Reminder – ePR and Concur FY 2021 Reimbursements

Travel & Reimbursement Services would like to remind departments of the deadlines for ePR and Concur reimbursements for FY 2021.

Please be sure to complete them on time in order to receive reimbursements and have them coded in the appropriate fiscal year.

ePR-Employee & Non-Employee Reimbursements

  • Reimbursements need to have an accounting date of 6/30/2021 or older to be FY 2021 (July 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021). 
  • ALL electronic approvals need to be approved by July 13, 2021

SAP Concur (Travel)

If the trip happened FY 2021 (July 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021) we will make sure it’s coded old year, but ALL electronic approvals in SAP Concur have to be approved by July 13, 2021 or the reimbursement will be coded FY 2022.

See Closing Information & Dates for 2021

Thank you,

Travel & Reimbursement Services

Travel_questions@utah.edu

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Been a while since you’ve traveled? Here are some refreshers:

University Travel Requires the use of the UTravel Concur system

In order to book travel and get reimbursed, every employee must update their own Concur User Profile and complete the Concur Online Training. Travelers are encouraged to use the Concur Mobile App while traveling to easily build their expense reports in real-time. Please review the UTravel Concur reference materials for more information.

Did you Cancel a Trip due to COVID-19? Take Inventory of Unused Airline Tickets

Did you have to cancel an airline reservation, or are you unsure if you received a future flight credit or refund? If you booked your trip with our Onsite Agency, we can help you with this information. Simply send them an email describing your situation. NOTE: If you booked through another source, you will need to contact them directly for help.

Before you purchase a new ticket, check to see if you or someone in your department has an unused ticket credit for a previously canceled trip to apply towards the new reservations. many airlines are allowing name changes on credits.

Update Travel Documents, Passports, etc.

Make sure you have your current government-issued ID, Drivers License, and/or Passport up-to-date. 

Direct Deposit Setup

Get travelers set up for Direct Deposit. Direct Deposit for travel reimbursements is set up with Accounts Payable, NOT Payroll.  Click here for access to forms.

Want a Trip Quote?

It is best to obtain a quote from Christopherson Business Travel before a trip is booked to utilize university negotiated pricing – click here to request your Trip Quote and a Travel Advisor will be in touch.

Do you think you would benefit from a Travel Card?

Travel Arrangers can obtain a Travel Card (TCard). Arrangers with a TCard may reach out to vendors directly to make reservations using their TCard (where accepted). Click here for more info on obtaining a TCard.

 

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Prepare and Plan – Domestic Travel Opening July 1

The Domestic Travel ban will be lifted beginning July 1, 2021. International Travel will still require additional approvals, which can be found on our COVID-19 Updates page. Prepare and Plan by reviewing the following:

•  Refresh Your Concur Knowledge and Training

There is Required Training to access Concur, as well as many Reference Materials to help answer any of your questions regarding the system. If you have not used the system in a while, we recommend reviewing both the Training and Reference Materials.

•  Concur Profiles

Travelers and Travel Arrangers should ensure travel profiles are complete and up-to-date. Profile info can be maintained by the traveler themselves or by a travel arranger. Refer to the Navigation and Profile Guide for more info.

•  Making Travel Reservations

Travelers and Travel Arrangers can make travel reservations on their own, using the Concur Booking Tool, or by working with University Travel Agents. Make sure your destination is open by using Sherpa.

•  Travel Card

Travel Arrangers can obtain a Travel Card (TCard). Arrangers with a TCard may reach out to vendors directly to make reservations using their TCard (where accepted). Click here for more info on obtaining a TCard.

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Legacy System will become Unavailable April 23, 2021

The Legacy Travel system will be permanently taken out of service effective 5pm, April 23, 2021.

Any final reimbursement requests will need to be prepared and printed by this time.

We look forward to a focused approach to help prepare campus for the re-opening University Travel. Watch for more information about the Concur System “UTravel,” Travel Cards (TCards) and other helpful steps as we move forward.

How to get a list of your open trips

UTravel Concur homepage.

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Current Travel Restrictions Extended Through June 30, 2021

Travel Restrictions have been extended for all University Travel through June 30, 2021.

Guidelines for Travel Re-opening: The University of Utah, in cooperation with Health professionals, continues to monitor pandemic conditions and trends in anticipation of a soft return to a more normal work and academic experience for campus faculty, staff and students. As part of this effort, we are beginning to define criteria and design guidelines that would outline a safe return to some forms of travel in the months after current restrictions expire.

Virtual Business and Association Conferences will likely continue to be offered in a virtual format in the coming year to limit large gatherings, and the University suggests avoiding large in-person meetings until vaccinations have been administered to a large portion of the population, transmission levels are low enough to ensure safety, and health professionals approve more travel.

