In short and in plain language
Travel costs often mean a lot of work in the office. Receipts get lost, and accounting has questions.
Travel costs follow fixed rules. A program can work out what has fixed rules.
The article shows a digital way to do it. You take a photo of the receipt. The program works out the daily rate for meals. A set person signs off, with a stand-in. Then it all goes to payroll and the books.
The article also explains which rules apply to the rates and to keeping receipts.
We set up this workflow for you.
In autumn, travel expense claims start to pile up in many businesses. Receipts sit in jacket pockets and glove compartments, the claim is put together in a spreadsheet, and accounting comes back with questions because the hotel bill shows a breakfast that the claim does not. By December time gets tight: the year's trips should be settled before the last payroll run and the groundwork for the annual accounts begin. Yet travel expense claims follow fixed rules. The German Income Tax Act sets the meal allowances, the deductions for meals provided and the time limits, and the German Fiscal Code sets how long receipts must be kept. Anything governed by fixed rules can be calculated instead of being worked out again every time. This article shows what a digital process looks like: capture receipts by photo, record the trip with times and meals, calculate the allowance automatically, handle approval with a deputy and hand the result over to payroll and accounting in good order. How paper receipts become searchable documents attached to the right case is described under Document digitisation.
Key takeaways
- Each calendar day with 24 hours away carries a meal allowance of 28 euros; arrival and departure days, and days of more than 8 hours away without an overnight stay, carry 14 euros each (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 4a).
- If the employer provides a meal, the allowance drops by 20 percent for breakfast and by 40 percent each for lunch and dinner, calculated from the 28-euro rate, which means 5.60 or 11.20 euros (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 4a).
- Receipts may be photographed with a smartphone, on trips abroad directly on site. The image must match the original visually, and the extracted text is kept after checking (Federal Ministry of Finance, GoBD para. 130).
- Business trips in a private car can be claimed at 30 cents per kilometre driven (Federal Travel Expenses Act, Section 5 para. 2). The commuting allowance of 0.38 euros applies to the journey to work, not to business trips (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 1).
- An approval needs a fixed owner, a deputy for absences and a deadline after which it is passed on. Queries belong on the claim itself, not in an email thread.
- Reimbursements are tax-free up to the amount deductible as work-related expenses (German Income Tax Act, Section 3 no. 16). Receipts remain subject to retention for eight years as accounting vouchers (German Fiscal Code, Section 147 para. 3).
Where travel expenses get stuck
A business trip produces more paperwork than its purpose suggests: a rail ticket or fuel receipt, a hotel bill, a parking ticket, a taxi receipt, plus departure and return times and whether a meal was provided along the way. In many small businesses this information passes through three stations. The traveller collects receipts and enters times in a spreadsheet, the manager signs off, and accounting or the payroll office recalculates. Each station works with its own version of the same data.
That is exactly where the familiar queries come from. If a time is missing, nobody can tell whether 14 euros or no allowance at all is due. If the hotel bill shows a breakfast, the allowance has to be reduced, even if the spreadsheet knows nothing about it. If a receipt is illegible or lost, a search begins that has nothing to do with the trip itself. We described such breaks between paper, spreadsheet and business software in general terms in Spotting media breaks in your company; travel expenses are a particularly clear example.
What this costs can be roughly gauged for your own business. Companies in industry and the service sector paid an average of 45.00 euros per hour worked in 2025 (Federal Statistical Office). Every quarter of an hour of working time that goes into queries and recalculations between traveller, manager and accounting therefore costs a little over eleven euros on average before a single euro has been reimbursed. At year end there is deadline pressure on top: autumn trips meet the last payroll run of the year, and open claims slip into the new year, where they add to the groundwork for the annual financial statements.
The allowances: 28 euros, 14 euros and the deductions
For tax purposes, additional meal costs for employees are not recognised against receipts but only as flat-rate allowances. The German Income Tax Act sets three cases: 28 euros for every calendar day on which someone is away from home and the first place of work for 24 hours, 14 euros each for the arrival and departure day of a trip with an overnight stay, and 14 euros for a day without an overnight stay with more than 8 hours away (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 4a). Shorter absences carry no allowance. For owners who travel themselves, the same calculation applies to the deduction of business expenses (German Income Tax Act, Section 4 para. 5 sentence 1 no. 5).
