Managing your company's business travel

1. Check business address
2. Define payment methods
3. Create booking units
4. Set up employees as business travellers

Please check that your business address is correct. Make sure that the company name and street address do not contain any special characters.

The business address is automatically adopted as the billing address.

As a business customer administrator, you can define the payment methods with which your business travellers are allowed to pay.

You can select PayPal, Giropay and Apple Pay as required. The central corporate credit card and any personal credit cards are always activated.

To use the central corporate credit card, simply set it up in the respective booking unit.

Create booking units if you would like to manage multiple departments or sites, or use different billing addresses and payment methods. The central booking unit is set as the default initially.

The address or payment method stored in the booking unit can be assigned to all employees created there.

To allow your employees to book rail tickets and BahnCards themselves, you as the business customer administrator or booking unit manager must set them up in bahn.business. You can decide whether or not employees should have their own booking rights.

Your employees will then receive an e-mail for registration, and can book tickets and BahnCards themselves if they have the right to do so.

bahn.business has three roles with different rights for perfectly organising business travel in your company: 

• Business customer administrators (GA)
• Booking unit managers (BV)
• Business travellers (GR)

Role for managing the general company account​

• Can centrally create and adjust data relating to the company
• Can invite employees or colleagues to become users, create booking units, and assign the roles of booking unit manager and business traveller
• Can book for themselves and for third parties, and grant or withdraw booking rights​​​​​​

The person who registers the company with bahn.business is automatically assigned this role. The role can be transferred if necessary.

Role for managing individual booking units

• Can create and adjust data relating to the individual booking unit
• Can invite employees or colleagues as new users of the booking unit and assign the role of business traveller
• Can book for themselves and third parties, and grant or withdraw booking rights within the booking unit

The ability to create booking units is ideal for companies with multiple locations, branch offices or accounting structures.

Role for all travelling employees​

• Can book for themselves if they are authorised to do so
• Can use the bahn.business portal and the DB Navigator app
• Can cancel their own tickets or claim compensation in the event of train delays

The role makes it as easy as possible for employees to organise their business trips and track their activities.

The company account contains all the relevant information about your company and is created automatically when you first register with bahn.business.

The personal business customer account is always related to a specific person and contains all the relevant information about them.

A large number of personal business customer accounts can be assigned to a company account.

• Company data such as address or payment methods
• Order information
• Administration for booking units and employees

The company account can only be viewed by business customer administrators (GA) and booking unit managers (BV).

• Personal details
• Personalised offers such as BahnCards, subscriptions or vouchers
• BahnBonus customer account, if applicable

A business customer account is created with a personalised (business) e-mail address. Persons registered in a company account always have their own business customer account.

A person can have both a business and a private customer account. These are not linked to each other and should be considered separately. If a business customer account is deleted, it is automatically converted into a private customer account.

Employees and colleagues come and go. To optimise employee management, bahn.business allows you to set up new employees and delete former ones either immediately or at a later date.

All persons with the roles of business customer administrator (GA) and booking unit manager (BV) can invite new employees to use the system via a registration link (valid for 42 days).

Several employees can be invited together. You can enter up to 100 employee e-mail addresses at the same time. Newly created employee profiles are assigned the role of business traveller. This can be adjusted after initial use.

Employees must enter an address and their date of birth in their customer account before you can order the BahnCard Business for them.
 

If an employee leaves the company, business customer administrators or the responsible booking unit managers can delete their business customer account immediately or at a later date to remove it from the company account.

The employee's business customer account is then automatically converted into a private one. The account holder is informed by e-mail about the cancellation of their business customer account. Only the employee themselves can permanently delete their now private customer account if they wish.

You can manage your personal details in the business customer account.

Enter your BahnCard Business or activate your participation in BahnBonus.

You can adjust your address, customer number, date of birth, contact e-mail, user name and password in your customer account.

If you wish to purchase a BahnCard Business, your registered address and date of birth must be entered correctly.

You can assign your BahnCard Business as a discount card in your business customer account.

If you enter the BahnCard Business as the discount type, the discount will automatically be applied to every booking.

If you would like to re-enter your BahnCard Business following an account migration, please note the following information in German.

You can choose to participate in BahnBonus in your business customer account and automatically collect status and bonus points.

If you have a BahnCard and have entered it in your customer account, the associated customer number will be used directly for BahnBonus. If not, you will receive a new customer number upon activation.

If you would like to re-enter your BahnBonus number following an account migration, please note the following information in German.

If you have the appropriate booking rights, bahn.business lets you book tickets, seats, BahnCard Business discount cards and upgrades for your colleagues, managers or employees.

We recommend all travellers to create a business customer account, as this makes the full range of offers available to book for third parties.

After booking, the third party receives the ticket by e-mail, while the person making the booking receives the booking confirmation and invoice.

The booked offer is automatically stored in the third party's business customer account if they have one.

As a business customer administrator (GA) or booking unit manager (BV), you can make bookings for third parties in your company or booking unit.

1. Log in and select the person who requires a ticket in the employee administration section.
2. Click on "...".
3. Choose the required offer.
4. Carry out the remaining booking steps as usual.

As a business traveller with your own booking right, you can book tickets and seats for third parties. It is not possible to book a BahnCard Business for third parties.

1. Carry out the booking steps as usual (login, select connection, offer, etc.)
2. In the "Customer data" step, select "For whom are you booking?". Here, click on "Book for another person" and enter the details of the person in question.

You can also book tickets and seats for third parties without a business customer account. The BahnCard Business can only be booked in conjunction with a business customer account, however.

1. Carry out the booking steps as usual (login, select connection, offer, etc.)
2. In the "Customer data" step, select "For whom are you booking?". Click on "Book for another person" and enter the person's details.