Please submit a ticket via Zendesk and choose "Travel Advance" from the drop-down menu. When requesting a travel advance, please see below for the relevant policies.
Travel Advances
Subject to departmental approval, a traveler (only an employee or student of Columbia
University with an active Concur profile) may request an advance to cover out-of-pocket, incidental expenses while traveling. Requests for individuals who do not have an active Concur profile must be completed and reconciled by an individual who has an active Concur profile. Any advance should be requested within a reasonable period of time (10 to 20 days) before the official business trip. A travel advance is meant to cover expenses that cannot reasonably be charged to a credit card.
The following circumstances may require a travel advance:
● International travel
● Travel by teams or large groups
● Travel for recruiting purposes
Requests for travel advances must include a description of the circumstance that would
require the advance and an itemized budget of expected expenses.
Reconciling a Travel Advance
A travel advance should be reconciled within 20 working days after the completion of a
trip. Each outstanding travel advance must be reconciled before a new advance will be
issued. There are two exceptions:
● When the second trip is within five working days of the first.
● When the advance is serving to fund programs or research start-up operations.
Please note: A traveler must reconcile an outstanding travel advance before they will be issued any reimbursement, whether it be for travel or for another business-related expense.
Upon termination of employment, all employees must promptly reconcile all outstanding advances.
An email reminder is sent to employees and their supervisor/department if the cash advance is not reconciled within 60 days of the trip end date, and reminder emails will be sent weekly until the cash advance is reconciled.
Travel advances must be reconciled within 90 days of the end date of the business activity. For awards issued by both government and non-government sponsors, the timeline for reconciliation of expenses and reporting may be more constraining or restricted per project rules. In addition, individual schools/departments may issue a shorter timeline for reconciliation of advances. In these cases, please follow the award or school/department guidelines.
If the travel advance is not reconciled within 120 days of the trip, the traveler should be advised the following will occur without additional notification:
● Suspension of travel advance privileges
● The reporting of the advance as income to the IRS on the traveler’s annual Form W-2
● Withholding of taxes on the advance from the traveler’s paycheck
● Employee continuing to be responsible for clearing the advance in order to have this properly charged to the department
If the actual expenses are less than the advance, the traveler must reimburse the
University for the unused advance via a personal check deposited to account 65399.
The personal check can either be deposited by the department using their RDC
(Remote Deposit Capture) machine (if the department has one) or deposited via the
Payments & Deposits Office https://sfs.columbia.edu/departmental-deposits
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