Travel Guidelines & PROCEDURES
ARRANGING TRAVEL
All CLA travel requests will be processed by the Travel Customer Service Office (TCSO), which is a centralized customer support center that provides direct travel support for all of our faculty, staff, students and guests. TCSO will work with individuals to initiate, process and expense travel through the University's Concur travel system (including making bookings).
To request assistance, travelers need to use the Request for Assistance Form that is provided by the TCSO (the button is located at the bottom left corner of the page). You can also contact TCSO via email at uaf-travel@alaska.edu, or via telephone at 907-450-TRIP for assistance.
Please DO NOT begin a travel request in the Concur system without the cooperation of an assigned delegate from TCSO; this will ensure that the appropriate approval flow and the actual booking of tickets, lodging, etc. is handled appropriately; also, please make sure to request to add the CLA Fiscal Officer, Heather Foltz (hlfoltz@alaska.edu) as your Department Approver if you have not done so already.
Department administrators will still serve as the first point of contact for faculty, students and guests who need to be directed to TCSO, but they will no longer provide any direct support to the traveler other than instances where no physical travel is occurring and only a registration fee is due.
Please note that travelers are expected to use the Concur booking tool as well as a personal UA travel card (when they are an employee) to incur all approved travel expenses whenever possible. For details about the personal travel card, please refer to the UA Travel Card brochure included at the bottom of this page.
In cases where no travel occurs, and registration only costs are incurred, a Concur request is not necessary and administrative assistants can (and should) provide support through the use of a procard, or a direct pay reimbursement.
CLA Funded Travel
For CLA departments that do not have an approved budget for travel, Department Chairs may request approval from the CLA Dean to reallocate funds from supplies and/or services for travel. These requests must be approved by the CLA Dean prior to any requests being submitted to TCSO or in Concur.
Request for CLA Dean's Approval of Unrestricted (Non-Instructional) Travel
UNAC Award Funded Travel
Note that the funds for UNAC awards are not made available to the units until the completion of the event and the acceptance of the required report. The final amount transferred to CLA will depend upon the final amount expended; if the award amount is $2,500 and only $500 is actually spent, only $500.00 will be given to the department as a reimbursement. Please make sure to provide a copy of your award letter when requesting assistance from TCSO.
Students and faculty who receive internal awards (generally URSA and UNAC) should work directly with the Travel Customer Service Office (TCSO) to initiate and expense travel costs. When you are working with these awards, please keep in mind the following guidelines:
Given that some awards may involve registration costs only and not actual travel expenses, department admins can provide direct assistance for those expenditures by making those purchases with a department procard or processing an employee reimbursement for registration fees paid out-of-pocket. To ensure that charges post in the appropriate fiscal year, department credit cards should not be used after June 16th, so please plan appropriately. If you need assistance while your department admin is off-contract, please contact the Dean's Office (uaf-cla@alaska.edu) for assistance.
If you need assistance with booking travel or you need to seek reimbursement for travel that has already occurred (e.g. airfare, lodging, per diem, transportation), you will need to request assistance from TCSO for the completion of a Concur travel request (https://uaf.edu/travel/resources/index.php).
Charges that are placed on individual travel cards or booked through Concur must be fully reconciled through the expense report process no later than July 8th to ensure that they will post in the correct fiscal year.
All UNAC awardees should use Fund 103010 and Org 61243 when submitting requests for assistance with UNAC travel. Note that 61243 has an AS program code, which means that account codes 4011, 4012 and 4015 cannot be used for supplies; only 4010 and/or 4014 would be the appropriate codes (when applicable).
TCSO will provide travel expense report documentation to the Provost's Office; however, if you only have receipts for non-travel expenses (e.g. memberships & registration fees related to online conferences) note that those receipts will need to be manually submitted to the Signers' Business Office, to the attention of Kathy Bennett (klbennett@alaska.edu), after being processed for reimbursement.
When the event has been completed, the required report must be provided through the Google form provided by the Provost's Office for that purpose: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc6IlZmQFP_HXnBaOgvQCoql8uitc0tz7bctRIhmhkr713U-g/viewform.