Spend Authorization and Expense Report

Reimbursements

Brigham Young University uses the following procedures to reimburse employees, students, and guests (called a non-worker in Workday). A Workday spend authorization is used to approve an employee, student, or non-worker of the university to travel at university expense. A Workday expense report is completed to reconcile university credit card transactions and to seek reimbursement for expenses incurred on the trip. For instructions and training on Workday talk with your organization's finance operations specialist or finance business partner.

Spend Authorizations

All employees, students, and non-workers traveling on university-approved business must have a spend authorization in Workday for each trip that requires them to be away from home overnight and/or requires them to use commercial transportation. Spend authorizations are not required for same-day travel without commercial transportation (use of UTA Frontrunner, Trax or bus is excluded from this requirement). The spend authorization should be filed at least 10 days prior to travel whenever possible. Spend authorizations are reviewed and approved by the designated financial security roles within Workday. The spend authorization must be fully approved before travel agents can book travel reservations. The spend authorization must also be fully approved before travel occurs.

When traveling in a group, a spend authorization must be filed for each employee that will be seeking reimbursement after returning from their trip.

Group Travel: A spend authorization is filed by an employee that is acting as the travel leader for a group of BYU students. Employees functioning as group leaders should book airfare, lodging and other expenses on a university credit card. Group leaders must reconcile all university credit card transactions in a Workday expense within 30 calendar days of completing the trip.

Student Travel: A spend authorization is filed by an employee who is sponsoring the student's travel. The employee may use their university credit card to prepay for hotel or other expenses, if vendor policies permit. An employee assigned the security role of Expense Data Entry Specialist for Non-Worker can complete an expense report for a student that needs to be reimbursed for trip expenditures. On that expense report they will reference the spend authorization. If possible, the student should use commercial transportation over personal vehicles. Risk Management will approve any spend authorization that lists mileage costs greater than $200.

When personal vehicles are being used by a student an Assumption of Risk form should be attached to the spend authorization for review by Risk Management.

Non-Worker (Guest) Travel: An employee assigned the security role of Expense Data Entry Specialist for Non-Worker can complete a spend authorization and expense report for a non-worker. Non-workers are not current BYU students nor employees, who are traveling by request of the university. Reimbursable expenses for non-workers are generally transmitted as a check payment.

Travel Expense Report

All employee, student, and non-worker expenses for university-approved business must be recorded in a Workday expense report within 30 calendar days of completing the trip. All trip expenses incurred must have an express business purpose. Travelers must not seek reimbursement for personal expenses on the expense report. Expense reports are reviewed and approved by the designated financial security roles within Workday before any payment can be made.

Travelers must submit electronic images of the original, itemized receipts for each expense exceeding $50 claimed on the Travel Expense Report. All required receipts must show the vendor, transaction date, detailed description of the goods or services purchased, the amount paid, and the form of payment. Corporate charge card slips are generally not acceptable since they do not contain all the required elements of the receipt. Travelers do not need to submit receipts for meals when they are electing to claim per diem. If required original receipts are lost, a traveler must make reasonable efforts to obtain duplicates. If such efforts fail to produce duplicate receipts, the traveler completes the Lost or Missing Receipt Affidavit and submits it with the remainder of their receipts. All original receipts and documentation should be retained long enough to verify that the receipt has been properly saved, reviewed, and approved in Workday.

University credit cards are the preferred method of payment while in travel status. Refer to the university credit card procedures for more information about these cards.