UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI ‘ I TRAVEL REIMBURSEMENT ISSUES

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

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 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 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. Improve Travel Policies/Procedures:

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 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. Technical Improvements:

IMPROVING THE PROCESS 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. Technical Improvements (cont.):

IMPROVING THE PROCESS 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. Technical Improvements (cont.):

IMPROVING THE PROCESS 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. Technical Improvements (cont.):

IMPROVING THE PROCESS 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. Technical Improvements (cont.):

QUESTIONS?