Two special rules matter for the calculation. If an assignment away from the workplace starts on one day and ends on the next without an overnight stay, the absence counts for the calendar day on which the greater part of the more than 8 hours falls. And at the same external place of work, the allowances apply only for the first three months; an interruption of at least four weeks restarts the period (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 4a). For fitters on a long construction site or staff on a customer project lasting several months, a system therefore has to keep count of how long someone has been working at that location.
For trips abroad, country-specific amounts replace the domestic ones. The Federal Ministry of Finance sets them at 120 percent for a full day and at 80 percent for the other cases of the foreign daily allowances under the Federal Travel Expenses Act; what counts is the place the traveller last reaches before 24:00 local time (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 4a). The ministry publishes the country table in separate circulars. It belongs in the system as a maintained master data table, not as a copy in every claim template.
| Situation | Allowance | Calculation rule under Section 9 para. 4a of the Income Tax Act |
|---|---|---|
| Full calendar day, 24 hours away | 28 euros | every day between arrival and departure |
| Arrival or departure day with overnight stay | 14 euros | regardless of hours on that day |
| One-day trip, more than 8 hours | 14 euros | across midnight: the day with the larger share |
| One-day trip, up to 8 hours | none | check meals provided at the benefit-in-kind value |
| Breakfast provided | minus 5.60 euros | 20 percent of 28 euros |
| Lunch or dinner provided | minus 11.20 euros per meal | 40 percent of 28 euros |
| From the fourth month at the same place | none | restart after a break of at least four weeks |
Deductions are based on the full-day rate
A simple worked example shows what this means in practice. An employee drives to a customer early on Monday, spends two nights in a hotel and returns on Wednesday evening. The business booked and paid for the hotel including breakfast; she pays for the other meals herself.
Trip Monday 07:00 to Wednesday 18:30, two nights, hotel with breakfast booked by the business
Day Absence Allowance Deduction Result
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday arrival day 14.00 EUR none 14.00 EUR
Tuesday full day, 24 h 28.00 EUR breakfast -5.60 EUR 22.40 EUR
Wednesday departure day 14.00 EUR breakfast -5.60 EUR 8.40 EUR
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 56.00 EUR -11.20 EUR 44.80 EURThe example reveals the core of the automation: the allowance does not depend on receipts but on four details per day, namely departure, return, overnight stay and meals provided. If these details are captured in a structured form, the result is unambiguous. If they are missing, even good software can only guess, and the query ends up with accounting again.
Capturing receipts by photo without losing them
For travel, accommodation and incidental costs the actual spending generally counts, and that requires receipts. The tax authorities expressly allow paper receipts to be captured as images, including with a smartphone (Federal Ministry of Finance, GoBD para. 130). The electronic document must be kept so that, when made readable, it matches the original visually (German Fiscal Code, Section 147 para. 2). For business trips abroad, the same paragraph contains its own relief: receipts issued abroad may be captured there directly with a mobile device.
One rule on text recognition is often overlooked: if a photographed receipt is enriched with full text by text recognition, that text must also be kept after checking and correction (Federal Ministry of Finance, GoBD para. 130). The extracted fields are therefore not a throwaway by-product but part of the record. Where recognition works reliably and where it guesses is described in Text recognition in practice. For travel receipts this means: date, amount and issuer can be read well, whereas whether breakfast is included in the room rate often needs a second look.
Once captured, work continues only with the electronic document; notes on the paper that are missing from the image should not arise in the first place (Federal Ministry of Finance, GoBD para. 139). The paper may then be destroyed unless other rules require the original to be kept (Federal Ministry of Finance, GoBD para. 140). Whether the business makes use of this belongs in the procedural documentation and is sensibly agreed with the tax adviser.
Two rules from VAT law decide whether a receipt is fit for accounting. For small amounts up to 250 euros, such as taxis or parking, fewer mandatory details are needed and the recipient does not have to be named (German VAT Implementing Ordinance, Section 33). Above that, the invoice must show the name and address of the recipient (German VAT Act, Section 14 para. 4). For hotel bills this means: have them made out to the business, not to the traveller. If a hotel invoice reaches the business as an electronic invoice, the file received is what goes into the archive; a photo of a printout does not replace it. How incoming invoices adapt to this is covered in the article on the e-invoicing mandate 2027.
Image fully legible
The whole receipt, straight and sharp, with all edges. Blurred images should be flagged at upload, while the receipt is still in hand.
Extracted fields
Date, issuer, amount, VAT rate and receipt type. Uncertain values are flagged for checking instead of being taken over silently.
