Every answer on the site, in one place

Not by searching live inventory. Live self-service search across airline and hotel inventory is not available today. Travelers request a trip and choose from the options our team sends.

No. Assistants book in the same portal for the travelers they are authorized to support, and anything you send us by phone or email is entered against the same traveler, policy and approver. The rules don't change with the route.

Optionally. Private travel for executives and their families runs on separate permissions and payment, and the employer can't see it.

Options come back within 4 business hours during office hours (8am–8pm ET and 8am–8pm AET, Monday to Friday). Urgent requests go to the urgent line, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Yes. Fares aren't held indefinitely. Each option shows when it expires, and we re-quote if it lapses.

Yes. Guests, candidates and client visitors can be added as guest travelers and billed to the right department and project.

Yes. Points and status stay in each traveler's own loyalty accounts. Whether points earned on company travel belong to the employee is your policy, and we apply whatever you decide.

Yes. Give us the agreement details and tour codes, and we'll apply them on eligible bookings and show which options use them.

No. Most bookings in a typical program are economy flights and standard business hotels, and the policy decides what is offered.

No. They're on the traveler's profile and applied to every option.

Yes. Phone and email bookings are entered against the same traveler, policy and approver.

Tell us when you request the trip. Your company's policy decides how the extra cost is handled.

Yes, within the portal's rule types (cabin, hotel caps, booking ahead, preferred suppliers, a trip limit, approvals and restricted destinations), for each policy group. A travel manager edits them in the portal, and every change is recorded.

The request stays pending and visible to travel managers, who can decide in the approver's place. Set a delegate for planned absences.

Yes. Everyone in the account can read the policy in plain language in the portal.

Only if you choose the 'always' approval mode. By default, in-policy choices confirm straight away.

Yes. The check runs on the option, however the trip was requested.

Yes. Approval history and the audit log record every decision, with the person, time and note.

Choose the one that works and say why. It goes to your approver, and you'll see when it's decided.

No. They're the most the US government will reimburse a federal employee for a night's lodging in that place, before taxes. GSA sets them from hotel data, but they aren't market rates. That's why the hotel rate benchmarks tool treats the GSA rate as a floor and lets you choose the multiple.

No. Hotel taxes are excluded, so decide whether your cap is before or after tax and say so in your policy.

GSA publishes new rates for each federal fiscal year, usually in August, and they take effect on October 1. These are the FY2027 rates, effective Oct 1, 2026 to Sep 30, 2027. GSA can also revise a rate during the year.

GSA covers the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. Rates for Alaska, Hawaii and US territories are set by the Defense Department, and rates for other countries by the State Department. The hotel rate benchmarks tool doesn't include them.

GSA sets rates by county, so a city's rate is its county's rate. Anywhere GSA doesn't list separately gets the standard rate, and some destinations change rate by season.

$113 a night for lodging and $68 a day for meals and incidentals, $181 in all, from Oct 1, 2026 to Sep 30, 2027. It applies anywhere in the continental US that GSA doesn't list separately. GSA lists 295 destinations with higher rates.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner and incidental expenses, which the Federal Travel Regulation describes as fees and tips given to porters, baggage carriers, hotel staff and staff on ships. GSA says the rate includes taxes and tips on meals, so they aren't reimbursed separately.

On the first and last day of a trip, a federal traveler gets 75% of the daily meals and incidentals rate for the place they're traveling to. A three-night trip at $80 a day is $60.00 + $80.00 + $80.00 + $60.00, or $280.00.

GSA sets most rates by county, so check whether the city's county is listed and use that rate if it is. If neither the city nor its county is listed, the standard rate applies.

GSA sets these rates for federal employees on official travel, and says it can't answer questions about paying contractors. A company's own travel policy decides what it reimburses. GSA's rates are a public reference that finance and travelers can both check.

Not for federal travelers. GSA explains that the lodging rate is a maximum: the traveler is reimbursed the actual lodging cost up to that rate, so there's nothing left over to move to meals, and the meals rate can't be moved to lodging either.

It means your negotiated rate stays bookable for as long as the hotel has a room to sell in the category the rate covers, including on its busiest nights. Without LRA, the hotel can close your rate when demand is high, which is when you'd save most. A hotel may ask for a higher rate, or a dynamic discount instead of a fixed rate, in return for it, so ask whether each bid includes it and compare like with like.

Neither is better in general. A fixed rate tells you the price in advance, which helps a budget and suits hotels where you stay often. A dynamic rate is a percentage off the hotel's public price on the day: it costs less on quiet nights and more on busy ones, and one travel manager writing for GBTA noted it may be the only way to secure last room availability. You can mix the two, so compare both at a few public price levels using your own stay data.

Allow five to six months from the start of preparation, plus the time to load and check the rates. GBTA's hotel RFP toolkit suggests preparing 2 to 3 months before launch and, citing Cvent data, gives an average of about 78 days from launch to acceptance, before rate loading and auditing, with a 3-week response window and 3 weeks or more for each round of negotiation.

Not always. If your stays are spread thinly across many cities, ask your travel management company what rates it can already book for you, and set city caps. A hotel RFP earns its effort where many of your nights go to a few cities or one area, such as around an office or a client site. Either way, the agreed rates only save money once whoever books your travel has loaded them and books them.

Yes. Invoices are generated per entity and period from that entity's company-billed charges.

No. We bill your entity, or charge a company card you already hold. Employee-paid items are reimbursed through your own expense system.

Finance or a travel manager reallocates it in the portal. The change is recorded with who made it and when.

Yes. Service fees are on their own lines in invoices, reports and exports.

Each entity is billed in its own currency, and reports group other currencies separately rather than adding them together.

The rule is about flights the airline cancels or significantly changes. When the traveler decides not to fly, what happens to the ticket depends on its fare rules, which is often how unused ticket credits arise. This is general information, not legal advice; check the rule and the fare's conditions for your situation.

Not for finance. A refund returns money. A credit returns value only if it's used, by the right traveler, with the right airline, before it expires. Under the 2024 rule as amended in August 2024, an airline that offers a credit instead of a refund it owes must clearly tell the passenger they have the right to a full refund, and the passenger must accept the credit.

It depends on the airline and the fare. Under the 2024 DOT rule as amended, a credit or voucher offered instead of a refund for a canceled or significantly changed flight to, from or within the US must stay valid for at least five years. Other credits follow the airline's own terms, so record each credit's expiry date.

72.5¢ a mile for business miles driven from Jan 1, 2026 to Jun 30, 2026, and 76¢ a mile from Jul 1, 2026 to Dec 31, 2026. IRS Announcement 2026-11 says the mid-year change "results from recent increases in the price of fuel." Sources: IRS standard mileage rates and IRS Announcement 2026-11, checked Oct 22, 2026.

72.5¢. IRS Announcement 2026-11 applies the 76¢ rate to allowances paid to an employee on or after July 1, 2026 for expenses incurred on or after that date. Miles driven before July 1 stay at the earlier rate whenever they're paid.

The IRS doesn't require it. Its standard mileage rate is optional. The IRS uses it to decide how much of a mileage allowance is deemed substantiated: under an accountable plan, Publication 463 says an allowance at or below the federal rate isn't included in box 1 of the employee's Form W-2.

Yes. Publication 463 says business-related parking fees and tolls can be claimed in addition to the standard mileage rate. Parking at your regular place of work is a commuting expense, not a business one.

It's on every option. On the Essentials plan it's $22 per flight booking and $12 per hotel or rail booking. See pricing.

No. You pay the supplier's price plus our published fee, both shown on every option.

No. You pay our published fees and nothing else. We don't accept commissions from hotels or airlines, so which option we put in front of a traveler isn't shaped by what a supplier pays us.

Someone who travels in a given month, or has something booked for them that month. People with a profile who don't travel cost nothing.

No. The change fee is our charge for doing the work. Any penalty or fare difference from the airline or hotel is passed on at cost, and shown before you agree to it.

The minimum is a floor on our fees for the month. If platform, booking and change fees add up to more, you pay those. If they add up to less, you pay the minimum.

Yes, at the start of any month, with written notice. Moving to a plan with included changes takes effect for bookings made from that date.

Only larger programs do. Included up to 500 travelers; $3,500 fixed fee above that.

Charges appear as soon as they're recorded. Each view shows when it was last updated.

Yes. Every table downloads as CSV, and the monthly report is printable and downloadable.

No. Expected refunds are shown as outstanding until the money is received, and credits count as recovered only when applied.

With UK DESNZ 2024 conversion factors, including radiative forcing for flights. The emissions estimator's method sets out each step, and sustainability covers what's included.

No. The tracker reads your file with JavaScript in your browser and works it out there. Nothing is sent to silentVIP or anyone else, and nothing is kept after you close the page.

It's the same rule the silentVIP portal uses in its reports: an open credit expiring within 60 days is flagged, so there's time to apply it to a booking. See credit and refund recovery.

Credits in different currencies can't be added without choosing an exchange rate and a date, so the tracker totals each currency separately.

YYYY-MM-DD, such as 2026-12-31, or the US format MM/DD/YYYY. A date that could only be day/month order is flagged rather than guessed.

In the GHG Protocol, business travel is scope 3, category 6: employees traveling for work in vehicles the company doesn't own or control, such as flights, trains, buses and rental cars. Hotel stays can optionally be included. Travel in company-owned vehicles is scope 1 or 2 instead.

Either can work, as long as you use one set consistently and say which. DESNZ publishes per passenger-kilometer factors each year, with and without radiative forcing, and hotel factors by country; its factors are described as suitable for UK organizations and UK operations, and other uses are at the user's own risk. EPA's Emission Factors Hub gives US factors per passenger-mile, combustion only. Record the set and year with every report.

Per passenger-kilometer, usually, but not always by the same margin. In the UK factors, national rail is well below a domestic flight. In the US factors, Amtrak's Northeast Corridor is far below a short flight, while its other routes are closer, and above EPA's medium-haul air factor per passenger-mile. Compare the factors for the routes your people actually travel.

Probably because the factors changed, not the travel. DESNZ's 2025 update cut its business air factors by 16% to 42% against 2024, because the earlier figures used COVID-affected data with unusually low load factors. When you change factor sets, restate the earlier year with the new set, or note the change, so the trend isn't misleading.

Total spend by category against budget, cost per trip, policy exceptions with what they cost above policy, refunds outstanding and unused credit value. Add average fare, nightly rate against cap and advance purchase when you're looking for the cause of a change.

Divide out-of-policy bookings by all bookings in the month. Compliance is the remainder. Report the exceptions by rule broken, with the justification and approver, so the number leads to an action.

Out-of-policy spend is the full cost of the bookings that broke a rule. Out-of-policy cost is only the amount above what the policy allowed, which is the money the exception actually cost the company.

This guide gives none. Published averages mix companies with different routes, cabins and policies, so your own trend month over month, and the cause behind each change, tells you more than a comparison with someone else's average.

QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite and any general ledger that takes CSV. These are file-based integrations; see the directory.

No. Today every integration is file-based: you download a CSV from silentVIP and import it, or upload a roster file to us. We label them that way so there are no surprises.

Yes, as project work. See pricing for how custom formats are charged.

You see which rows are missing data, with links to fix each one, and the failure stays at the top of the page until it's resolved.

Yes, from an HR roster CSV with a preview before anything changes. See HR roster import.

Yes. Give anyone the travel manager role in Organization.

Each role sees only what it needs. Finance sees spend and invoices, assistants see the travelers they support, and travelers see their own trips.

A travel manager sets your delegations in Organization. You see only those travelers.

Call the urgent line for anything happening now: +1 (212) 347 5600 or +61 2 9100 0800. For anything else, send a request in the client portal or email support@silentvip.com. You never need the sales forms.

Urgent support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After-hours call charges: $45 per after-hours call on Essentials; included on Managed and Enterprise.

Anything affecting travel in the next 24 hours: a cancellation, a missed connection, a denied boarding, a hotel that can't honor a booking, or a traveler who needs help now.

Yes. Itineraries, preferences, loyalty numbers and policy are on file, so whoever answers can act without asking you to repeat the trip.

