Embedded Files
You will receive a VISA Purchasing Card to use for your travel expenses. This P-Card will be used for flights, hotels, rental cars, rental car fuel, and any expenses for receptions. This P-Card should never be used for any personal expenses such as food, entertainment, or alcohol. When using your P-Card, you must keep track of all receipts, physical or digital. Money for food while traveling will come to you as a cash advance, which is determined by the in/out-of-state rate for meal per diem, and how long you will be gone for your trip.
General Travel Policies:
General Travel Policies:
When you are traveling and realize that you may have not brought enough materials, make sure you are sensible about having them sent to you. Use write-ups from previous trips (found in the S-Drive or the filing cabinet in Anders's office) to the same location to make your best estimate. Use your best judgement and talk with Anders about shipping before/during a trip.
Rental Cars & Travel Agencies:
Be conscientious with the use of your rental car. It is intended for business use. Putting excessive miles on the vehicle for personal use is not acceptable.
If you are taking vacation time while on a trip, make sure you do not keep the car and use it for personal travel. You are only covered under MSU car insurance when you are traveling for work.
If the trip is over a holiday, such as Thanksgiving, talk to Anders before you go so you can get approval ahead of time.
Your driving behavior is also a reflection on MSU. Think about that in regards to speeding and road etiquette.
MSU prefers that you rent midsized/standard cars. With that said, there are certain circumstances when something else may be more appropriate (for example, a MT high school visit trip later in the fall, you may feel safes with a vehicle that has AWD or 4WD). Ideally, try not to plan trips for too late in the year to avoid this, but it's Montana, which means anything can happen when it comes to the weather! Most importantly, NEVER drive on bad roads that you are uncomfortable with. Please be mindful if booking something other than a standard vehicle and take care to not spend frivolously.
When you are ready to load your vehicle for in-state trips, you can pull up next to the SUB. Make sure to call Campus Police and let them know you are parking there (ext: 2121). They will typically give you about 20 minutes to get everything into your car.
Flights: When making plane reservations, you can use sites like "www.kayak.com" to view a price range and availability. Before purchasing a flight, Anders must approve the ticket. Email Anders the itinerary or options for flights with a schedule and he will approve from there. Be sure to book the actual ticket directly through the airline and not through a third-party site like Kayak.
Lodging:
The national standard hotel per diem is $110. When traveling out of state, many "high cost areas" will have higher per diem rates. Always be sure to request the government rate for your area when making the reservations.
Your hotel is your "home away from home." We expect you to be safe and comfortable. Be conscientious about cost, but not at the expense of safety and comfort.
If you stay with family, friends, etc., while traveling for work, you will be reimbursed $12.00/night.
Expenses:
P-Cards: Your purchasing card is to be used for business purposes ONLY. You'll use your P-Card to book airline tickets, rent cars, pay for hotel rooms, pay for gas for your rental car, buy
NEVER use your P-Card for food/drinks or personal purchases.
Meals: You will get in-state/out-of-state per diem each day in the form of a cash advance.
Breakfast: $11.20 In-State, $16 Out-of-State
Lunch: $13.30 In-State, $19 Out-of-State
Dinner: $19.60 In-State, $28 Out-of-State
Total: $44.10 In-State, $63 Out-of-State
Reporting: You will be required to complete a pre-approval before all out-of-state travel and though it is technically not required, it is strongly recommended prior to in-state. Submitting a pre-approval is how you receive your cash advance/meal per diem. While traveling, keep receipts of all expenses paid on your P-Card. You will be required to submit an expense report upon return. *See next sections for further instructions.
High School Visits & Fairs:
Arrive early for your appointment or the fair.
Be courteous and friendly with prospective students, high school counselors, and other Admissions Counselors.
Stay with your table throughout the entire fair. If you need a break, ask a neighboring table to watch your table and scan barcodes for you.
You need to stay until the VERY END of the announced program time. *please do not begin to pack up until this time*
Always stand at your table during a fair. NEVER talk with students while sitting down. Be responsible and accountable for your belongings and how you're representing the university.
Traveling With Non-Admission People:
Occasionally, the opportunity may arise to travel with a spouse or friend. This is an exceptional situation rather than a common one. Approval for such requests must be made in advance of the travel and will be considered on a case by case basis. Always check with Anders and Mike ahead of time.