Linked to the trip
Each receipt belongs to exactly one trip and one travel day. That shows up a hotel bill attached to a day without an overnight stay.
Meals on the receipt
If a breakfast or dinner appears on the invoice, a note is created for the allowance of that day before anyone calculates.
Payment method
Paid privately, with a company card or settled directly by the business. Only what the traveller paid personally is reimbursed.
Missing receipt
If a receipt is lost, a substitute record with a reason is created and marked as such, rather than the gap being filled without comment.
Allocating travel and accommodation costs correctly
If someone drives to a customer in their own car, the journey can be claimed at a mileage rate without individual receipts. The German Income Tax Act refers to the highest mileage allowance under the Federal Travel Expenses Act (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 1 sentence 3 no. 4a). For a car this is 30 cents per kilometre driven (Federal Travel Expenses Act, Section 5 para. 2), for other motor vehicles such as motorcycles or scooters 20 cents (Federal Travel Expenses Act, Section 5 para. 1). What counts is the distance actually travelled, there and back.
This rate should not be confused with the commuting allowance. That amounts to 0.38 euros per full kilometre of distance, but applies to the journey between home and the first place of work rather than to business trips, and counts one way only (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 1 sentence 3 no. 4). Anyone who keeps both rates in the same spreadsheet will sooner or later pick the wrong one. A system separates them by the type of journey: commute or assignment away from the workplace.
For overnight stays, the actual accommodation costs count. If the traveller shares a room with someone not employed by the same employer, only the costs that would have arisen for sole use may be claimed (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 1 sentence 3 no. 5a). After 48 months at the same external place of work, accommodation costs are only deductible up to a limit (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 1 sentence 3 no. 5a). Breakfast on the hotel bill is not part of the accommodation costs. If the business booked and paid for the hotel including breakfast, it generally counts as a meal provided, and the allowance for the day on which breakfast is eaten drops by 5.60 euros (German Income Tax Act, Section 9 para. 4a).
Kilometres, nights, meals: a few fields per day
Approval: ownership, deputies, deadlines
There is usually an approval step between claim and reimbursement. It has a factual purpose: someone who knows about the trip confirms that it was work-related and that the details are correct. Recalculating the allowances is not part of it; the system takes care of that. The less the approver has to calculate, the more thoroughly they can check what only they can judge: purpose, duration and whether the costs were reasonable.
To stop approvals from stalling, three things need to be defined. First, a fixed owner, usually the direct manager or the project lead who arranged the trip. Second, a deputy who steps in as soon as the owner is absent, without anyone having to forward an email. Third, a deadline after which an open approval triggers a reminder and is then passed on to the next level. How we set up approval routes in general is described in Digitising approval workflows.
Photograph the receipt
The traveller photographs receipts while still on the road. The image goes straight into the case via a fixed inbox, and text recognition reads date, amount and issuer.
Create the trip
Destination, purpose, departure, return and overnight stays are entered once, and meals provided are ticked per day. Entries from the calendar or the project can pre-fill the details.
Calculate the allowance
The system determines 28 euros, 14 euros or no allowance for each calendar day, deducts meals provided and checks the three-month limit at the same place.
Approve
The owner sees trip, receipts and calculation on one page and approves or raises a query on the claim. During absences the approval goes to the deputy.
Hand over
The approved amount goes to payroll as a reimbursement, the receipts with account and cost centre to accounting. Both work from the same version.
The traveller photographs receipts while still on the road. The image goes straight into the case via a fixed inbox, and text recognition reads date, amount and issuer.
Destination, purpose, departure, return and overnight stays are entered once, and meals provided are ticked per day. Entries from the calendar or the project can pre-fill the details.
The system determines 28 euros, 14 euros or no allowance for each calendar day, deducts meals provided and checks the three-month limit at the same place.
The owner sees trip, receipts and calculation on one page and approves or raises a query on the claim. During absences the approval goes to the deputy.
The approved amount goes to payroll as a reimbursement, the receipts with account and cost centre to accounting. Both work from the same version.
Queries are a typical point at which digital processes fall back into the inbox. A query belongs on the claim itself: it names the receipt or the day concerned, and the answer changes the claim instead of disappearing into an email thread. That way it remains traceable for later audits why an amount was changed. This can be implemented through process automation, which runs value limits, deputies and reminders as rules.