The urgent line: +1 (212) 347 5600. The person who answers can see your trip.

Under the EU rules it's €250 to €600 per passenger, by distance; under UK261 it's £220 to £520. On a journey of more than 3,500 km that arrives between 3 and 4 hours late, it's €300 or £260. US federal rules set no compensation for delays.

No federal rule requires it. DOT considered requiring cash compensation for significant disruptions in December 2024 and withdrew that proposal on November 17, 2025. US rules do require a refund when the airline cancels a flight or delays it by 3 hours or more (domestic) or 6 hours or more (international) and the passenger chooses not to travel.

Only when an EU airline operates it. A flight from the US into the EU on a US airline isn't covered by the EU rules; a flight from the EU to the US is covered whatever the airline. UK261 works the same way for the UK, and also counts EU airlines on flights into the UK.

The rules give compensation to the passenger. Whether it's passed to the company is a matter for your travel or expense policy, so say so in the policy. This is general information, not legal advice.

No. Locations come only from the trips booked through the program: destinations, hotels and itinerary locations.

No. Only trips on file in silentVIP can be matched to an incident.

No. Private travel is kept separate from the company program and isn't visible to the employer.

No. We arrange travel and support the response; medical, security and insurance services come from your own providers.

Employers have legal duties for the health and safety of their employees, and a business trip doesn't automatically take work outside them. Which laws apply, and how they reach a trip abroad, depends on where you and your employees are based and where they travel, so ask your employment or safety counsel. This guide is general information, not legal advice.

ISO 31030 is guidance: it describes how an organization can manage travel risk, and says it applies to organizations of any size or sector. Use it as a checklist for your own approach. Treat a claim that a program is ISO 31030 certified with care, and ask what was assessed and by whom.

Not necessarily. Many programs work from the itineraries booked through the company, which tell you who should be where and when. Phone location is a separate choice with privacy questions of its own. Whatever you choose, write it in the policy so travelers know.

Someone named in the policy, before the trip is booked: usually a senior manager, with HR or security advice for the riskiest places. The decision, the reason and any conditions attached should be recorded with the trip.

It's the way an organization plans for, and responds to, the things that can go wrong when employees travel for work: a written policy, checks before higher-risk trips, knowing where travelers are, and a plan for the first hours of an incident. Duty of care is the obligation behind it; travel risk management is how you meet it.

Not to start. At a company of 100 to 1,000 people, most of the work is ownership and process: a policy, a named approver for higher-risk trips, bookings on file, and an incident lead with a deputy. A medical or security assistance provider adds advice and services for trips where you need them, and your insurer may already include an assistance line.

They are a sensible public reference for U.S. companies, and a simple way to set approval tiers. Apply the rule to the level for the area the traveler is going to, not just the country's headline level, and keep your own list for places where your business has its own reasons for caution. Employees who aren't U.S. citizens should also check their own government's advice.

The State Department's advisories ask travelers to enroll themselves. Some describe it as a way to get updates and alerts from the U.S. embassy or consulate, and say enrolling helps the embassy or consulate contact the traveler or their emergency contact in an emergency. Put a reminder to enroll in the pre-trip briefing for U.S. citizens.

The portal doesn't store payment card numbers. See Data security.

Not today. Our current position is set out on our data security page, and we won't claim an assessment we haven't completed.

The portal and its database run on Cloudflare (Workers, D1 and KV storage). Email is sent through Resend. Payment card numbers are not stored in the portal.

Yes. Use the document request form on our trust center and we'll return it with our supporting documents.

No one. Private trips sit outside the corporate account, and the employer's roles have no view of them.

They stay with that provider until they're flown. Your current provider services any changes to them. New requests come to us from launch day, so nothing is booked twice.

We collect the list from your current provider (airline, ticket number, value and expiry) and add each one to our credit tracking. They're applied to the traveler's next booking with that airline where the fare rules allow.

They're added as open refunds with the expected amount. Refunds paid to your current provider are still theirs to pass on, and we track them on the same list until they're settled.

Mostly the project owner, for a few hours a week, plus short sign-offs from finance and an approver.

