Posts Tagged "GovTrip"

We are a government agency and provide reimbursable administrative services to other government agencies. Of course, the service line I work for is travel. We support the E-Gov Travel initiatives with a customer support desk. We average about 5,000 calls per month, with most of them being about the system, but quite a few involve travel policy. The majority of these are in the category of airfare and the difference between contract fares (YCA), capacity controlled contract fares (-CA) and non-refundable fares. Frequent travelers understand the differences pretty well, but the vast majority of federal travelers are infrequent travelers and do not always understand what the requirements are for the types of airfares they can select. In addition to this, travelers...

My agency’s helpdesk not only supports our selected E-Gov Travel system, but all the associated questions that go along with it. A primary area is the Federal Travel Regulations. While seemingly straight-forward, there are many gray areas that are left to agency discretion. In fact, there are about 14 areas in the FTR that an agency must have a policy about such as the size of rental car to authorize, the amount of telephone calls to reimburse, the transportation method most advantageous to the government, etc. Often there is a something different to a policy question that makes it unique and has to be researched. In order to accomplish this, we have a Departmental travel contact for the agency’s Bureaus that assits. After that, we verify with...

We are a government Franchise Fund that performs reimbursable work for other agencies to save tax dollars. One function is E-Gov Travel. We offer E-Gov Travel to our customers and run a help desk to offer assistance to travelers using the software and in federal travel policy. We were fortunate to be providing this service prior to E-Gov Travel (then eTS) and were involved in the change to this system. We lead the initiative for my agency and participated in IV&V testing of all the vendors before making our selection.  We were the first agency to place a E Travel task order with GSA. Our group does TDY and PCS (relocation) travel. We also have an interface in our accounting system for obligations and payments as well as staff that administer the travel...

When I started working in travel in 1996, our agency was using the paper method of filing authorizations and vouchers.  Travel planners picked up the phone to make common carrier reservations with a small, dedicated TMC and called hotels directly.  Back in those dinosaur days, we kept a binder with paper copies of the per diem rates for various locations and would have to use those to ensure that travelers claimed the correct rates on their vouchers.  That was before the 75% M & IE allowance for the first and last day of travel.  Travelers actually recorded their beginning and ending time per day on paper.  We calculated per diem based on the number of quarters a person was in travel status.  Let’s say an individual started the first day of travel at...

There are three choices when an agency selects an eGov Travel System.  The choices are; Carlson Wagonlit Government Travel’s E2Solutions, EDS’s Fed Traveler and Northrop Grumman Mission System’s GovTrip. All of the eGov Travel Systems meet the minimum requirements which were defined by General Services Administration (GSA), who awarded the contract.  This article will be referencing GovTrip. GovTrip forces the  travelers to comply with the Federal Travel Regulations (FTR).  The FTR governs the expenses the traveler is allowed to claim and the requirements which must be met in order to conduct official travel on behalf of the Government.  An agency can have travel policy which is stricter than the FTR.  GovTrip can be set up to reflect some...

My government agency not only uses the imbedded TMC in E-Gov Travel, we also use an accommodated TMC.  In addition, we also have a task order on the GSA TSS Schedule (Travel Services Solutions) with a TMC that is used apart from E-Gov Travel for telephone reservations only. We have a mechanism to still prepare the authorizations and vouchers for travel in our E-Gov Travel system and record the transportation expense. We are glad that our chosen E-Gov Travel vendor recently allowed more TMCs to participate in E-Gov Travel. Prior to E-Gov Travel, we created our own independent contract for travel management services, since the existing GSA contract was non-mandatory. One thing the travelers find cumbersome is the fee process. It’s difficult for the...