Handover to payroll and accounting
After approval, the paths split. Payroll needs the reimbursement amount per person, broken down by type; accounting needs receipts, accounts and tax amounts. When an employer reimburses travel expenses, this is tax-free to the extent that the amounts do not exceed the expenses deductible as work-related costs (German Income Tax Act, Section 3 no. 16). If the business pays more than the allowance, it can levy wage tax on the excess at a flat 25 percent to the extent that the payment does not exceed the allowances by more than 100 percent (German Income Tax Act, Section 40 para. 2).
A second point concerns meals provided. A meal provided by the employer during an assignment away from the workplace is valued at the official benefit-in-kind value if its price does not exceed 60 euros (German Income Tax Act, Section 8 para. 2). It is not taxed if a meal allowance could be claimed for that day; in that case the allowance is reduced instead. The meal still matters for the wage tax certificate: for such meals the certificate shows the capital letter M (German Income Tax Act, Section 41b para. 1). Whether and when a meal was provided must therefore travel from the travel expense claim to payroll.
Tax-free payments generally have to be entered in the payroll account, which is kept for every employee and every calendar year (German Income Tax Act, Section 41 para. 1). Payroll accounts must be kept until the end of the sixth calendar year following the last wage payment entered (German Income Tax Act, Section 41 para. 1). For the handover this means: payroll does not receive a pile of receipts but one record per person and pay month, with the tax-free amount, the flat-rate taxed portion and the note on meals provided.
| Recipient | What is handed over | What it is needed for |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll | Reimbursement per person, split into tax-free and flat-rate taxed | Payroll account and payment with the salary |
| Payroll | Days with meals provided | Capital letter M, benefit in kind on short trips |
| Accounting | Receipts with account, cost centre and tax amount | Posting, input VAT, analysis per project |
| Accounting | Payment method per receipt | Reconciliation with company card and bank account |
| Archive | Image, extracted text, claim, approval log | Retention and proof during an audit |
Whether the handover runs as a file, through an interface or as a posting batch depends on the software in place. What matters is that nobody types the amounts in a second time. The routes we use to connect software, from an application programming interface to a governed file exchange, are described under Integrations. If you then reconcile payments with the bank account, the article Matching incoming payments automatically covers the counterpart on the incoming side.
Archive: eight years with the case
Receipts belonging to a travel expense claim are accounting vouchers and must therefore be kept for eight years (German Fiscal Code, Section 147 para. 3). The period starts at the end of the calendar year in which the receipt was issued (German Fiscal Code, Section 147 para. 4). A hotel receipt from October 2026 can therefore be deleted at the earliest after the end of 2034, and only if it is no longer needed for taxes whose assessment period is still running.
For digital archiving, the German Fiscal Code requires that the reproduction is available throughout the retention period and can be made readable without delay and evaluated by machine (German Fiscal Code, Section 147 para. 2). In practice this means: image, extracted text, claim and approval log sit together with the case, are not overwritten afterwards and can be found by trip, person and period. What such an archive has to do in detail is described in GoBD-compliant document storage; how retention periods and deletion runs work together is covered in Meeting retention periods digitally.
Doing without a paper receipt must not impair the possibility of tracing and verifying the records.
The process needs procedural documentation: who photographs when, how checking works, who approves, when paper is destroyed and where everything is kept. It does not have to be long, but it has to match the actual process. We help with writing it down under Process documentation.
Before December: what you can prepare now
A digital process does not have to be finished by the turn of the year to help. A lot is gained if the year's open trips are settled before the last payroll run and the rules for next year are agreed. Five points can be clarified within a few weeks:
- Collect open trips: list all of this year's trips that have not yet been claimed, with date and person. A submission deadline in November leaves breathing space before the December payroll run.
- Put the travel rules in writing: who authorises trips, who approves, who deputises, whether the business pays more than the allowances and how hotels are booked. Whatever is not written down is handled differently in every department.
- Define the capture route: one inbox for receipt photos, a fixed naming scheme and the link to the trip. Receipts that arrive via private messengers or stray emails otherwise do not reach the case.
- Agree the handover: clarify with the payroll office and the tax adviser in which form reimbursements, meals provided and receipts should arrive, and which accounts and cost centres apply.
- Settle archive and paper: whether paper receipts are destroyed after capture, who decides this and how it is described in the procedural documentation.
If you first want to know how much time travel expense claims actually take today, start with a process analysis: we follow a claim from the trip to the archive, count stations and queries and identify which step pays off first. Terms are listed under Pricing, and a first conversation can be arranged via Contact.
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