As part of the Vice Chancellor of Finance and Business Operations Working Smarter initiatives, the Accounting Office is pleased to announce a streamlined approach to travel expense reimbursement processing. The Accounts Payable unit will no longer review every trip for policy compliance, but will conduct reviews using a sampling methodology based on trip criteria. Departments will continue to be responsible ensuring travel expense reports are completed in accordance with Business and Finance Bulletin G-28 Travel Reimbursement policy. One of the goals of the streamlined approach is to improve the reimbursement turnaround time. The success of this new methodology is dependent upon the quality of the travel expense reporting.

In order to facilitate the streamlined review, the following enhancements have been made to the  iTravel system:

• The fields associated with trip Origination and Destination have been separated to provide unique fields for the City, State, and Country. This modification will allow for more consistent data entry, improve search results, and enhance the account coding of transactions. Please note that trips in the Travel Coordinator’s Work In Progress queue after the enhancements are implemented will need to have the new fields completed before the trip can be routed.
• The delivery options have been modified to mirror ePay. The delivery options are consistent with internal control best practices. Departments will have the option to request special handling on an exceptional basis; special handling requests require an explanation in the Comments section noting the circumstances necessitating the special handling. All trips with requests for special handling will be reviewed by Accounts Payable. If the specially handling request cannot be accommodated, the travel coordinator will be informed.

Due to the new sampling methodology, it is increasingly important for travel coordinators, pre-approvers, and approvers to ensure trips conform to Business & Finance Bulletin G-28 (https://policy.ucop.edu/doc/3420365) and all attachments are appropriate and readable.

The iTravel enhancements will be placed into production in the next few days. The streamlined review process will commence shortly thereafter. Questions regarding these enhancements should be directed to travelfeedback@ucr.edu