Rental cars are used for University business only - MSU is responsible for the employee ONLY.
Only Admissions personnel - or those requested/approved by Admissions - may represent MSU at college fairs, high school visits, etc.
Receptions request form
Receptions request form
Alyssa will need to submit a hospitality approval form for your receptions on the road. Submit a “Receptions Request Form” with your travel advance paperwork to Alyssa (Example 2). Be sure to list every city and state in which you might have a pizza party and the total number of parties. The cost for each party will be estimated at $200 and the number of people attending will be estimated at 25 people per party.
After Travel:
After Travel:
ChromeRiver Expense Reports:
Use the Expense Reports to justify your travel expenses to the Business Office. The Expense Report needs to be created and submitted upon return of each trip as soon as possible. Try to have the Expense Report submitted within five days of your trip, although it is not always possible to follow that schedule when you have back-to-back trips.
Uploading Receipts: It is VERY IMPORTANT that you ask for a receipt in every instance in which you used your purchasing card (including taxis, parking, tolls, etc.) and go back, if possible, to obtain a receipt if you forgot one. This will cut down on the un-receipted expenses and may allow the Business Office to cut down on verification calls. Using the Chrome River Snap App. on your phone, upload every receipt as soon as possible (during your trip).
Hotel Receipts, Car Rental Receipts and Airline Receipts: For these receipts, after your purchase, you are typically sent a full page receipt via email, upload this receipt to the ChromeRiver website directly, do not use the ChromeRiver Snap App.
All other receipts (gas, parking, etc.): Use the ChromeRiver Snap App to upload an image of the receipts, the most important thing to get in the image is the date of purchase, the P-card number and the actual cost. It is not necessary to get the excess information that can be printed on receipts on occasion.
In recent months the Business Office has become far more vigilant about seeing actual receipts for all expenses. While you are “allowed” to have up to $24.99 of expenses a day without receipts, the Business Office has been calling to verify all un-receipted expenses. Any un-receipted expenses should be written down on the bottom of the “Miscellaneous Expenses” sheet (Example 4) with date, amount, and vendor (i.e. taxi, toll, etc.). Luggage handler gratuities are not reimbursable. Restaurant gratuities (15% maximum, unless gratuity is included as part of the printed bill) are reimbursable, but include that info on your receipt, if possible.
Do not submit your credit card folios unless additional information is on the credit card receipt that is not on other receipt (IE. Tip amount, location of hotel, pizza party, etc), just the original receipts.
Alyssa needs the ticket invoice as well as the payment stub from your actual ticket for every trip (even the free ones if available from MT Travel). Email your confirmation to Alyssa as soon as you purchase your ticket.
After all receipts have been updated, you can go ahead and create an Expense Report in ChromeRiver for the trip.
How to make a ChromeRiver Expense Report:
Click on "Create" next to the Expenses section on the Dashboard to start the Expense Report.
Select Import from Pre-Approval and select your Pre-Approval associated with the trip. This will automatically fill the following sections but just in case it doesn't, fill it in with the following information
Report Name: Use the name of your trip similar to what you said for your Pre-Approval
Campus Department: BZ - Student Success
Vendor | Last Name | Purpose | Location (as applicable): Use the same description as what was used for the pre-approval, but copy this because you will want to use it over and over again for each expense description.
Ex. JACKSON S CA HSVs and Fairs
Report Type: select Travel then input your name into Traveler's Name
Destinations: input "to/from NAME OF DESTINATION"
Ex. to/from Southern California Area
Save
Linking Expenses to your Report w/Receipts: After linking your Pre-Approval and saving the Expense Report, all of your expenses that occurred within the dates of travel will automatically pop up on the report with red exclamation points on the left hand side. As you continue to link expenses to receipts, the red exclamation points will disappear. You will know your Report is complete when at the bottom of the report, the "Total Pay Me Amount" is equal to zero. If not, either you owe the University money or they owe you money.
To start adding expenses, you will click on the "plus" button and click on "Create New"
Lodging:
Baggage Receipts:
Meals:
Airline Receipts:
Rental Car Receipts:
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse