When Metropolitan State University of Denver employees travel for University business, they may be eligible for certain personal reimbursements such as per diem amounts. Accounts Payable and the Office of the Controller want to ensure that employees get those reimbursements as quickly as possible. 

By submitting accurate, complete, timely expense reports, employees can help the Accounts Payable team turn around reports more quickly.   

To avoid slowing down the process, all employees should observe the following guidance. 

30-Day Rule:  

  • All expense reports are due immediately upon an employee’s return from travel and are considered late after 30 days. The sooner employees submit their expense reports, the faster the team can process the reimbursement.   
  • All transactions must include an itemized receipt and have a valid business purpose, with few exceptions.   

Illegal purchases:  

  • Personal purchases are not allowed. See the Purchasing Manual for guidelines about other disallowed purchases, such as alcohol.   

Official functions:  

  • Official functions while on travel status should happen only on rare occasions, and a valid business purpose must be provided. They should not occur if the only attendees are MSU Denver employees. Including these types of expenses on an expense report requires additional reviews and slows reimbursement considerably. 

Spend authorizations:  

  • A spend authorization (or pre-approval) is required whenever there is travel requiring airfare, an overnight stay, a rental car or a cash advance, and it should include estimates for all anticipated expenses for the planned travel. Spend authorizations are submitted prior to travel, and missing spend authorizations delay processing of expense reports. 

Expense reports: 

  • Expense reports should be linked to the spend authorization in Workday. All transactions should have an itemized receipt. Always include itineraries for air travel and conferences. Claim per diem as necessary for meals, but do not charge meals to a University credit card or a hotel room while traveling. 

Outside of some travel-related expenses, employees should not use personal money to buy goods or services for the University. These items should be paid via Accounts Payable or with a University-issued Travel or Procurement Card. Limiting personal reimbursements to a few travel-related expenses reduces the employee’s out-of-pocket costs as well as costs to the University, and it improves institutional data. 

If an employee pays for items with their own money: 

  • Suppliers cannot use the University’s tax exemption, so it will cost the University more. 
  • MSU Denver loses valuable supplier information because the system will see only the reimbursement to the employee and not the original supplier.  
  • Additional documentation is needed from the employee to explain why they did not use the University-approved procurement processes.  
  • The employee may incur financing charges if the reimbursement is received after the credit-card payment is due. 
  • The employee must provide a copy of their personal credit-card statement with their reimbursement request. 

To learn more, please visit the Accounts Payable SharePoint page.