Business travel often starts with an urgent email: dates, destination, estimated cost and a request to approve the trip. The manager replies in a thread, the travel coordinator receives a forwarded copy, and the finance team learns about the expense weeks later.
A structured travel workflow connects those steps without removing the flexibility required for different destinations and policies. The requester gets a clear status, approvers get the right context, and the organisation gains a reliable record of travel plans and costs. That is why business travel requests for SharePoint and Microsoft 365 should share the same approval rules and travel calendar.
Why business travel needs a structured request process
Where informal travel requests break down
Travel combines several decisions: Is the trip necessary? Does it fit the budget? Who is travelling? Does the destination require additional approval? Who must arrange transport or accommodation?
When that discussion happens in email, important data is fragmented. A manager may approve the trip without seeing the total cost. The travel coordinator may not know that another team member will be at the same location. Finance may need to reconstruct the trip after it has happened.
What a complete travel process should include
1. Submit the pre-travel request
The employee selects the travel request template and records the destination, dates, business purpose, traveller and estimated costs. Required files and additional details stay with the request.
2. Send the request through approval
The direct manager can review the business reason first. Finance, procurement or a department head can be added in sequence or in parallel according to the policy. Email and Teams notifications tell each approver when a decision is waiting.
3. Coordinate the trip
After approval, the travel team or the traveller receives any follow-up task. The approved travel appears in a shared calendar so colleagues can plan meetings and understand availability.
4. Complete the settlement
A separate settlement or mileage reimbursement template captures actual costs. References to the original request, receipts, allowance calculations and multi-currency totals help finance review the claim without returning to old emails.
What changes when travel requests are structured
A three-day customer visit
Before
The request is spread across email, calendar invites and spreadsheets. Nobody knows whether the trip is approved until someone replies. The final expense claim needs manual comparison with the original estimate.
After
The traveller submits one request. The manager and finance see the same cost breakdown. The approved trip appears in a shared calendar. Settlement follows a defined template with receipts and current exchange rates.
How Travels Hub supports business travel in Microsoft 365
Travels Hub is designed for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. It provides pre-travel request templates, travel settlements and mileage reimbursements together with approvals, tasks, comments, checklists, reports, role-based permissions and an audit log.
- Travel Calendar: month and timeline views, department filtering and trip summaries.
- Request Templates: separate forms for pre-travel, settlement and mileage processes.
- Flow Builder: sequential, parallel and mixed approval paths with conditional logic.
- Budgets and currencies: cost tracking with automatic exchange-rate conversion.
- Notifications: status updates and reminders in the flow of work.
- Security: Microsoft 365 hosting, role-based access and audit history.
Practical setup checklist
- Define separate policies for local and international travel.
- Capture traveller, destination, dates, purpose and estimated costs in the request form.
- Set approval thresholds by amount, department or destination.
- Add tasks for booking, visas, equipment or other required preparation.
- Connect the pre-travel workflow to a settlement process.
- Agree who can view the travel calendar and who can export travel data.
Useful travel automation does more than approve a trip. It gives the traveller, manager, coordinator and finance team the same version of the plan.
Bring travel requests approvals and settlements together
Travels Hub brings the process into SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, where your team already works. Data remains in your Microsoft 365 tenant, and approval responsibilities stay visible.
Frequently asked questions
Can travel requests and expense settlements use different workflows?
Yes. Travels Hub supports separate request templates with their own forms, approval paths, permissions and validation rules.
Does the app show who will be travelling at the same time?
The Travel Calendar provides a shared view of travel requests and can be filtered by department. Clicking an entry opens a travel summary.
Can the workflow handle international currencies?
Yes. Travels Hub supports budgets and expenses across multiple currencies with automatic real-time currency conversion.
Can finance receive the data for reporting?
Reports and integrations can export data to a SharePoint list for further use with Power Automate and Power BI.