Travel Advisory No. 4

Travel Advisory

Office of Operations

Bureau of State Expenditures

Advisory Name

Expense Report Mandatory Header Fields

Date Issued

05/16/2017

Date Last Updated

07/13/2017

Subject:

Mandatory Header Fields in SFS Travel and Expense Module

Guidance:

The Travel and Expense module in the Statewide Financial System (SFS) will be updated to make the following fields mandatory on the expense report header: official station, the employee’s home/residential address, the start location and destination location of the travel event, and the start and end dates and times of the travel event and/or expense.

This requirement will make information more easily accessible and facilitate a more efficient review process. The implementation of these mandatory fields is expected to coincide with the SFS Summer Release scheduled for Monday, August 21, 2017.

To prepare for implementation, all expense reports submitted for approval must be paid by August 18, 2017. Expense reports not approved by that date will be denied back to the employee with a status of pending. To ensure the approval of any expense reports currently in process, the deadline for submitting expense reports to the Office of the State Comptroller is 5:00 p.m. on August 17, 2017. Bulkload agencies must transfer files to SFS by 11:00 a.m. on August 17, 2017 to ensure they are loaded in SFS prior to 5:00 p.m.

Any employee who anticipates submitting an expense report for reimbursement, whether it be travel-related or otherwise, must have an official station populated in their employee profile in SFS. Agencies must ensure that the official station for these employees is properly designated and entered in the employee’s profile prior to the implementation date of August 21, 2017.

Please note that after August 21, 2017, SFS will not allow an employee to (1) create or edit an expense report if the official station in the employee’s profile page in the SFS is blank or (2) save an expense report if any mandatory field in the header is blank. Additionally, expense reports may be denied payment if the information in any mandatory field is in an incorrect format.

Chapter XIII, Section 2 of the GFO has been updated as follows:

Chapter / Section	Name	Description
XIII.2	Employee Expense Reimbursement Policies	Updated to include that SFS will prevent an employee from creating or saving an expense report if certain mandatory fields are not completed. In addition, expense reports must contain all required information and documentation, including receipts where required, prior to being submitted for approval.
XIII.2.A	Expense Report Mandatory Header Fields	New section created to provide guidance regarding the fields that must now be populated on the header level of expense reports.
XIII.2.B	Expense Report Submission	Updated to reorder XIII.2.A to XIII.2.B.
XIII.2.C	Expense Report Certification	Updated to reorder XIII.2.B to XIII.2.C.
XIII.2.D	Expense Report Payment	Updated to reorder XIII.2.C to XIII.2.D.

References: For additional information on travel, please refer to the OSC Travel Manual.

If many additions/changes to employee profiles are required, please see SFS Job Aid “JAA-EDA205-002 performing a Mass Update” located at SFS Secure for additional guidance.