Field travel, with the risk in plain view
Programme staff, monitoring visits and emergency deployments take nonprofit teams to places most corporate travellers never go. The questions that matter are simple to ask and hard to answer from a pile of e-tickets: who is in a Level 3 or Level 4 country this week, which grant paid for it, and what the donor's report should say about its emissions.
TripDesk365 answers them from the bookings: the State Department level of every destination on every trip, a grant code on every booking, and the flights in front of the people responsible for them.
The advisory level of every destination, on every trip
Each booking lists every country the trip lands in beyond the one it starts in, including connections, with the local time there and the US State Department advisory level, linked to the Department's own page. A connection through a Level 3 country shows up, not only the final destination.
Right now 24 countries carry a Level 4 "Do not travel" advisory and 26 carry Level 3 "Reconsider travel", from the State Department's feed, which TripDesk365 reads every six hours. See the Level 4 list and the Level 3 list.
When the Department raises a country's level, staff who turned on browser alerts are told if you have trips landing there in the next 60 days, so a deployment planned under Level 2 is looked at again before it leaves under Level 3. The traveller sees the same levels on their own trip link.
Who is in a high-risk country this week
Security focal points and country directors need the list of people on the move, not a booking system. In TripDesk365 they get:
- A travel map of flights departing in the next 24 hours, in the air, or landed in the last six hours, each destination coloured by its advisory level. Positions are live where flight data has them and estimated from the schedule otherwise, and the map shows which. Names appear only for people whose role may read them.
- A calendar of every departure in the month on its local day, and a traveller directory with each person's next departure and disruption history.
- A Monday email of the week's departures and open disruptions, sent without names, to the people with reporting access.
- The person to call for each traveller: an emergency contact kept with the booking and on their profile, shown only to people whose role may read contact details, and never on a trip link or an export.
Working with your assistance provider
Many NGOs have an assistance or security provider who needs to know who is travelling where. TripDesk365 is the record they can be given: filter the register by departure dates and export the roster, one row per trip with the lead traveller, the route and the first departure in local time. The export needs its own permission and a stated reason, and is logged before any data leaves. Medical help, security advice and evacuation stay with your provider.
A grant code on every trip
Restricted funding means a flight has to be charged to the grant that allows it, and a donor audit means somebody will ask to see the list. Set up booking fields for what your finance team tracks:
- Grant or award number, as a list of active grants, required on every booking.
- Programme or country office, so country-level reporting does not depend on reading routes.
- Purpose of travel, such as monitoring visit, emergency response or training, as a list.
A missing grant code is flagged on the booking. Values can be corrected after the trip when a cost is reallocated, and a closed grant is archived, never deleted, so its trips keep their code in every later export. The flight-by-flight export carries every field as a column for the finance team's reconciliation.
Emissions per grant, for donor reports
Choose your grant field in the emissions report and TripDesk365 totals the estimated CO₂e of flights per grant for any period up to 400 days, with and without the non-CO₂ effects of flying at altitude, as a CSV with the method stated. Trips with no grant code are a row of their own, so the per-grant figures add up to the organization's total. The figures are estimates from the UK government's published conversion factors, not measurements. Try the method on our flight emissions calculator.
Approving a trip to a Level 3 or Level 4 country
Most NGOs require more than a line manager's yes before someone travels to a high-risk country: a written justification, a security plan, confirmation of insurance, and a senior sign-off. TripDesk365 puts the level in front of whoever approves; the approval process itself is yours.
Our free high-risk travel approval checklist sets out what to ask for at each level, and what to do when a level rises after a trip is approved.
When a flight is disrupted
A cancelled connection in a Level 3 country is a different problem from one at home. TripDesk365 follows each flight on a live flight-data feed: when the feed reports a cancellation, a major delay or a diversion, or someone files one on the booking, the traveller and the person who booked are emailed, a work item opens with a deadline, and staff with browser alerts, a Slack or Teams channel, or a webhook to your own systems are told. The work item stays open until a person records what was done.
When a late arrival leaves too little time to make the next flight, the person who booked is told before the traveller lands, with later flights on the route from the airline timetable. Seats and fares are not checked: the list is where your agent starts.
For humanitarian travel agencies
Agencies that book for NGOs can run each organization as a client account with its own grant fields, its own forwarding code for confirmations, and its own rows in the emissions report, while their agents work one queue. See how TripDesk365 works for agencies.
What TripDesk365 does not do for NGOs
- It does not offer humanitarian fares or extra baggage allowances, and it does not search fares today.
- It does not provide 24-hour assistance, medical or security advice, or evacuation.
- It shows the US State Department's levels only, not other governments' advice or a security company's ratings.
- It does not read a traveller's location from their phone, or send text messages.
It is the record of who is going where, under which level, on which grant, which every other part of a duty of care programme depends on. Our duty of care checklist covers the rest of a programme.
Bring next month's deployments
Send us a few upcoming field trips before the demo. We will show you their advisory levels, the map, and the emissions report cut by grant.