We are looking at doing the same thing. I am proposing at the 30-day mark. We notify them at every 30 days five months out from expiration currently so I would like at the 30-day mark advise that now this has rolled over to the University. But I would like to hear what others are doing as well.

Hi Rebecca,

We created an unused ticket dashboard through POWER BI. We upload our unused ticket report by the 5th of each month and it is incumbent on the department to look at the dashboard and act accordingly. We have a key for different types of credits e.g. e-ticket, partial, MCO. They are encouraged to use it within their college/school/department. If they can't use it they notify us and we let the agent team apply it to the next applicable user (unless on federal funds. Creating this visibility has helped a lot and we were able to move $1M in pandemic era credits before 12/31/23. I used to mail out to the CBOs monthly and mainly received silence. Some colleges/schools/departments are on top of it and some are not. I announce this now every six months. It has been a game changer for us.

Sabrina

I’d love a silver bullet on this one! We have automated messaging—sent by our TMC—that goes out to the CU traveler (or the arranger, for guest bookings) at 90, 60, and 30 days before expiration. Additionally, the travel team receives a monthly unused ticket report, and departments can request a report detailing their own unused ticket data. Like Sabrina, we have some departments managing this process very well and others that we just don't get buy-in from.

The sweep has eluded us, as there’s no smooth process to ensure unused funds are only applied to the original purchasing department and/or the same project. As you mentioned, the biggest issue is with federal funds, since we’re required to repay the funding source if those funds are reused for travel unrelated to the original grant. In many cases, a year after the original travel date, those funds are closed due to fiscal year-end deadlines—making this an even bigger issue than some departments want to take on.

In a perfect world, I’d have additional personnel to help manage unused funds. With CCO buy-in and added resources, we could build a process—using the data we collect at the time of booking—to sweep only non-federal credits and ensure they’re at least applied to the appropriate campus. I can imagine getting even more granular with this, but until there’s broader consensus, it remains a bit of a pipe dream.