Prepare for Re-opening Travel. The Travel Department is working to prepare our campus for a return to business travel by: Closing down all Legacy system trips, issuing Travel Cards (similar to the PCard program) to Departmental Travel Arrangers (to be used initially for Guest/Recruit travel), and to provide refresher training for the UTravel Concur travel system.  Please advise Travel Arrangers to stay up to date with these efforts by following the Travel Tidbits news blog.

The June 30, 2021 Travel restriction applies to all business travel, including travel related to bringing guests to campus. This travel restriction applies to ALL faculty and staff travel, all university-coordinated student travel and all guest/recruit travel. 

Current exception procedures remain in effect through the June 30, 2021 restriction date.

Approved exceptions to this restriction must adhere to all the following procedures:  

  1. Requesting department must prepare a memo describing reasons travel is necessary at this time and measures to be taken to address safety for the traveler and those who will be in contact with the traveler during and following the trip.
     
  2. The memo must be approved by one of the following individuals:– Main Campus Academic Affairs: Sarah Projansky, associate vice president for faculty, sarah.projansky@utah.edu
    – Main Campus Staff: Wendy Peterson, deputy chief HR director,  wendy.peterson@utah.edu
    – U of U Health Academics: Dayle Benson, chief of staff for Clinical Affairs, dayle.benson@hsc.utah.edu
    – U of U Health Hospitals and Clinics Staff: Sarah Sherer, senior human resources director, sarah.sherer@hsc.utah.edu 
  3. An exception will require final approval by the cognizant vice president. Exceptions must be fully approved and attached to an approved UTravel Concur Request at least one week prior to the start date of travel. 

In-State Travel Considerations: We encourage our campus community to be informed about the transmission level assigned to different counties by the state when traveling on university-related business within Utah. We encourage students, staff and faculty to limit travel when a high transmission level is in place and to follow all health protocols, including wearing a face covering, when travel is necessary. We also recommend traveling with one person/household per vehicle. 

Personal Travel: We continue to encourage you, when considering your personal travel choices, to follow travel advisories issued by your local and state authorities. If you choose to travel, you may be restricted from returning to work depending upon the specifics of your circumstances. There are things you can do to minimize health risks to yourself and others, such as quarantining before traveling to visit high-risk individuals and checking your health status by monitoring your temperature and other symptoms of COVID-19. There are now a number of commercially available coronavirus test kits that can be used to assess your status. 

NOTE: Upon return, ALL individuals are expected to complete and submit a “Returning Traveler Self-Reporting Form” following the instructions linked here

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Closing Legacy Trips

We have been reaching out to many of you to close your Legacy trips, and we understand that this is causing significant challenges within your departments, both with gathering signatures in this remote environment as well as compiling documentation.

We have some good news!

We have obtained approval to use an alternative method to close LEGACY trips that may help.

This method is only approved for LEGACY system trips, and is being allowed to help all of us close these old trips and concentrate on other challenges that face us at this time.

Our objective is to close all LEGACY trips by the end of March so we may better focus on preparing campus to leverage the new Concur system as we look toward a reopening of University travel as conditions allow.  The University must close these trips to avoid prepaid expenses such as airfare, conference fees, etc. being considered taxable income to the traveler.

This exception procedure will not apply to trips where:

  • There was a cash advance – these will require the full substantiation procedure of a Final Reimbursement, or 
  • Trips that have been pre-expensed in the Concur system – we will work with departments to close these trips as we finish shutting down the Legacy system.

We appreciate all your support as we prepare for future travel.

Follow procedure steps published here.

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Concur Mobile SSO Currently Down – January 22, 2021

Concur Mobile is currently being updated, which means the Single Sign-On feature of the application is down. Users are still able to login with their PIN, however. UIT and Concur are working together to facilitate the ease of logging into Concur Mobile as this update takes place.

We appreciate your patience, and we will send out a notification to campus as soon as it’s up and running.

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May 7, 2021: New Travel Restriction Date for all Business Travel

The University of Utah is currently restricting all business travel, including guest travel, through End of Spring Semester, May 7, 2021. This travel restriction applies to ALL faculty and staff travel, all university-coordinated student travel, and all guest/recruit travel. Approved exceptions to this restriction must adhere to all the following procedures:

  • The requesting department must prepare a memo describing reasons travel is necessary at this time and measures to be taken to address safety for the traveler and those who will be in contact with the traveler during and following the trip. We require the memo to have two approvals, see below.
     