No. Trips already booked stay with Navan until they're flown, and Navan services them. We take new bookings from your go-live date, so nobody's trip is rebooked to make the switch.

Unused tickets belong to the airline ticket, not to Navan. We record each one with its airline, value and expiry from your export, and apply it to the traveler's next booking with that airline where the airline allows it. Credits the airline won't move are listed so finance can see what's left.

Yes. A 30-day parallel run is the usual way: one group books with us while everyone else stays on Navan, then everyone moves.

Single sign-on with Google or Microsoft is available on request, and an account can require it for everyone. SAML isn't available today.

Yes. With silentVIP, travelers request a trip and choose from options our team sends, with the full price and policy status on each. If instant self-search is essential to your travelers, Navan may suit them better; our comparison page says so plainly.

It depends on how many travelers, legal entities and approval rules you have, and on whether you're moving open bookings and credits from another provider. Most of the work is gathering data: a roster, a policy, billing details. At silentVIP, most programs launch in 4 to 6 weeks.

Ideally 8 weeks before the event; we can work to shorter timelines when inventory allows.

Yes, as guest travelers billed to the event's department and project.

No. We handle travel and accommodation; the venue, catering and agenda stay with the organizer.

It's the part of a contracted room block that goes unused. Many group contracts say how much of the block you commit to use and charge for a shortfall below that. The terms differ from hotel to hotel, so read the clause before you sign, and size the block from the attendees you expect rather than the most you could invite.

No. The cutoff date is when the hotel stops holding unbooked rooms at the group rate and can sell them to others. Attrition is what you owe if the rooms used fall short of what you committed to. Rooms released at the cutoff don't necessarily reduce that commitment, so check both clauses.

A group fare is worth asking about when ten or more people fly the same route on the same day: it can hold seats before you know every name, and the fare's terms say how long the price holds. It usually comes with deposits and deadlines of its own. When attendees come from many different cities, individual tickets booked through your usual travel program are often simpler.

silentVIP's group travel starts at 10 attendees. The group fee is $45 per attendee, with a $1,500 minimum. See meetings and group travel.

A business that books and services travel for companies rather than for individuals. It holds traveler profiles, applies the company's policy, issues tickets, handles changes and disruptions, and reports spend back to the company. Some are mostly people with a booking tool attached; others are mostly software with people behind it. The glossary has the short definition.

There's no headcount rule. The trigger is usually one of three things: finance can't see or allocate travel spend without a monthly chase, nobody owns travelers when a trip goes wrong, or exceptions to policy are only found after the money is spent.

It can be free to you as the buyer, but someone pays. When a platform has no fee to the company, it is usually funded by commissions or other payments from suppliers. Navan, for example, says its free Business plan is funded by travel providers' commission fees. That's a legitimate model; just know it's the model, and ask whether it affects which options you are shown.

Often, yes. Many companies let frequent, simple trips go through a self-booking tool and send complex trips, groups and executive travel to an agency. What matters is that both routes use one policy, one traveler profile and one set of reports, so you aren't reconciling two programs at month end.

An extra payment a supplier, usually an airline or a hotel group, makes to an agency for reaching volume targets, on top of any standard commission. Amex GBT's annual report, for example, describes incentives from air travel suppliers for flown incremental bookings above minimum targeted thresholds. Overrides don't appear on the client's invoice, so ask whether your bookings count toward any and who keeps the money.

A payment from a global distribution system (the network agencies use to search, book and ticket) to an agency for the bookings it makes through that system, often more when the agency routes a certain volume or share of its bookings there. Sabre describes paying them in its annual report. The buyer usually doesn't see it; it matters because it can make one booking channel more profitable for the agency than another.

A transaction fee is charged per booking, change or service, so your bill rises and falls with how much you travel. A management fee is a fixed amount for running your program or staffing it, whatever the volume. Larger accounts often combine the two, so check which services each one covers.

Neither is better in general. A percentage fee rises with the price of the trip, so it costs more on expensive fares and less on cheap ones. A flat fee is the same however much the ticket costs. Perk, for example, publishes a percentage fee per booking with a minimum and a maximum. Price a year of your own trips both ways before deciding.