University of Cologne

DB is currently offering a discount campaign with heavily discounted Bahncards at a promotional price: *Business Bahncard 25 at a price of €33.00* * Bookable for business travelers. The validity start date can be selected up to 180 days in the future, the subsequent validity period is also one year and then ends automatically. Link Business BC: https://www.bahn.de/bahnbusiness/angebot/bahncard-business *Private BC 25 at the price of 33,00 € * * The validity start date must be in the period from 01. - 31.10., the BC 25 is then valid for one year and is then automatically converted into a normal subscription if not cancelled at least 6 weeks in advance. Link Private BC:https://www.bahn.de/angebot/bahncard

Please note that we updated the list of special rates for hotels in our service area.

Please note the information on invoices with travel funds reference in Circular No. 39 (10.08.2022).

Please make sure to submit your applications/statements within 6 months after the last day of travel in accordance with § 3 LRKG. Submissions which are filed later are expired and cannot be processed anymore (see application form); if you delegate the completion and/or submission of applications to others, you bear resposibility for this.

Legislators have modified the state law on travel expenses, which will become effective on January 1, 2022. We have provided an overview of the most important changes, that you can find by clicking the news headline.

We are pleased to inform you that, with immediate effect, original (wet-ink) signatures are no longer mandatory for all internal forms such as "Travel Authorization Application" or "Statement of Travel Expenses". A digital signature is sufficient. All submissions are to be made on paper via inhouse mail. Please also refer to the Circular No. 56, dated 18.11.2021.

As of 16 February 2022, the signature regulations for the authorization of business travel have been adjusted. Approval by the Rector or Chancellor is now only required for official travel to virus variant areas. You will find further information on our Coronavirus info page.

We kindly ask all travellers to only use the latest versions of our forms, instead of re-using or overwriting previously used ones, since there are currently many changes being made to various forms. In doing so, you contribute to a faster settlement process with fewer queries. Thank you very much! Team Travel Expenses

Dear travelers, we have translated our forms and applications and now have them all available for you in English! Simply visit the English section in our download area and select the forms you need. All submissions to our department can be made using our English forms. We hope this will accomodate all travelers and make the application process easier. As always, if you have any questions, we will gladly assist you!

As of September 18th 2021, the University has restructured its hygiene and safety measures, which also affects business trips and their authorization: https://portal.uni-koeln.de/en/coronavirus

We are taking the opportunity to remodel our website. In this process, we also incorporate suggestions we have received from you regarding the transparency and accessibility of information. You are very welcome to continue to propose ideas for making our site better: reiko@verw.uni-koeln.de. Visit our website and take a look around! We are looking forward to receiving your feedback.

Dear traveller, We are very happy to announce the introduction of our new software for the processing of applications for travel expences KIDICAP starting Monday, 29th June 2020 after intense collaboration and adjustment with our software provider. The new software will replace the outdated and no longer supported PtravelReiko. With this, we hope to achieve a quicker processing of your applications. For you, the traveller, nothing will change due to the introduction at this point. All approvers from Division 7 now need to make sure to only process approvals within our new KIDICAP-software in order to ensure a regulated workflow. In case you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Team travel expenses

Dear traveller, we have processed all arrears! All those applications for travel allowances, which have not been processed yet, either still need clearance from the respective department responsible for the provision of financing, or still require clarification by the traveller and will also be conclusively processed very shortly. We were able to achieve this with the brilliant help of our partnered department and we’d like to thank them very much! Currently, we are working towards ensuring short processing times for all future applications that we will receive. Thank you for your patience. Team travel expenses

Dear traveller, to begin with, we would like to thank you kindly for your patience regarding the long processing time for your applications for travel allowances in the past. Please be assured that we too are distressed by the great number of arrears. Therefore, we are currently intensely working on a long term solution. We are planning to transfer our new system for the processing of applications into real-time mode by mid May. In order to decrease the number of arrears, we have been receiving active support from our department (Abt. 41 & D4) since mid February. Up to six colleagues have temporarily been appointed to the processing of applications. Two of those will continue to support us. This way we can assure to very effectively work off the accumulated arrears and are headed towards the complete processing of all of the applications. In the following you will find a few numbers to help understand our development: Arrears as of 31 December 2019: ca. 6.000; processed so far: 5.263 (≈ 88 %). Current arrears: 730 ≈ 12 %; dated 2019: 131 ≈ 2 %, dated 2020: 599 ≈ 10 %. We are very grateful and would like to thank our colleagues from our partnered department. We will continue to work towards ensuring the prompt processing of your applications for travel allowances. Thank you very much for your understanding. Team travel expenses