Understand Travel & Expense - Overview

See the SPSCC Approval Workflows - Travel & Expense for a visual representation of the AWE for Travel & Expense.

The travel and expense module is available to all SPSCC employees to submit requests for travel reimbursement, expense reimbursement and cash advances.  Some key terms to know include:

• Travel Authorization (TA): A travel document created prior to travel showing estimated costs for travel. It produces an encumbrance that will get relieved once an expense report is filed against it
• Cash Advance (CA): A travel document created to facilitate payment to the traveler in advance of travel. It can be applied across multiple expense reports.
• Expense Report (ER): A travel document created after travel to record actual cost of travel. It may also produce a reimbursement and/or reconcile a cash advance.
• Business Purpose: Required on TAs, CAs and ERs. Each travel document can have only one Business Purpose assigned to it.
• Expense Types: Used to identify individual expense lines. Expense types are required for each TA or ER line and are associated with accounting distributions.
• Billing Types: Associated with Expense Types and determine if an expense is billable, internal or non-billable. NOTE: If Billable is selected, transaction lines will be picked up by Project Costing if it has a Project ID in the funding distribution. If Non-Billable is selected, transaction lines will not be picked up by Project Costing.
• Payment Types: Meant to identify how a particular TA or ER line item will be or was paid. One Payment Type (Pre-Paid) will actually change the nature of how a transaction is accounted for. All other Payment Types get processed by PeopleSoft the same way, but each can have their own business process significance when applied to a line item.
• Expense Locations: Primarily used to drive Location-based amount restrictions, such as Per Diem amounts for meals and lodging. Travel documents have default Location identified in the document Header. Each expense line can also have its own Location field, which enables a single report to be used for travel scenarios that involve multiple Locations.
• Requestor: The individual requesting reimbursement or permission to travel.
• Reviewer: The individual responsible to running the Budget Check Process and confirming the travel document is complete and accurate. Typically this is the person responsible for tracking their department's budget expenditures (executive / administrative assistant, program manager, etc.)
• Budget Manager: The individual responsible for giving final approval on charges being made to a particular budget. Typically this is the manager, dean, vice president, or grant manager considered to the "owner" of that budget.
• Supervisor: The individual who the Requestor directly reports to for all HR related transactions.
• Approval Workflow Engine (AWE): The system's automatic process for routing requests through each step of the approval process. Travel and Expense's AWE is not the same process as Procurement's AWE.