Introduction
TABLE OF CONTENTS
In order to locate Car Travel Policy Settings use the following path:
Corporate Site → Edit Travel Group → Manage Policies → Car Policy
Image 1. Travel Policies Location
Corporate travel policies are typically developed by the Travel Group Administrators and specify things like whether an employee is permitted to rent a luxury car, how many weeks or business days in advance they should book their reservations, or if there are any additional limits when it comes to total sum that can be spent.
Note — By default, Thomalex system creates one default Car Travel Policy. This policy should ideally be modified right after the website has been created or deleted to create a brand new one from scratch.
Notice that each travel group can have multiple Air, Car, and Hotel Travel Policies enabled at the same time. Therefore it's important to pay attention to what policies are set to be "Active" simultaneously.
Finally, by a very basic principle, for each service on the Thomalex system you will know which search result is within the travel policy by being highlighted in green if its "In Policy" and by being highlighted in red if "Out of Policy", example:
Image 2. Examples of "In policy" (green) and "Out of policy" (red)
Car Travel Policies
Air, car, and hotel policies in the Thomalex corporate environment share the basic configuration and the available settings that can be set.
Creating a car travel policy for employees is necessary to help keep your employees following the corporation's rules and your business travel expenditure as low as possible.
By accessing the Car Policy, the Policy panel will appear, here we are able to see the existing and/or create new Policies.
Image 3. Car Policy Panel
Any setting with the red * next to its name is a mandatory setting and without it, a Policy can't be established.
After you have filled in all the necessary information and clicked on "Save" the newly created policy will appear in the "Car Policies List":
Image 4. Newly created policy
At any time the newly created policy can be updated with new settings or entirely deleted. Often times it's easier to just edit the Car Policy that is created by the system and proceed using the travel policy in that way but that's all up to the customer's preferences.
Once the policy is deleted it can't be restored. However, at any time you are able to toggle the policy between Active and Inactive status by checking the "Policy Active" option next to the "Policy Name" option at the very top of the Policy Creation panel:
Image 5. "Policy Active" Setting Location
That way it's going to be very handy to manage the status of numerous policies without deleting them.
Note that after making a Policy Active or Inactive it must be Updated for the changes to take place.
Now, In the following lines, we will explain each setting of Car Travel Policies in detail.
Setting Name | Description |
| Policy Name | Specify the name of the policy. Example: Any name that will be easy to distinguish between various car policies created. |
| Display Name | Type the name of the policy. Example: Any name that will easily differentiate between numerous policies. |
| Policy Active | This option is necessary to be enabled if the Policy needs to be active. The Policy can be toggled on/off with this option without the need to delete it. |
| Supersede This Policy | The business logic is such that only one policy can be applicable at a given time, the most restrictive one. However, if you enable this option, the policy will overpower all other policies. |
| Associated Travel Groups | Here, we can choose which of the Travel Groups this Policy will be enabled for or rather which Travel Groups will use this policy. |
| Book from Date - Book to Date | Define the time frame in which the policy will be active. Example: If set to be applied from January to December of the following year; the policy will have effect only within that time frame. Note that policy will not be activated prior to the set "Book from date" and will produce no effect after defining "Book to Date". |
| Location | Specify the departure and arrival locations to which this policy applies. The options are: All — For covering the whole world and all the possible booking locations. Example: If "All" is selected it will create a rule to be applicable to car bookings at any possible location. By City — Applies to the selected city. Example: If "City" is selected then it will apply a rule to any car within the radius of the selected city. By State — Applies to the State. Example: If "State" is selected then it will apply a rule to any car within that State. |
| Pick-Up Range | Allows you to set the check-in range related to set dates that will be in policy. All other dates will result as "Out of policy". Example: If set between January and December of the following year — the car results within the mentioned year will be in policy, and all results for other dates will be returned as "Out of policy" |
