After a year of planning, designing, and testing by the Finance team, the new travel authorization and reimbursement process became available to the campus community on Sept. 17. The primary goal of this redesign was to streamline travel authorizations and reimbursements to make it easier and faster for our campus community. You can read about the redesigned process in this news item: New Travel Process Now Live
As with any new process, once it goes live opportunities for improvement present themselves, and this process is no exception, as follows:
- We have made several small adjustments to the TR-1 form, so make sure you are using the most recent version.
- To avoid processing delays, please review the quality of your scanned documents before submitting. You should verify that all pages were scanned in straight and that the resolution is sufficient to read all content, especially receipts.
- If you are submitting a TA for a student, we ask that you upload an approved copy of the Student Trip Authorization form when you submit the TA. Pursuant to policy, students cannot travel on university business unless approval has been obtained via the Student Trip Authorization form. In the past, verification was a manual process wherein Procurement Services would check with Finance and Administration to confirm a Student Trip Authorization form was on file for a student TA. By submitting the approved form with the TA, processing delays will be avoided. The travel portal has been updated to prompt you to upload the form if the traveler is a student. IMPORTANT: The Student Trip Authorization form must still be approved in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration first. It may be submitted electronically to vcfa@ualr.edu and an approved copy will be returned to you.
- Please remember to submit all supporting documents with your TA and TR-1, including Special Meeting Forms, if applicable to your travel.
- Procurement Services and Accounts Payable are still receiving paper copies of TAs and TR-1s from the campus and they cannot continue to do so. Our process behind the scenes does not work and becomes slower and manual when documents are not submitted through the Travel Document Submission portal. If they receive TAs and TR-1s via email or campus mail, you will be asked to resubmit using the portal. If you need help with the new process, please review the training presentation or contact us directly for individual training.
Your feedback and suggestions have been extremely helpful and in many cases resulted in improvements to forms or processes. Please continue submitting feedback through the Questions and Comments form. As always, if you need assistance, feel free to contact us directly: Desiree Taggard, Procurement Services (501-916-5724, dltaggard@ualr.edu); Vanessa Whitman, Accounts Payable (501-569-8617, vawhitman@ualr.edu); and Sheri O’Brien, Office of VCFA (501-916-5623, siobrien@ualr.edu).
