZEP determines the date from which you have booked more than two days per week to the same work location and the same project or the same customer. An interruption of more than four weeks resets this deadline. If the three-month deadline is likely to be exceeded, ZEP displays a corresponding notice in the employee's Cost Accounting.

When this option is active, ZEP detects an overnight stay based on the travel duration spanning evening and morning. Three detail values control the detection:

If you deactivate "Detect overnight stay", ZEP generally does not take an overnight stay into account when calculating the meal allowance. This particularly affects arrival and departure days on which the minimum absence time is undercut: for these days, ZEP then never calculates a meal allowance.

If you enter "0" for "Minimum", ZEP instead always recognizes an overnight stay as soon as a trip exists - even without a break between the time entries. In this case, ZEP always calculates a meal allowance for arrival and departure days on which the minimum absence time is undercut.

When an employee has booked time on multiple projects on the same day, this setting controls how the calculated subsistence costs are distributed across the projects:

The calculation is based on a two-step logic: first, ZEP determines the subsistence allowance for the day from the employee's perspective, based on all time bookings for that day across all projects. The amount depends on the rates per absence duration stored in the locations master data. Only in the second step does ZEP distribute this daily allowance across the projects involved that day.

For internal cost accounting, the proportional distribution across all involved projects always applies, regardless of the setting selected here. Only with the option "Proportional across all projects" does the externally billed subsistence amount match this internal total exactly. With the option "Only for the same customer", the externally billed amount can differ depending on the projects and customers involved.

This setting is only available if you previously selected "Subsistence costs for projects from different customers are separated" for the proportional distribution. It determines how bookings for other customers' projects affect a project's absence time:

Please note: the daily subsistence allowance paid out to an employee does not equal the sum of all project invoices. Projects of different customers can each be invoiced separately for the same daily subsistence allowance, without bookings on other projects affecting one another.

Controls whether all start and destination locations from the location lists are selectable in the trip recording forms or only a reduced list of typical locations. For very large location lists, the reduced list improves clarity.

The setting also affects the employee's expense statement:

With several entries on the same day, the consolidated view can be clearer, while the individual view makes each leg of a trip traceable.

Specifies how locations are displayed in the expense report, project time record, and project sales volume — either as a short form with a legend at the end of the report, or directly as the full label.

Here you configure the output format of the printed expense report that employees receive for approval and payment.

For the three report tables Subsistence costs, Mileage, and Receipts, you control which reference levels appear in the columns:

The approved expense report is output in one of the supported formats — PDF is suitable for archiving and handover to accounting, HTML for quick display in the browser.

With the checkbox Approved expense report in landscape format, the PDF output is switched to landscape orientation. Recommended for detailed trips with many receipts and columns that become too narrow in portrait format.