| Advance Purchase (in days) | Allows you to define the number of days in advance for booking cars that will be specified as days for "In policy" bookings, anything less than the set number of days will be considered as "Out of policy". Example: When "7" is set, all Cars that are booked seven days from today will be in policy, and less than seven days will be out of policy. |
| Rental Duration | Specify the max renal duration for which the car results will provide "In policy" results. Example: If you set "10" then all car searches that are for more than ten days of duration will be "Out of policy". |
| Transmission | Choose results that are either "Automatic" or "Manual". Whichever of these is chosen, the other one will be Out of Policy. |
| Air Conditioning | Choose results that either have Air Conditioning or not. Whichever of these is chosen, the other one will be Out of Policy. |
| Car Class | For Car Class, we can further choose which of the Car Classes will be in policy. The Car Classes that are not selected will be treated as out of policy. |
| Car Type | For Car Type, we can further choose which of the Car Types will be in policy. The Car Types that are not selected will be treated as out of policy. |
| Preferred Vendor | Optionally, specify car vendors to which this policy applies. You are able to specify all car vendors or just a few. Use the tick on the left side of the list to select the vendor:  Image 6. Preferred Vendor SelectionMark preferred vendor - Use the tick on the right-hand side of the list to select the vendor:    Image 7-9. Selecting preffered vendor |
| Price Cap Per Day | Price Cap Per Day will look for a cheapest Car Rental Per Day and set the added Cap (Either in Maximum Percent or Maximum Amount). Example: If the cheapest Car Rental we have available is $100, and the Price Cap Per Night is set to 10%, it will limit what we can book to $110 (Cheapest + Amount we set). |
| *Custom fields | This option will appear only if the custom field that is created is created as a type list and if Display on Policy is activated. More about it can be found in the Custom Field Document. |
Table 1. Car Policy Settings and Descriptions
Car Policy Custom Fields
Custom Fields can also be added to Policies themselves. They are used to check the information set on the Employee's Profile with the information set in the Policy itself.
To enable the Custom Fields in Policies, we need to set their Type to List and enable Display on Profile.
Image 10. Options to enable Custom Fields in Policy
After those options have been enabled, a new toggle button will be shown to us, and "Display on Policy" can now be seen.
Image 11. Display on Policy toggle location
Now, if we activate this option whichever Custom Field we create, will be shown in our Policy Tab.
For example, we have made a basic Custom Field to show the usage of it in Policy.
Image 12. Custom Field Options Example
This Custom Field will be shown in our Air Policy as:
Image 13. Custom Field Options Example in Air Policy
If we choose "Option 1" in Policy, we would need to choose "Option 1" in the Employee's Profile too for their bookings to be in Policy.
Image 14. Custom Field Option Chosen in Policy
In the Employee's Profile we can find this Custom Field too, and if we choose the same "Option 1" all of the bookings (if they also fall under other rules of the Policy) will be in Policy.
Image 15. Custom Field Option Chosen in Employee's Profile
If any of these 2 Custom Fields does not match the other one, it will make the Flights out of Policy for the Employee.
If the Booking is being created for the "Guest" Traveler, this Custom Field rule will be taken from the Coordinator which created the Booking.
Application of the Most Restrictive Policy
Having more than one active policy is often the most used corporate model. Thomalex corporate environment allows you to have numerous active policies at the time.
The most restrictive policy will be the one that is going to be used as a reference for acknowledging if the search request is "In policy" or "Out of policy".
Following the mentioned set of preferences, the next level would be favoring the set location (country, state, city...).
On the other hand, if there's a case where there are two policies that both have the same trip reason, and both are set to have the appropriate location - the system will create further restriction references that will additionally establish restraint calculation.
The further restriction references would be the "Maximum Price" followed by the "Maximum Price Per Night" and followed by the "Maximum Number Of Nights".
It's important to understand that rule of the thumb is to follow the most restrictive attributes of the set policies. Whenever there is more than one active and applicable to the search request - the system will always favor the most restrictive one.