Travel (Missions)
This page gives rules and procedures for travel ("missions") paid
by LEAR.
General Principles
- You should travel only when necessary, and as economically as
reasonably possible.
- All major expenses for a trip must be approved in advance with a
signed Ordre de Mission form.
- We only reimburse the minimum of: (i) real costs that you
have actually incurred; (ii) the daily forfait;
(iii) costs that we consider to be "reasonable" and commensurate with
your usual living standards at home.
Hence, you should:
- Check in advance that in principle we will approve travel to a
conference or workshop before submitting a paper to it (we do what we
can, but an accepted paper alone is not a guarantee of
funding, nor do we usually fund trips for work done outside of
LEAR).
- Minimize extra page charges by shortening your paper, and always
get our approval in advance for extra pages.
- Use the cheapest reasonable registration method, transport,
accommodation, meals, etc. Any "extras" are at your own expense, just
as they would be at home.
- Book early enough to get any available discounts - you are
personally responsible for expenses caused by unreasonably late
booking, changes of plans for personal reasons, etc.
- Apply for any travel grants or student discounts that are
available to you, and join professional societies such as the IEEE if
this will save money overall (i.e. if the members registration rate +
society membership is less than the non-members registration
rate).
- Keep track of your real expenses while travelling.
Before the Trip
To make sure that everything is clear and that nobody has any
unpleasant surprises, we ask you to provide a detailed budget for each
trip. Email this to Cordelia and Bill and bring a printed copy with
the Ordre de Mission form when you come to get this signed. It should
include itemized estimates for all costs that you plan to claim,
including (but not limited to) :
- Registration charges, including any workshops, extra page charges,
membership charges, etc. If there are extra page charges that will be
paid by a co-author, add a footnote giving the charge and the
co-author.
- Exact costs for major travel such as flights, inter-city trains,
etc.
- Estimated ground transportation costs such as airport coaches,
buses, etc. If you think that you may have to take any taxis, note
this and include cost estimates if possible.
- Accommodation costs, or upper estimates if exact costs are not
known.
- Reasonable upper estimates for meals and other incidentals.
- Any other costs that may be incurred, such as visas.
The website where you can monitor your trips is
https://izi.inria.fr/tiki-index.php.
Choosing Flights and Trains
In principle, we only reimburse the cost of the cheapest advance
purchase fare. Also, INRIA will not reimburse more than the cost of
the best fare found by their official travel agent Carlsson Wagonlit,
so we always need to get an official proposition from Carlsson even if
you don't use it.
You can book your flights yourself if you want to, but if you book
through INRIA and Carlsson you will avoid having to pay yourself and
be reimbursed later.
Experience shows that the following procedure causes the least
hassle for everybody :
- Work out your exact dates and other constraints and find the best
proposition that you can on your favourite internet travel site. At
the moment, SNCF voyages
seems to be the best, as it gives good fares and allows complex
multi-stop trips to be planned on-line. Other operators are Ebookers and Lastminute. If you just want
to know which flights exist, Amadeus (the professional network
used by most European travel agents) is very useful. If there are
several promising possibilities choose the best two or at very most
three.
- Once you have detailed proposition(s), with prices and sets of
flights that suit you, log in to https://izi.inria.fr/tiki-index.php. You have to fill in the form at "demander missions" (ask Anne if you have questions about it). INRIA's travel agency will
make a proposition that satisfies the constraints and price at least
as well as your suggested itinerary. Usually, they will find something
at least as good, or at least give you their best price for your
chosen itinerary.
- When they reply, decide quickly which proposition to take, fill in
a corresponding Ordre de Mission form, get approval from Cordelia or
Bill, and book it. Carlsson usually only give you 1-2 days to decide,
so you will need to be sure what you want at this point.
Choosing Hotels and Restaurants
One of the major benefits of trips and conferences is that they
allow you to meet and build up links with other members of the
community. This is part of your job on any trip and we expect you to
make an active effort towards it. Hence, your budget should be large
enough to allow you to eat casual meals with interesting colleagues,
and your hotel shouldn't be so far from the centre of activity that
you can't do this. However, this only stretches to casual meals and
economical hotels. If you choose to eat in fancy restaurants or stay
in luxury hotels, it is at your own expense. If no suitable budget
accomodation is available, we do expect you to save money by sharing a
room wherever possible.
While Travelling
Make sure that you get official receipts for conference
registration (this should be in your registration envelope - if not,
ask!), accommodation, airport coaches, taxis, etc.
After the Trip
Add up your total incurred costs, write on the expenses form (A5
sized sheet) "Je demande le remboursement forfaitaire de XXX euros
pour cette mission", sign the form, and give it to Anne. If your
costs were larger than expected, you will need to justify any large
items to Cordelia or Bill and get approval for the increase.
- You need to provide full receipts for all claims in cost
categories that are not normally included within the daily forfait,
such as airport coaches, trains or flights, motorway tolls,
registration charges, visas, etc. These also need to be entered on the
expenses form.
- You also need to provide receipts for accommodation (but
for missions outside of France, you don't actually need to
enter these on the expenses form if you don't want to), and for any
significant cost overruns beyond your planned daily forfait
(don't enter these on the form either).
- You do not need to provide receipts for non-accommodation
daily costs that are within your planned forfait, such as meals,
subway, etc. However you should keep an approximate record of these
costs yourself, as you can only request reimbursement for costs
actually incurred (in cases of doubt, we may ask to see examples of
such receipts).
Further administrative information
- As members of GRAVIR, we have four different administrations with
four different sets of rules, budgets, etc: INRIA, CNRS, INPG and
UJF. For simplicity, we process almost all of our missions through
INRIA.
- You will need to fill in a request form (Ordre de Mission) for the
body paying (usually INRIA), and also for your employer if this is
different (e.g. CNRS employees should also fill in an Ordre de Mission
sans frais for the CNRS). These need to be approved and signed by
Cordelia or Bill, well in advance of the travel.
- Each administration enforces an official forfait (daily maximum reimbursement) which
depends on the country or town visited and the category of staff. To
find out your forfait, click on your
destination in this list and scroll to the bottom for the
forfait. The staff categories are roughly: CR1 and above - group I;
postdoc and young CR2 - group II; student - group III. These sums
include all food, lodging and incidentals. For each free
(non-breakfast) meal that you get (e.g. lunches or dinners given by
hosts or included in the conference registration) the daily forfait
reduces by about 15-20%.
- You should use public transport wherever possible. In general,
taxi trips and any other form of non-economy travel must be approved
in advance. Unreasonably large taxi fares will not be approved or
reimbursed. To get reimbursed for a taxi, you need to fill in the
appropriate form.