The Equus Compliance Engine (ECE) is a risk assessment tool designed for Business Travelers. ECE evaluates multiple compliance indicators to identify risks associated with a travel destination during a business trip similar to the Vialto MyTrips Assessment.
Compliance Indicators Evaluated by ECE
ECE assesses the following key indicators:
Permanent Establishment (PE): A detailed compliance check including subcategories - Service, Agency and Fixed Place of Business, which further expands into:
Place of Management PE
Construction PE
Other PE
Social Security
Tax Liability
Posted Workers
Immigration: This assessment is powered by Fragomen, and results will only be displayed if the appropriate license is in place.
These indicators collectively provide insights into potential compliance risks and required actions.
Risk Levels and Outputs
ECE provides results for seven assessments, delivering:
Risk Levels: Indicators return values such as Low, Medium, or High risk (depending on the type of assessment).
Risk Summaries: Detailed explanations to help users understand the implications of the risk levels and recommended next steps. The assessment for Posted Worker returns a binary outcome for initiating a Posted Worker Notification (PWN) filing:
Required
Not Required
Configuring ECE as the Default Assessment Engine
The Equus Platform allows only one assessment engine to be active at a time. A system preference determines the active engine. By default, this preference sets ECE as the primary engine.
Dynamic behavior is implemented across the platform depending on the engine selected. This includes screens and widgets display data based on the active assessment engine. The Assignment and Travel Destination details screen will vary depending on the engine selected. For ECE, the Employee screen can display three Permanent Establishment Questions that will be considered for the Permanent Establishment Assessment result, as well as an additional question added to the Travel Destination Screen—all questions are optional, but if used, they will be considered for the PE results.
The Mobility Manager widget will also display different fields for both internal and external widget depending the engine enabled. For ECE, the permanent establishment questionnaire will appear. Note that the data related to non-selected engines is hidden.
Assessment Requirements
The process of conducting assessments using the Equus Compliance Engine (ECE) follows this workflow.
Create Records: Create or access an existing business trip in the platform.
Create Travel specific data for assessment: Add or update a travel destination associated with the trip. Once the destination details are saved, assessments can be triggered either manually by clicking the
button or automatically as the system processes the data and initiates the request.
The results are displayed immediately in an accordion-style layout, which can be expanded to reveal detailed assessments, including any child records for further insights.
Note, users can initiate assessments from the Internal Travel Destination Screen under Assignments or the Mobility Manager Widget. Both manual and automatic processes validate inputs before generating results.
Viewing the Results
Internal users can view results in the Destination Details screen or Mobility Manager Widget, with detailed insights available in the Assessment Results section.
ECE results are displayed in a collapsible layout for easy access. The Travel Destination Grid is updated to show ECE-specific assessments. Each indicator's results, including child assessments like Permanent Establishment subcategories, are grouped together. Every assessment includes a Risk Level and Risk Summary for clear and actionable insights.
Posted Worker Notification Filing can also be started with the results provided either manually or automatically.
Immigration Assessment
If the appropriate license is in place, the Immigration assessment results will be visible in the Mobility Manager Widget and Internal Business Travel Record.
Note that a connection with a PinPoint site is also required to get immigration assessment results. Reach out to your Equus Representative for more information.
The Immigration assessment will be in one of the following statuses as indicated by the badge:
Not Supported: Fragomen does not support the destination country, and no immigration information will be available for the destination.
Unavailable: Pinpoint’s request to Fragomen timed out. Users can retry by deleting the destination and reading it (automatic retries are a planned future enhancement)
Too Long: The trip is too long for Fragomen to assess for immigration requirements
Not Applicable: Immigration is not applicable for the trip (e.g. a domestic trip)
Additional Action Required: Fragomen supports the destination country, but the user will need to answer additional questions to get the final assessment results. A link is provided which the user should click to answer the questions. It is possible to create QWF automations to send this link over emails (e.g. to have the mobile employee answer the questions themselves). Users do not need to be logged in to use the link.
Once the user clicks the link and answers the additional questions, the Assessment results will be updated to show Fragomen’s determination. The possible determinations are:
Business Visa or Other Entry Visa Required: badge is red and reads “Required”
Work Authorization Required: badge is red and reads “Required”
Further Action or Consultation Required: badge is red and reads “Required”
No Visa or Work Authorization Required: badge is green and reads “Not Required”
Transit-Only / No Assessment: badge is gray and reads “No Assessment”
This determination will be accompanied by a Summary field that includes information from Fragomen about the specific actions needed.
Things to Note
For PWN assessments, after the PWN Filing process has been started or marked as Filed, a Reference Number field will become available. This Reference Number will be displayed in the Travel Destination section on both the internal screen and the Mobility Manager widget.