GetGoing makes travel management easy and effortless for today’s busy professionals. If you’re looking for ways to simplify your travel booking experience, pre-trip approval could be a good fit for you. It allows your travelers to submit trip proposals and get approval before anything gets booked. In a nutshell, it helps you save time, save money, and stay within policy.
- Save time: Pre-trip approval lets you review your team’s travel plans before they dive down the rabbit hole of searching for the perfect flight. “Acceptable business travel” is unique to each company, and pre-trip approval helps you manage it easily.
- Save money: Travel budgets are often tight for companies. Pre-trip approval gives you a heads-up on upcoming travel plans so you can catch any non-essential travel or suggest more affordable options.
- Stay within policy: Pre-trip approval lets you assess a trip before anything is booked. You may want to push for a virtual meeting instead of travel, or share advice if a traveler is going to a high-risk country.
How does it work?
- When activated, travelers share their planned trip details (e.g., dates, times, destinations) with a company approver. The approver reviews the proposed trip and gives the green light for travelers to complete the booking.
- Once a pre-trip request is approved, travelers can easily book their trip – keeping within the details of their original planned trip (dates, times, destinations).
- Travelers can still browse GetGoing to see which flight, hotel, car and train options are available. This helps them prepare their trip proposals for pre-trip approval.
- Notifications are sent to travelers and approvers after each step of pre-trip approval.
How do I activate Pre-Trip Green Light Approval?
Pre-trip approval is available to all customers and can be enabled by an Admin on the Policy page.
- Assigning a Green Light Approver: Your approver can be a department manager, office manager, or any traveler in your account. A fallback approver must also be selected for travelers who might be assigned to an existing department.
- Submitting Trip Requests: Click on the “Submit Request” button to start the submission process. Enter information such as destination, dates, trip purpose, travelers, and additional notes before sending for approval.
- Creating a Trip: When Green Light is activated, trips can only be created from approved requests. To create a new trip, click on the approved pre-trip card. Important: Travelers can search for flights & hotels in browsing mode without making a pre-trip request but they won't be able to select any service for booking.
- Approvers: Once a trip request is made, approvers will be notified with an email. To approve a request, click on the pending request. From there, you have the option to approve or deny a request (and include a note). Once a request has been approved or denied, it’s automatically removed from the approver view.
Green Light FAQ
- Who can be listed as a Green Light Approver and Fallback Approver? All approvers must be selected from the Company Approvers list.
- If a trip has multiple travelers - each from different departments - would each traveler need approval from their personal department manager even though they are flying together? That’s correct. If they are on the same trip, each departmental manager must approve before any of the travelers can proceed to book.
- If a trip has multiple travelers and one of them is exempt from the approval process, will the Green Light travelers still need to wait for approval? If the trip is created by a traveler who is exempt, then no Green Light approvals are needed.