Employee Travel and Reimbursement Updates

Employee Travel and Reimbursement (ET&R) has included some important reminders and updates in support of departmental travel and reimbursement processes. 

New Travel Reimbursement and Corporate Card Representative (TRaC Rep) Certification Program

We are excited to announce the pilot launch of a new certification program for TRaC representatives.  In partnership with our colleagues in Financial Training, we will be introducing the pilot phase with a small group of designated participants in May 2015.  We will be working with the management centers to develop the list of participants and will partner with Business Managers to notify pilot participants.  Some highlights of the program are included below. 

• Participate in online learning modules (Introduction to G/L Accounts, Online Expense Reports videos)
• Attend four required classroom training sessions held once per month, May thru August
• Complete online quizzes and final certification exam 

In conjunction with the launch of this new certification program, we will be introducing new training and overview sessions for initiators and TRaC representatives in August 2015.  In addition, a new enrollment period for the TRaC representative certification will be available in August 2015 as well. 

We will distribute communications later this spring to provide updates on new classes and the corresponding schedules.   

Expense Report Enhancement

In response to the feedback received from a large number of our customers, we have partnered with our colleagues in Administrative Systems Management to change the display of the expense types to reflect the general ledger (G/L) account first and then the description.  The display will be sorted in g/l account order.  All expense types with no g/l account will be displayed alphabetically at the bottom of the list.  This change will be moved to production by Wednesday, April 29. We appreciate your sharing the feedback as we continue to enhance the tool and business processes.

New Telephone Hours

Effective May 11, 2015, the Employee Travel and Reimbursement telephone hours will be 9:00am - 4:30pm, Monday through Friday.  The office hours will remain 8:00am - 5:00pm, Monday through Friday.  The email OnlineTravel@Duke.eduEmployeeTravel@Duke.edu

Reminders

• Please be cautious on the number of transactions in the expense report to ensure a manageable volume for review and approval by all departmental representatives in the approval queue.  You can work with your departmental business managers to determine the reasonable volume and frequency.  If you find that you are including more than 20 receipts in a corporate card non-travel expense report, you may elect to change the frequency of the process.  This will enhance efficiencies for all approvers.
• Please remember that items such as lab supplies and office supplies should not be purchased on the corporate card.  Please use the designated method for creating purchase orders in your department.

We appreciate everyone’s continued support with this process.  You may contact us at OnlineTravel@Duke.edu), if you have any questions or need additional information.