Yeah, our automated system (Concur) does end up insisting on justifications for why you picked the 12 hour direct flight which is $100 more expensive than the t

Yeah, our automated system (Concur) does end up insisting on justifications for why you picked the 12 hour direct flight which is $100 more expensive than the three options with 2 stopovers and a total travel time in the 18-20 hour range (or sometimes even overnight stays in airports). Feels like a lot of the goal in these systems is to try enforce rules that no person expense manager could try insist on with a straight face. If even 10% of the company gets scared off by the justification demand and books the inconvenient option, that's $20k/yr saved. Which is still probably peanuts compared to what Concur costs, but that cost is somebody else's problem to the finance person who gets to claim savings on annual flight costs.