How to obtain Travel Advance forms:

To order a packet of Travel Advance forms, please call or email Frank Valdez in the Office of the Controller at (212) 854-4694 fjv1@columbia.edu.  Please include your building address, mailcode and phone number when ordering forms.

TRAVEL ADVANCES

Subject to departmental approval, a traveler may request an advance of up to a maximum of $500 to cover out-of-pocket, incidental expenses while traveling domestically.  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 charge card. 

To order a packet of Travel Advance forms, please email Frank Valdez in the Office of the Controller at fjv1@columbia.edu. (Please include your mailcode and phone number.)

The following circumstances may require a travel advance exceeding $500

• International travel
• Travel by teams or large groups
• Travel for recruiting purposes
• Funds for program or research start-up or short-term operations
• Payments to conference/research participants

Requests for travel advances exceeding $500 should include a description of the circumstance that would require the advance and a brief budget of expenses. 

Reconciling Travel Advances

A travel advance should be reconciled within 20 working days after the completion of a trip. One must reconcile an outstanding travel advance before a new advance will be issued, except when the second trip is within five working days of the first.  The only exception will be when the advance is serving to fund programs or research start-up operations, and is approved by the dean, vp, associate dean or senior financial officer.  In addition, a traveler must reconcile an outstanding travel advance before he or she 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.

Failure to account for a travel advance within 90 days of the trip end date will result in a written notification from Accounts Payable to the department and the traveler.  

If the travel advance is not then 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
• the employee continuing to be responsible for clearing the advance in order to have this properly charged to the departmental accounts

Please note, once an unsettled advance has been added to the traveler’s W-2, it cannot be reversed.

TRAVEL ADVANCE PROCESSING

Invoice Number Processing

As soon as a processor enters a travel advance invoice number (“Tnnnnnn”), AP/CAR searches the Accounts Payable database for a previous advance to the vendor that has not been cleared. If an unreconciled advance is found, the processor will be asked to supply a reason for the additional advance.

To override, enter a reason and press the Accept button. A confirmation notice will be displayed.

To cancel processing, press Cancel Override. In most cases, outstanding travel advances must be reconciled before a new one is issued.

A history event will be recorded of the outstanding travel advance override.

Amount Processing

If, when entering the gross amount of a travel advance invoice, you exceed the maximum allowable advance amount, currently set at $500, the following window will appear, requesting a reason for the excess amount.

To override the condition, enter a valid reason and press the Accept button. (Pressing the Cancel Override button will cancel entry of the amount.)

Examples of special circumstances which justify a travel advance exceeding $500 include: travel of employees who have applied and were denied a corporate charge card (an exception memorandum, signed by a DAF, must accompany a request due to this circumstance); travel to foreign countries; travel by teams or large groups; and travel of graduate research assistants, resident fellows, and part-time attending physicians.

As with the outstanding travel advance condition described earlier, an auditable history event will be recorded.

Distribution Line Processing

 

Travel advance invoices must be paid from FAS accounts with a “2380” subcode. Enter an account with a travel advance subcode on a distribution line in the same manner as you would any other account number. However, after confirming the account selection, the system will not move the cursor immediately to the Amount field. Instead, the Travel Distribution Line Description window opens.

Note: If the vendor is an employee, the system automatically copies the vendor number into the Vendor Number field.

The traveler’s vendor number and Travel Advance number are required. If travel will be longer than one month, the Long Term End Trip Date is used to record the year and month the traveler will return.

There are two user-defined fields for optional text.

Enter or confirm the required information in the Distribution Line Description window, and press Accept.

You will be returned to the invoice distribution line, with the cursor in the Amount field. Notice that the Description field now reads “Travel”.

CLOSING OUT A TRAVEL ADVANCE

To close out a Travel Advance receivable, fill out a Travel and Business Expense Report and attach the original receipts that account for the advance. The following are three possible scenarios for clearing Travel Advance receivables:

1) A Travel Advance is issued for $3,500, and the traveler used exactly $3,500. A Gross Amount entry of "$0" should be processed as follows:

Enter 0 dollars in the Gross Amount field of the invoice header.

Enter a debit of $3,500 against the departmental account(s) with appropriate subcodes.

Enter a credit of $3,500 against the departmental account (the same account as the advance payment) using subcode “2380”.

2) A Travel Advance is issued for $2,500, and the traveler spent $2,657.56. The University owes the traveler $157.56. The $157.56 reimbursement should be processed as follows:

Enter $157.56 in the Gross Amount field of the invoice header.

Enter a debit of $2,657.56 against the departmental account(s) with appropriate subcode(s).

Enter a credit of $2,500 against the departmental account (the same account as the advance payment), using subcode “2380”.

A check in the amount of $157.56 will be issued to the traveler.

3) A Travel Advance is issued for $4,715.41, and the traveler spent $4,050.99. The traveler owes the University $664.42. A zero entry should be processed as follows:

Enter $0 in the Gross Amount field of the invoice header.

Enter a debit of $4,050.99 against the departmental account, with the appropriate subcode.

Enter a credit of $4,715.41 against the departmental account (the same account as the advance payment), using the “2380” subcode.

The department must deposit a personal check (Via the FFE Cash Module in FINSYS), payable to “Columbia University”, for $664.42, to the Bursar’s Office against sub code “2381”. Attach copies of the check and the “FFE Batch Printout” to the Travel & Business Expense Report.

 

 

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