1. Travel Expenses Tool Instruction Manual
Author: Jan Faber

2. Prerequisites
Make sure the following conditions are met before you start using the tool
MS Windows computer
Microsoft Excel with macro’s
Active internet connection when using the tool
OpenAir account
Set the Personal settings -> Regional settings as follows:
Date format: MM/DD/YYYY
List separator for CSV output files Comma (,)
Jan Faber

3. Instructions First use: OpenAir setting correct export preferences
After logging on to OpenAir click on your Username at the right top of the screen and select “Personal Settings”
A screen opens in which you can alter your personal settings.
Set “Date format” to MM/DD/YYYY
Set “List separator for CSV output files” to “Comma”
Select the “Save” button at the top or bottom of the page.
1) Personal Settings
2) Regional Settings with:
Date format
List separator
Jan Faber

4. Instructions First use:
Download the tool named “template travel expenses” from intranet at :
under “Documents”.
Create a folder on your computer where you will manage your future travel expenses and copy the file into this location
After starting the file, Excel will ask you some questions about enabling some features (1 or 2 times); answer all questions positive by selecting the button next to the question.
After enabling the required features, a popup will appear asking you to select the export file containing the registered work. This file will be made available every month in OpenAir at
( “OpenAir -> Reports -> Saved Reports – Shared reports” with name “Timesheet Report Expenses” )
You can download it and place it in this “template folder" each time you have a new declaration
Since we are configuring the template for first use, you may choose to select “Cancel”, so that we can configure the template for your personal use
The Rows under tab Travel Expenses will be Red colored, indicating that no activities are found. Select Tab “Personalised Data”
1) Enable all necessary features for the template to work
2) Selection of the OpenAir csv export
Jan Faber

5. Instructions First use:
When you select the tab “Personalised data” ,you see a sheet that presents several white fields you can alter. The light gray fields can be altered, but generally it is not necessary to do this.
Before you actually start working with the tool you must fill in your name and your home postal code in the fields “Name” and “Postal code”
On the lower site of the sheet you see some bookmark fields you can use when you have recurring distance declarations you do not want to fill in manually every time you specify expenses.
At this point in time, You do not need to create bookmarks! You can create and alter them at any time in the future, after which you must save this template again to save the newly defined bookmarks.
On the bottom you can select the date format of the input file. Since we set it to “MM/DD/YYYY” in OpenAir, we do not need to change it here. You can change it however, if for some reason your import file has a different date format.
Save your personal template by closing excel and choosing “save” when asked. You will use this template for future timesheet/expenses.
bookmarks
“Personalized Data” for personal preferences
“Travel Expenses” sheet for specifying work related travel expenses
Jan Faber

6. Instructions Using the tool every month:
Now your personal template is stored on your local drive and you can re-use this template every time
Start your own personal template again
Locate the OpenAir export file you downloaded from OpenAir (“Timesheet_Report…”) and select it as the input file
Next select the “Travel Expenses” tab
In the top part you will see your personal data and the month for which you want to specify your expenses
In the table below, you see the dates and the activities you have described in OpenAir (column 1 and 2)
When you correctly fill in the white fields, the tool will calculate the distance and the corresponding amount that you can declare for that day.
If you only see red rows , with no activities defined, or the Month and Year are not correctly set, chances are that your OpenAir “Export file” cannot be imported correctly. If so, check if you have set the correct export settings in OpenAir and that the “date format setting” under personalised data is correct.
Warning: if you open the OpenAir Exported file directly in Excel and subsequently save it, Excel may change the table format (removing double quotes). This may result in the inability of the tool to read it again.
Your personal data
“Travel Expenses” sheet for specifying work related travel expenses
Month and year of
the OpenAir export file
Date and Activities
Jan Faber

7. Instructions Using the tool: declaring travel distances
You can use the white fields to declare your roundtrip for each day
First you declare if you worked at home (“At home (y/n)”) that day. If so then no declaration for this day will be calculated, since you did not travel that day.
Next you fill in your home address (“From”).
At last you can fill in the destinations (in order). The tool will then calculate the total round trip, starting at “From” to every “Destination” in the specified order and back from the last destination to the “From” address.
If you are not sure that the correct route has been calculated, you can select “show route” to get an exact description of the calculated route (google maps)
If for some reason you cannot declare your travel expenses by using the method above, there is some space to declare travel expenses for activities that were not registered in OpenAir.
This space can be found at the bottom of the sheet. Here you can manually declare date, activity and the other fields +
Declaring regular travel distances +
Declaring special travel distances
Jan Faber

8. Instructions Using the tool: applying bookmarks / delete distances
As mentioned earlier you can apply bookmarks to make things easier. This is done by selecting the “Apply bookmarks“ link at the top of the sheet.
Bookmarks can be defined at the “Personalised data” tab. Here all fields (white) and a key value can be declared.
The template searches the Activities to find keywords and apply the correct bookmark based on this search
Every time “Apply bookmarks” is pressed, all locations in the sheet are deleted and bookmarks are applied
Selecting “Delete locations” will delete all location related fields
Delete all locations & apply bookmarks
Corresponding bookmark in “Personalised Data”
Here all days for which the “activities” field contains the string “hours”, the bookmark is applied. In this case, since all work days have this key value in the activity field, all days will have the same values set for the “At home”,”From” and “Destination” fields.
Bookmarks are applied in order of importance, meaning that the defined bookmarks on the top are applied before the bookmarks that are situated on a lower position in the table. So any bookmark defined above the bookmark in this example will overrule this one.
Jan Faber

9. Instructions Using the tool: export pdf
When all is done you can export your travel expenses declaration for the month to pdf by selecting the “Export to PDF” link.
A file for the specified month and year is created in your “template folder”.
You can attach this file to your OpenAir mileage declaration
Export to PDF file
Resulting PDF file
Jan Faber

10. Instructions Expenses in OpenAIr: creating a Mileage receipt
Start your declaration bij creating a new Expense Report in OpenAir
This can be done by navigating to
Alternatively, you can navigate in OpenAir by selecting the “+” on the left and choose “Expenses: Expense Report New”
Define the date for which you want to declare; for example if you want to declare the km’s for March select the first week of April.
After selecting “Save”, select the “+” on the left again and choose “Mileage receipt”
New Expenses Link in menu after selecting +
Date selection for Expense Report
Mileage receipt
Jan Faber

11. Instructions Expenses in OpenAIr: specifying a Mileage receipt
In the Mileage receipt form you have to specify 4 things:
Mileage Expense item : Kilometers/ Mileage : 0,19 ct
Client: Project: Select a client project on which you worked the most.
Mileage: Enter the total amount of km as calculated by the tool
Attachment: Attach the pdf file you created
Save the Form
You are done
Atach the pdf
Select Your “main” Client Project
Enter the milage from your pdf
Select Mileage Expense item “Kilometers/ Mileage : 0,19 ct”
Jan Faber

12. Instructions Using the tool every month:
All you need to do now, every month, is repeat the steps on slide 6 / 11.
This will save you a lot of time and you won’t forget travel as related to work.
If you have any suggestions on how to improve this tool or the process, let Ria van Asten or Jan Faber know.
Jan Faber