The Approve Travel Request module lets authorized users, such as managers, HR, or assigned approvers, review, approve, or reject travel requests.
If a travel approval flow is configured, requests follow the flow step by step. If no flow applies, the request goes directly to the Subscriber Admin.
Where to Find It #
Go to Dashboard → Travel → Approve. This is the one place where travel requests are approved or rejected — you cannot act on a request from the All Travel Requests page or from its details page opened from there.
Good to know: the table only lists travel requests you are actually eligible to act on, so you are never sifting through the whole company’s travel. If you are not an approver anywhere, the page simply comes up empty rather than showing an error.
Who Can Use This Feature #
Subscriber Admin can approve or reject any travel request in the company, at whichever step it currently sits on, without needing any specific permission.
Employees can approve or reject a travel request only when they’re the assigned approver for its current step and hold the matching permission below.
Permission Behavior
Two permissions control these actions:
- Approve Travel Request (As Approver)
Required action: Update
Shows the Approve option for travel requests where you’re the assigned approver. - Reject Travel Request (As Approver)
Required action: Update
Shows the Reject option for travel requests where you’re the assigned approver.
Both of the following must be true before an Approve or Reject option shows up for a given travel request:
- You’re assigned as the approver in the relevant approval flow step (Reporting Manager, Company Admin, or a Selected Employee named on that step).
- You hold the matching permission for that action.
Good to know: Being included in the approval flow is not enough by itself. You also need the required permission to take action.
Likewise, having the permission does not make you an approver automatically. You must also be the assigned approver for the request’s current step. If either requirement is missing, the Approve or Reject option will not appear.
To open and view the details of a travel request, the employee also needs the View Travel Request Details permission.
These permissions can be assigned directly to an employee, or to an entire team at once (so everyone on that team inherits them). See the Permissions Management guide for how to assign permissions.
How Approval Flow Works With Travel Requests #
This works exactly the same way as leave and bill approval do — if you’ve read either of those guides already, the mechanics here will feel familiar, since all three use the same underlying approval-flow engine.
The Moment a Travel Request Is Created
The instant an employee (or someone submitting on their behalf) submits a travel request, Office-X checks the approval flows set up under Dashboard → Admin → Approval Flows to find the one that applies to that employee — based on the employee themselves, their team, gender, department, or designation. At most one flow applies to any single travel request.
If an Approval Flow Applies
The travel request is saved as Pending and linked to that flow, with a step-by-step checklist built for it — one entry per step, each starting out as “waiting.” Only the first step’s approver(s) are contacted at this point; nobody assigned to a later step hears anything yet. Whether that first-step notice arrives as an in-app notification, an email, both, or neither depends on how that step was configured. The employee who submitted the request always gets their own confirmation email regardless.
Good to know: if a step’s approver type is Reporting Manager but the employee doesn’t actually have one assigned, the Subscriber Admin automatically stands in as the approver for that step instead — so the request never gets stuck with nobody able to act on it.
If No Approval Flow Applies
The travel request is still created and saved as Pending, but with no step checklist at all — it simply waits on the Subscriber Admin. Only the Subscriber Admin is notified (an in-app notification), and no one else can act on it until an approval flow is set up to cover that employee.
Approval Flow Behavior #
Only users who are assigned as approvers in the applicable approval flow step can take action on the travel request. Each step is set up with exactly one approver type:
- Reporting Manager
- Company Admin
- Selected Employees
If no approval flow is configured, travel requests default to the Subscriber Admin — see above for exactly what that means.
Step-by-Step Approval, In Detail #
When a flow has more than one step, the steps are always processed strictly in order — a later step can never be acted on before every step before it has been approved.
Approving a step does not approve the whole travel request. It only marks that one step as approved (recording who approved it and when), moves the request on to the next step if one exists, and notifies that next step’s approver(s) that it’s now their turn.
Only when the final step is approved does the travel request’s overall status actually change to Approved. Up until then, the request stays Pending, even though one or more steps have already said yes.
For example, in a 3-step flow (Reporting Manager → Travel Coordinator → Company Admin): once the Reporting Manager approves, the request is still Pending — it’s simply moved on to the Travel Coordinator. Once they approve, it’s still Pending, now waiting on the Company Admin. Only once the Company Admin approves does the status finally become Approved.
A Reject at any step — first or last — immediately sets the travel request’s overall status to Rejected. There’s no need for every step to weigh in; one rejection ends it, and steps after the rejected one are simply never reached.
What Happens to a Step Once It’s Decided #
Once an approver has acted on their step, they can’t act on that same travel request again. If they’re also the assigned approver for a later step in the same flow, they’ll get another chance to act when the request reaches that step; otherwise, their involvement in taking action is finished. They can, however, still view the request and add comments for as long as it remains open for comments (see Comments & Communication below).
The Subscriber Admin’s Role #
The Subscriber Admin can always step in and approve or reject whichever step is currently pending on any travel request — even if they aren’t personally named as that step’s Reporting Manager, Company Admin, or Selected Employee. But this only lets them act on the current step; it does not let them skip ahead or finalize the whole request early.
In other words: if a 3-step flow is configured and the Subscriber Admin clicks Approve on step 1, the outcome is exactly the same as if the regularly assigned step-1 approver had clicked it — step 1 is marked approved, and the request moves on to step 2, still Pending. The only situation where the Subscriber Admin’s decision is instantly final is when no approval flow applies at all — there, since there’s no step structure, a single Approve or Reject from the Subscriber Admin is the whole decision.
Finding the Requests You Need #
Each row on the Approve Travel Requests table shows the ID, Employee, Start Date, End Date, Travel Mode, Attachment (a tick or cross), Status, Requested Date, and the Action menu. Newest requests come first.
