Master data for travel expense management is maintained under Administration > Travel. There you store the vehicles with mileage and passenger allowances and the locations with the corresponding daily flat rates. Both master data sets are managed as lists with a validity period, so legal changes remain historically traceable.

A trip is recognized in ZEP through an activity that is marked as Travel activity. Activities are managed under Administration > Projects > Activities. When creating or editing an activity, you activate the checkbox Travel activity so that ZEP treats the activity as a trip during recording and displays the travel fields travel direction, Start, Destination, km, and passengers.

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

Usually a single travel activity is sufficient (typically with short form T and label Travel). If needed, several travel activities can be created, for example to record different types of trips (domestic, foreign, training) separately.

Under Administration > Travel > Vehicles, you manage the vehicles used in your company and the respective allowances for mileage and passenger compensation. Employees select from this list when recording a trip with mileage reimbursement.

When creating or editing a vehicle, the following fields are available:

The allowances are recorded separately by Tax-free and Taxable. This way, statutorily tax-free rates and rates above that can be managed separately:

When recording a trip, the current mileage of the vehicle can additionally be entered. This is an optional field — useful if you want to document vehicle usage to the kilometer.

For the "Description" field, you can store several language-specific names using the language tabs, for example German, English, and French. The name shown is automatically the one matching the language set for the employee or the project.

A vehicle's currency does not have to match the tenant's base currency. This is useful, for example, when employees or projects work abroad and you want to pass on local allowances unchanged. In this case, create a separate vehicle with the required currency.

When processing cost accounting, ZEP converts the allowances into the base currency where necessary. The exchange rate used is based on the date of the booked journey. The current rate is retrieved automatically from Fixer.io.

Multiple vehicles are combined into a vehicle list with a validity period. Per list you configure:

When the statutory rates change (e.g., new mileage rate from a new tax year), create a new vehicle list with the corresponding start date. ZEP automatically uses the list valid on the trip date — earlier trips retain their original rates.

Under Administration > Travel > Locations, you manage the locations selectable as start or destination and the corresponding daily flat rates for subsistence costs. Employees select start and destination from this list when recording a trip.

When creating or editing a location, the following fields are available:

If the evaluation currency matches the location currency, ZEP applies the fixed rate directly without conversion, avoiding rounding errors from converting back and forth. If the currencies differ, ZEP converts the location fixed rate, using the exchange rate valid on the date of the booked journey.

With Business trip under German travel-expense law, days between the outbound and return trip count as a full 24-hour absence from 0:00 to 24:00, even if no booking crosses midnight. With Other trip, this extension does not apply. Only the start and end of daily working time count here, and overnight stays are not taken into account.

The description can be stored in several languages: in the language selector of the "Description" field, choose the language you need, for example German, English, French, Spanish, Slovak, or Turkish, and enter the matching text. ZEP then automatically displays the description matching the active language, for example in reports or entry screens. If no description is stored for a language, ZEP falls back to the German description.

Additionally, you can mark a location using the option "Home office / no accounting of subsistence costs". Activate this checkbox if you want to keep track of when employees worked from home, while no subsistence costs and no travel allowances should apply for this location. ZEP then automatically sets all flat rates of this location to 0. As a result, a home office location does not appear in the employee's expense report or in the project accounting.

If you instead set all flat rates of a location to 0 manually, without activating the "Home office" checkbox, this location does not count as a home office location. The employee still does not receive subsistence costs. However, travel allowances or special daily rates can still be charged to the customer project for this location, if you configure this accordingly in the travel settings of the respective project.

Per location, the daily flat rates are stored according to the selected calculation method. Here, too, tax-free and taxable are consistently separated:

If an employee is provided with a meal during a trip, ZEP automatically reduces the calculated subsistence costs. Per location you store the corresponding deductions:

The deductions can likewise be stored in tax-free and taxable variants — relevant when the reimbursement exceeds the statutory rates.

Analogous to vehicles, locations are managed in location lists with a validity period. Per list you configure:

When the rates change (annual tax adjustments, new foreign rates table), create a new location list with the corresponding start date. ZEP automatically uses the list valid on the trip date.