  • The memo must be approved by one of the following individuals: 

– Main Campus Academic Affairs: Sarah Projansky, associate vice president for faculty, sarah.projansky@utah.edu
– Main Campus Staff: Wendy Peterson, deputy chief HR director, wendy.peterson@utah.edu
– U of U Health Academics: Dayle Benson, chief of staff for Clinical Affairs, dayle.benson@hsc.utah.edu
– U of U Health Hospitals and Clinics Staff: Sarah Sherer, senior human resources director, sarah.sherer@hsc.utah.edu 

An exception will also require final approval by the cognizant vice president. Exceptions must be fully approved (by both VP and area representative, above) and then attached to an approved UTravel Concur Request at least one week prior to the start date of travel. 

Additional information can be found on our COVID-19 Updates Page here

NOTE: Upon return, ALL individuals are expected to complete and submit a “Returning Traveler Self-Reporting Form” following the instructions linked here.

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Travel Guidelines: All Business Travel Restricted through March 15, 2021

The University of Utah is currently restricting all business travel, including guest travel, through March 15, 2021. This travel restriction applies to ALL faculty and staff travel, all university-coordinated student travel, and all guest/recruit travel. Approved exceptions to this restriction must adhere to all the following procedures:

  • Requesting department must prepare a memo describing reasons travel is necessary at this time and measures to be taken to address safety for the traveler and those who will be in contact with the traveler during and following the trip.
     
  • The memo must be approved by one of the following individuals: 

– Main Campus Academic Affairs: Sarah Projansky, associate vice president for faculty, sarah.projansky@utah.edu
– Main Campus Staff: Wendy Peterson, deputy chief HR director, wendy.peterson@utah.edu
– U of U Health Academics: Dayle Benson, chief of staff for Clinical Affairs, dayle.benson@hsc.utah.edu
– U of U Health Hospitals and Clinics Staff: Sarah Sherer, senior human resources director, sarah.sherer@hsc.utah.edu 

An exception will also require final approval by the cognizant vice president. Exceptions must be fully approved (by both VP and area representative, above) and then attached to an approved UTravel Concur Request at least one week prior to the start date of travel. 

In-State Travel: We encourage our campus community to be informed about the transmission level assigned to different counties by the state when traveling on university-related business within Utah. We encourage students, staff and faculty to limit travel when a high transmission level is in place and to follow all health protocols, including wearing a face covering, when travel is necessary. We also recommend traveling with one person/household per vehicle. 

Personal Travel: We continue to encourage you, when considering your personal travel choices, to follow travel advisories issued by your local and state authorities. If you choose to travel, you may be restricted from returning to work depending upon the specifics of your circumstances. There are things you can do to minimize health risks to yourself and others, such as quarantining before traveling to visit high-risk individuals and checking your health status by monitoring your temperature and other symptoms of COVID-19. There are now a number of commercially available coronavirus test kits that can be used to assess your status. 

NOTE: Upon return, ALL individuals are expected to complete and submit a “Returning Traveler Self-Reporting Form” following the instructions linked here.

Thank you.

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Be Prepared: Travel Cards Now Available and Legacy System to be Disabled

When COVID-19 shut down the travel industry, the University was in the middle of a migration from the Legacy Travel system to the UTravel (Concur) system. Although regular University business travel is still restricted, there is work that should be done to clean up open trips and to prepare for new University Travel when we are able to travel again.

What you should be doing now:

  • Close all open Legacy trips, substantiate all pre-paid expenses
  • Allocate all open expenses in UTravel Concur by preparing and submitting expense reports
  • Apply for Arranger Travel Cards, where appropriate
  • Educate and encourage Travelers to apply for Individual Travel Cards, where appropriate
  • Review UTravel Concur procedures, as needed

Mid-November: “Register a Trip” Functionality to be Disabled in Legacy System

What does this mean? Any NEW trips will need to be completely dealt with in the UTravel Concur system. All open Legacy trips need to be closed so we can take the entire system down. We will disable the entire Legacy system in the upcoming months.

Don’t worry… we are here to help in this transition. We have added an enhancement that allows us to mass import users to ease setup. We anticipate that travel volume will grow slowly and give us time to help each of our Arrangers learn to use the UTravel Concur system.


Introducing the University of Utah Travel Card Program!

Travel Cards (TCards) can be obtained by Travelers or by Arrangers, with Supervisory and Central approval. TCards are meant to reduce out-of-pocket expenses for travelers and guests, as well as improve efficiency for planning departments. These cards are issued through our contract with JPMorgan, but are administered through the Travel & Reimbursement Services department. The TCard page requires authentication.

Expenses charged to a TCard are allocated by the cardholder on an expense report in Concur within 30 days.

Arranger expense reports do not generate a travel fee charged to the department. Traveler expense reports to allocate airfare and reimburse out-of-pocket expenses like per diem will continue to generate travel fees used to fund our office.

To find out more, please visit the Travel Card webpage here. (Requires authentication.)


Stay tuned! More information about Travel System changes will be posted in the upcoming weeks:

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