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264 Chapter 7

Business trips are morę complicated. The agency has two employees for the organization of business rrips (although one of them works only three days a week). For each trip, there is always a single employee responsible who also carries out as many tasks as possible for this trip. In this way the service to clients should be guaranteed. For business trips a client needs a travel permit. Usually clients that are familiar with the process have already filled out a permit. Clients who arrive without a permit are given a blank permit that they can fili out later, after which they must return the permit to the agency. Travel permits are always checked before any other action is taken. If a permit is not filled out properly, it is returned to the client with the request to provide the miss-ing information and send the permit back as soon as possible. In case a permit is not returned in time, the travel agency can no longer guarantee a timely organization of the trip. In the rare occasion that this happens, a notification is sent to the client and the file is closed. If a travel permit is okay, it is filed and the actual organization of the trip can start. First, however, a copy of the file is sent to the finance department of SU, because this department is responsible for the financial aspects of the trip.

An employee of the finance department of SU checks whether the client is allowed to make business trips paid by SU. The results of this check are sent to the travel agency in an internal memo. If the result is negative for the client, which is hardly ever the case because clients usually know when they are permitted to make business trips, the finance department does not make any payments. If the result is positive, the finance department makes an advance payment on the bank account of the client. It also pays any registration fees that might need to be paid in case of conference visits. Finally it pays those flights of the trip that are madę for business purposes. However, these payments only can be madę after the finance department has received detailed pricing information from the travel agency. After all the necessary payments have been madę, the finance department is no longer involved in the preparations of the trip. However, after the client returns, the finance department handles the client’s declaration (see below).

To prepare a trip (private or business), the travel agency always starts with flight arrangements. If a trip involves one or morę flights, the responsible employee of the travel agency starts by preparing a flight Schedule that includes departure and arrival times of all flights as wełl as