Budget planner
Next year's travel budget, by department
Enter your own fares, nightly rates and how much each department travels. You get a budget per department and in total, with silentVIP fees on a separate line, ready to download for department heads.
Your budget will appear here
Enter your average fares and nightly rate, then a row for each department: how many people travel, how many round trips a year of each type, and hotel nights per trip. The planner multiplies it out, totals each department and adds silentVIP fees as a separate line.
See a worked example (Halden & Pike Engineering, our fictional demo company; the fares and trip counts are made up for illustration, not benchmarks)
Setting the numbers for the first time? How to set a business travel budget walks through each figure and where to find it.
How it's worked out
The arithmetic, line by line
- Air: domestic trips × your domestic fare, plus short-haul trips × your short-haul fare, plus long-haul trips × your long-haul fare.
- Hotel: trips × nights per trip × the nightly rate (yours, or the GSA FY2027 rate for the city you chose).
- Allowance: your percentage of air plus hotel, for change penalties and fare differences.
- Travel budget: air + hotel + allowance, per department and in total, and divided by travelers.
- silentVIP fees, on their own line: platform access for the people traveling in a typical month × 12, a fee per flight booking (each trip counts as one round-trip booking), a fee per hotel booking (each trip with nights counts as one stay), and a fee per change, raised to the monthly minimum when a month's fees fall below it. A trip counts as at most one hotel booking, and a department never has more hotel bookings than its hotel nights, rounded up. The minimum is applied to an average month (minimum × 12), so a very uneven year can cost slightly more. It's the same calculation as the cost comparison on our pricing page.
What it leaves out
- Meals, ground transport, rail, visas and event fees. Add a department row or a separate line in the CSV if you budget for them. To price one US trip with meals, use the trip cost estimator.
- Seasonality and price changes over the year. Your fares are averages, so revisit them each quarter.
- Emissions. For CO2e on your regular routes, use the flight emissions estimator, which needs the airports.
- Implementation, project work and group travel fees. See pricing.
- After-hours calls ($45 each on Essentials, included on Managed) and custom export formats ($750 one-off).
GSA FY2027 lodging rates come from the hotel rate benchmarks data: GSA FY2027 per diem lodging rates (effective Oct 1, 2026 to Sep 30, 2027), checked Oct 21, 2026. They exclude taxes and cover the continental US only.
See spend against budget in the portal
silentVIP reports spend by department against each department's budget. We'll show you on the demo company.
Already a client? Get travel support.