Reimbursement of expenses for business trips abroad
If you travel abroad for your work, you are entitled to reimbursement of expenses for lodging, meals, minor expenditure, and transport with the approval of the institute.The amount reimbursed depends on the country you travel to. If you book your business trip via UniGlobe, you do not need to advance the money for your trip.
To make a business trip abroad, you need prior permission from the University. Make sure you apply for authorisation no later than 8 weeks before your trip. Read more >>
Allowance
If you receive a travel allowance from a party other than the University, this will be deducted from the sum for which you may claim.
You can claim the following expenses when travelling abroad:
- If you travel by train, you may travel first class and will be reimbursed for this.
- If you travel by another form of public transport or by boat or plane, you must travel in the lowest, but safest, class of travel. The cost of this will be reimbursed. If you wish to travel in a higher class, for instance on health grounds, you must request permission beforehand. If you are granted permission, the relevant cost will be reimbursed. Such permission is only granted in exceptional cases.
- We want you to travel in the most sustainable way possible. The University therefore decided that trips of six hours or less must be taken by train rather than plane.
- If you travel using your own vehicle or by taxi or rental car, you will be reimbursed as long as you have permission to use this form of transport. The allowances and conditions are the same as apply to travel in the Netherlands. Do not forget to keep a logbook of your kilometres and to add this to your claim.
- We reimburse accommodation costs, meals and small expenses. There are fixed reimbursement rates for these costs and you must meet a number of conditions.
The Dutch government establishes the amount reimbursed (in Dutch). This amount depends on the country you travel to and consists of five components:
- Hour component for minor expenditure for every hour of the business trip
- Lodging component if your trip includes an overnight stay
- Breakfast component
- Lunch component
- Evening meal component
Conditions
You are entitled to reimbursement of your expenses for breakfast, lunch and evening meals tax-free and irrespective of the amount, as long as the following conditions are met:
- You must have actually incurred these expenses in an establishment intended for the purpose.
- You do not need to submit receipts for your expenses.
- Your business trip should include breakfast time (between 6.00 and 8.00 hrs), lunch time (between 12.00 and 14.00 hrs) and dinner time (between 18.00 and 21.00 hrs).
- If your business trip requires you to spend more than 60 days in one location, the reimbursed amount for minor expenditure, breakfast, lunch, and evening meals will be halved starting from the 61st day.
Hour component
You do not need to submit receipts for the hour component, and you are entitled to an hour component for minor expenditure for every hour of your business trip. The amount reimbursed will be halved starting from the 61st day if your business trip lasts longer than 60 days.
Accommodation component
You are required to submit receipts for the lodging component. You can claim your expenses via Self Service. The maximum amount reimbursed per night can be found in the tariff list (in Dutch).
Submit your expense claims
- You can submit your travel and accommodation expenses via Self Service.
- Log on to Remote Workplace.
- Choose SAP Self Service.
- Submit your claim as soon as possible but no more than three months after the end of the calendar year.
- Ensure that you have an electronic copy of your proof or purchase, for instance an original receipt, before you submit your claim.
- Before making a business trip, arrange permission from your manager. Your activity holder and budget holder must approve your claim.
Expense claims if you are not employed by the University >>
Book your trip via UniGlobe
Book your business trip abroad via UniGlobe. UniGlobe will send their invoice directly to Leiden University, so you don’t need to worry about it.
If you book your business trip abroad by train with another travel agency, then you may request an advance via Self Service. However, you must submit an expense claim no more than six weeks after your business trip.
Funding
LIAS is committed to supporting professional travel of its employees: conference attendance, research and training trips, etc.
Travel funding application
Diversity of individual circumstances and our budgetary situation make it impossible to set fixed individual travel budgets. Funding is allocated by the LIAS MT, taking into account overall budgetary and policy issues, the availability of project monies (NWO, etc), and previous support for the applicant. LIAS funding normally does not exceed 1000 euros and a member of staff can only apply for funding once a year and only, when attending a conference, to present a paper. Staff should explore other sources of (co-)funding first before applying for support from LIAS. This includes grants and subsidies from funds and foundations within the university, such as AMT, Global Interactions, LUCIS, IIAS, LeidenAsiaCentre, the Aillion Foundation and the Leiden University Fund. Evidence of applications and amount of funding received from these sources should be included with the application for LIAS funding. Decisions on funding will be made 3 times per year, in the first week of April, August and December. Please plan well ahead so you can register in time for the conference you want to visit.
Application deadlines for 2020-2021 are 28 February 2021, 30 Juny 2021 and 31 October 2021.
You should run your plans by your supervisor (leidinggevende) prior to submitting your application to lias@hum.leidenuniv.nl with cc to your supervisor.
Funding will be limited to travel and accommodation, and other directly work-related items such as conference fees. Per diem costs, such as dinners and lunches, will not be funded.
If your application is successful, you will be notified, including instructions for claiming the expenses.
If there's budget left after applications have been granted LIAS might grant it to earlier denied applications.
Useful links
- Procedure for booking (international) business trips. All staff members should be “authorized bookers”in the Uniglobe system. If you run into problems opening an account, please contact the LIAS office.
- Expense claims of University staff. Please be aware that in selfservice the system automatically calculates a per diem allowance. LIAS does not pay for such expenses from the central travel budget. You should change the numbers of dinners, lunches etc into zero in order to claim just the hotel costs. Update the claim by pushing the small button with the two arrows on the right hand site below the specification of your costs to see if it worked before submitting.
- Government rate list of hotel fees abroad (Dutch only)
Guest participants in PhD defense
For PhD defenses, LIAS will pay for travelcosts of one examiner from outside the University, preferably from the Netherlands. If necessary costs will be covered for one examiner from Europe (flight and 1 night accommodation). Please contact the LIAS office well in advance to arrange this.