To get to the right one quickly:
- Search — type an employee name or a Request ID.
- Filters — the Filters button opens Status (All, Pending, Approved, Rejected), Travel Mode and a Requested Date From/To range. Set Status to Pending to see just the requests still waiting on someone. The button shows how many filters are on, and Clear removes them all.
- Columns — hide the columns you do not use.
- Pages — 10 rows per page by default, switchable to 20 or 30, with a “go to page” box.
Action Options for Approvers #
Eligible approvers can perform the following actions based on their approval flow assignment and permissions:
- Approve
Approves the travel request’s current step. If a multi-step approval flow is configured, the request moves to the next approver. If it is the final approval step, the travel request becomes Approved. This takes effect immediately when you click it — there’s no confirmation prompt. - Reject
Rejects the travel request immediately, regardless of which step it was rejected at. There’s no built-in reason field on the Reject action itself — if you want to explain why you’re rejecting a request, add a Comment first (see Comments & Communication below), since comments can only be added while the request is still Pending. - View
Opens the travel request details so the approver can review the full travel information before taking action. - Comment
Adds a note to the request. This is the only way to put a reason on record, since Approve and Reject have no reason field of their own.
Good to know: Approve and Reject each act on one travel request at a time — there is currently no option to select several requests and approve or reject them together in bulk.
Good to know: Notifications depend on what happens to the travel request:
- Rejected: Only the employee the request belongs to is notified.
- Intermediate approval: The employee is notified that the request moved forward, and the next approver(s) are notified that it is their turn.
- Final approval: The employee is notified that the request is fully approved.
Approvers who already completed their step will not receive another notification as the request moves forward.
What Approvers Can View #
From the travel request details page, approvers can review:
- Travel title
- Destination
- Travel dates
- Travel mode
- Transportation expense
- Hotel expense
- Currency
- Uploaded attachments
- Approval workflow progress and history
- Comments
The Approval Workflow section shows all approval steps in one place, including each step’s position, status, approver, and action date. You can also see who the request is currently waiting for.
If the travel request is rejected at any step, the approval process stops there. The remaining steps are not shown as skipped or processed.
The Timeline #
Alongside the approval steps, the details page carries a Timeline — a plain Date / Action / Action By table of what has actually happened to this request, oldest first. It is the quickest way to see the full story before you decide:
- Created — when it was submitted and, importantly, who submitted it. If a travel coordinator or HR filed it on the employee’s behalf, you will see that here rather than having to guess.
- Edits — if the request was changed after submission, each change is listed field by field, from the old value to the new one. Worth a glance before approving: the dates or costs you checked yesterday may not be the ones in front of you today.
- Each approval or rejection — which step, who acted, and when.
The two views answer different questions: the Timeline shows what has happened, while the Approval Workflow section shows the planned route and which step is waiting now.
Comments & Communication #
Approvers can add comments to travel requests to:
- Provide instructions or feedback to the employee
- Request clarification regarding travel details
- Explain the reason for rejection, since there’s no reason field on the Reject action itself
- Track communication during the approval process
Comments support file attachments, up to 5 per comment. Anyone who can already view the travel request can comment on it — the requester, the requester’s reporting manager, the Subscriber Admin, any approver named anywhere in the flow, or anyone holding View Travel Request Details permission — but only while it’s still Pending. As soon as it’s Approved or Rejected, commenting closes; comments made while it was still pending remain visible afterward.
All comments are logged and visible in the travel request history for transparency.
Your Daily Routine #
Clearing your travel approvals:
- Go to Dashboard → Travel → Approve.
- Open Filters and set Status: Pending — that is your actual to-do list.
- Click a row to open it. Check the destination, the dates, the travel reason, and the transportation and hotel costs against what the trip should reasonably cost.
- Glance at the Timeline for any edits made since submission, and to see who filed the request.
- Decide promptly. Travel requests are time-sensitive — tickets get more expensive, and the employee cannot re-raise a request for a trip that has already started, because the start date cannot be in the past.
- If you are going to reject, write your comment first. Reject has no reason field, and comments close the moment the request is rejected — so an unexplained rejection stays unexplained.
- Click Approve or Reject. Both take effect immediately, with no confirmation prompt, so be sure before you click.
- Approving a step in a multi-step flow does not finish the request — it hands it to the next approver. The employee still sees Pending until the last step is done.
Good to know: if you open a request and the Approve/Reject options are not there, it is one of three things — it is not your step’s turn yet, you have already acted on your step, or someone else (often the Subscriber Admin) got there first. Refresh the page to see the current status.
Notifications and Activity Log #
- When it is your turn, you get a notice asking you to act — in-app, by email, both, or neither, depending on how that step was set up in the approval flow. The email links straight to the request.
- When you approve an intermediate step, the next approver is notified and the employee gets an update. When you approve the final step, the employee is told the request is fully Approved.
- When you reject, only the employee is told — nobody further down the flow is contacted, and approvers who already acted on earlier steps are not notified again.
- If you do not seem to be getting notified, it is usually that step’s notification and email switches rather than a fault — ask your Subscriber Admin to check the step under Admin → Approval Flows.
Activity Log: every approval and rejection is recorded in Dashboard → Activity Log with the request and who decided it — alongside the request’s own Timeline. Comments are logged too, so a decision and the discussion behind it stay traceable together.
Summary #
The Approve Travel Request module helps ensure travel requests are reviewed and processed correctly. Each request either follows the configured approval flow step by step or goes directly to the Subscriber Admin when no flow applies. Each approval moves the request to the next step, and it becomes Approved only after the final step is approved. A rejection at any step rejects the request immediately.
To approve or reject a travel request, a user must be the assigned approver for the current step and have the required Approve Travel Request (As Approver) or Reject Travel Request (As Approver) permission.
