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.