SECTION OVERVIEW AND POLICY

Agencies are responsible for ensuring employees adhere to all employee expense policies outlined in this guide, as well as all relevant rules and regulations.

Only State employees may be paid through the Statewide Financial System (SFS) Travel and Expense module. Every employee seeking expense reimbursement must have been assigned a unique employee identification number through the payroll system. Requests for reimbursement by non-employees, such as non-paid Commissioners and Board Members, will be requested using the Claim for Payment (AC 3253-S) or the Claim for Travel Reimbursement by a Non-Employee (AC 3257-S) and submitted through the SFS Accounts Payable module. Non-employees may also take advantage of the State’s eSettlements process.

The SFS prevents an employee from creating or saving an expense report if certain mandatory fields are not completed. Please refer to Section 2.A – Expense Report Mandatory Header Fields of this Chapter for additional information. The SFS also prevents an employee from submitting an expense report for reimbursement if the employee owes money to the State as a result of previous expense reports (i.e., Due to State). Please refer to Section 10.D - Refunds Owed to the State by an Employee - Using a Due to State Offset of this Chapter for additional information.

Some employees use a proxy to enter expense report information into the SFS Travel and Expense module. See Section 2.C – Expense Report Certification of this Chapter for more information on the use of proxies.

Process and Transaction Preparation

All expenses must have a corresponding expense type associated with them. Refer to Section 9 – Allowed Values for Processing Payments in the SFS of this Chapter for a complete listing of expense types.

Expense reports must contain all required information and documentation, including receipts where required, prior to being submitted for approval.

To ensure the timely processing of bulkload transactions in the Travel and Expense module, each expense report must include a unique identification number (Report ID), regardless of the General Ledger Business Unit (GLBU) associated with the Report in the SFS. Each agency must submit Report IDs in accordance with the number sequence defined by the SFS. Submitted expense reports that are not in compliance with the allowable numbering scheme may potentially fail due to duplicate numbering. Agencies should contact the SFS with any questions on the proper numbering scheme.

Guide to Financial Operations

REV. 08/01/2019