Transcript Travel Reimbursement Issues

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I
TRAVEL REIMBURSEMENT
ISSUES
TRAVEL STATISTICS
TRAVEL STATISTICS
• For the period July 1, 2005
through November 24, 2006, a
total of 8,779 travel completions
were created in the University’s
eTravel system. Of the 8,779,
6,301 travel completions were
vouchered (i.e. checks issued to
traveler’s).
TRAVEL STATISTICS
From the 6,301 travel completions
vouchered, the following averages were
determined:
• Average No. of Days for Traveler to Create a
Completion after return:
18 Calendar Days
• Average No. of Days for Fiscal Officer to
Approve a Completion after created:
20 Calendar Days
TRAVEL STATISTICS
• Average No. of Days between return date and
Fiscal Officer Approval:
37 Calendar Days
• Average No. of Days for Disbursing to Cut a
Reimbursement Check after Fiscal Officer
Approves:
19 Calendar Days
• Average No. of Days from Return Date to
Traveler is Reimbursed:
56 Calendar Days
TRAVEL STATISTICS
• The next two slides represents travel statistics
by Department in order of longest average
processing time to the shortest average
processing time, from the time the traveler
returns to the time the traveler is reimbursed.
• Summary:
Longest Average Processing time: 133 days
Shortest Average Processing time: 1 day
Median Average Processing time: 56 days
REIMBURSEMENT
PROBLEMS
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Lack of Proper Receipts
Disbursing Office allows the traveler to
certify small expenses if receipts are lost
(e.g. parking, taxi, etc.). Traveler’s try to
certify large expenses such as
conference fees (for hundreds of dollars.)
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Receipts do not show payment method
Receipts submitted do not always show
the payment method (e.g. paid via
personal credit card). In these situations,
it is difficult to determine if the expense
is a legitimate reimbursement to the
traveler.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Booking trips online
Travelers often use online travel sites to
book hotel, air, and car rental together as
a package (e.g. Expedia). The traveler
may pay the online travel site, but will not
retain documentation of payment to the
online site. When the traveler then tries
to claim reimbursements, there are no
individual receipts from the airline, hotel,
or car rental agency because these
expenses were already pre-paid.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Discrepancies between Itinerary and
Travel Completion
Travelers will submit a copy of their
itinerary with the travel completion. The
dates and times on the itinerary do not
always match dates and times on the
travel completion. This causes errors in
the calculation of lodging and M&IE.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Wrong Federal Allowable Rate (FAR)
utilized
Some cities have more than one FAR
depending on the season. If the wrong
FAR is used, the traveler may receive
more or less than what they are actually
entitled to.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Boarding Passes and hotel receipts are
not included with travel completions
- Disbursing Office relies on boarding passes
as proof that the traveler actually went on the
trip. However, if the traveler does not have
boarding passes but has a hotel receipt,
Disbursing Office will waive the boarding
pass requirement.
- Travelers sometimes have no boarding
passes or hotel receipts. In this situation,
there is no proof that the traveler actually
went on the trip.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Car Rental
- Travelers are not allowed to purchase
insurance for intra state travel.
Traveler’s will purchase the insurance
and request a reimbursement.
- Travelers are allowed to take collision
insurance for out-of-state travel but not
personal injury insurance. Traveler’s
purchase the personal injury insurance
and request a reimbursement.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Car Rental (cont.)
- Travelers are entitled to rent compact or sub
compact vehicles only.
▪ Traveler’s will take advantage of “free upgrades”
offered by the car rental agency. Car rental
agencies may charge a $1.00 to $2.00 surcharge
for the “free upgrade”. Travelers will request
reimbursement for the surcharge.
▪ If a larger vehicle is rented, there is no justification
attached for renting the larger vehicle.
▪ Frequent travelers have a preferred car rental
agency. These traveler’s will not deviate from this
preference even if compact or sub compact
vehicles are not available from that agency at the
time of their travel.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Fiscal Officer/Traveler Issues
- Fiscal Officers do not always check travel
expenses line by line on travel completions.
- Questionable travel completions are
forwarded to Disbursing for rejection
because the traveler questions their Fiscal
Office’s judgment.
- Disbursing will try to work with the Fiscal
Officers to correct minor discrepancies in a
travel completion via telephone. Fiscal
Officers will often request the entire
document be returned for correction.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• Lack of Funds Available
If a travel is being funded by a mix of
University funds and federal funds, quite
often, the federal fund account will not
have sufficient funds available.
Therefore, the traveler cannot be
reimbursed until that issue is resolved.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• University pCard vs. Personal Credit
Cards
Because University pCards are issued in
a University employee’s name, it is
difficult to determine whether or not a
charged expense should be attributed as
a reimbursement to the traveler or as paid
for by the University.
A Traveler should not be reimbursed for
expenses paid via a University pCard.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• IRS Gross Income Reporting
If a traveler receives a travel advance and
does not file a travel completion within 60
days from their return, the University is
required to report this to the IRS as gross
income to the traveler.
In August of 2006, the eTravel system was
modified to generate email auto notices to
travelers and their fiscal officer’s if they
have not filed a completion within 45-days
and 55-days of their return.
REIMBURSEMENT PROBLEMS
• IRS Gross Income Reporting (cont.)
For the period August 1 – November 24,
2006, the eTravel system has generated:
- 105 forty-five day notices; and
- 73 fifty-five day notices.
TOTAL: 178 notices
IMPROVING THE
REIMBURSEMENT
PROCESS
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Improve Travel Policies/Procedures:
• Identify Low Risk/High Risk Travel
If a trip is identified as “low risk” (e.g. same
day travel), do not require itineraries and/or
receipts.
• Standardize Bargaining Unit (BU) Rules
If all BU’s could move to one standard set of
rules, this would eliminate confusion. This
however would depend entirely on BU
negotiators.
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Improve Travel Policies/Procedures (cont.):
• Move towards one travel system to
accommodate UH, RCUH, and UH Foundation.
Have the system also be able to accommodate
SCOPIS employees, and UH students.
If all types of funding and all employees and
students could be accommodated by one
system, preparers and travelers would only
need to learn and use one system for
processing travel documents rather than
multiple systems.
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Improve Travel Policies/Procedures (cont.):
• Responsibility for creating travel documents
With the implementation of eTravel,
preparer’s are expecting traveler’s to take
care of creating their own travel documents.
If preparer’s and traveler’s roles were more
clearly defined, this would eliminate
confusion as to whose responsibility it is to
process travel documents.
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Technical Improvements:
• Online Approvals
Online approvals would eliminate routing of hard copy
travel documents for signatures. Hard copy receipts
would still need to be submitted to the Fiscal Office.
To implement, FO’s would need to supply the approval
data, supervisor for each employee in Peoplesoft and
the PI for each account in FMIS.
• Auto feed from eTravel to FMIS
This would directly feed all of the accounting
information from eTravel to FMIS. This would eliminate
data entering the accounting information into FMIS and
cut down on the Disbursing Office processing time.
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Technical Improvements (cont.):
• Pre-fill the Federal Allowable Rates (FAR) in the
eTravel System
Traveler’s would not have to look up the FAR.
This would reduce the risk of the Traveler
selecting the wrong FAR.
• Send additional reminder notices to travelers
Currently, travelers are only sent reminders after
45 and 55 days from their return date. The
system could be modified to send reminder
notices to traveler’s to create their travel
completions three days after their return date.
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Technical Improvements (cont.):
• Send reminder notices to FO’s when the traveler
has submitted the document for approval in
eTravel
Currently, FO’s are not prompted to approve
documents online. A modification could be added
to eTravel when a travel document has been
submitted online for their approval.
However, even if reminder notices are sent to the
FO, the FO would need to wait for the travelers to
submit back up documents before final approval
can be made to the online document.
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Technical Improvements (cont.):
• Eliminate hard copy checks and implement
electronic funds transfer (EFT) for advances
and reimbursements
All travel advances and reimbursements
would be directly deposited into traveler’s
accounts.
Disbursing could lesson the amount of lead
time needed to process advances, currently
at 10 days. With EFT, a 5 day lead time
should be sufficient.
IMPROVING THE PROCESS
Technical Improvements (cont.):
• Create a knowledge database to store
questions and answers
Create a central location for traveler’s to
access if they have any travel related
questions or concerns.
QUESTIONS?