I'd love to hear more about how you'll be able to embed the credit accounts in Concur. Seems like a great solution!

Similar to Tulane we (University of Texas-MD Anderson Cancer Center) made our departments whole upfront. Essentially all credits now belong to the the institution and not individual travelers. We are free to use these credits how we deem fit. We also elected to place the credits on UATP cards. The only drawback is it takes several weeks to transfer unused ticket credits to UATP cards. Until the transfer takes place the credit still sits on the traveler's profile with the airline or within Concur. As travel is suspended, we trust that leakage/accidental usage is mitigated.

Here is my outline of the communication we will be sending to the travelers and bookers about the UATP account consolidation. It’s not finalized yet, but this is where we are. I added a couple notes in parentheses.
 UATP cards will be issued by 4 major US carriers; America, Delta, Southwest and United
Tulane’s finance department to issue internal credits for qualifying tickets refunded to the UATP card, allowing UATP usage on a first-come first-serve basis. (I am merging the Concur withdrawn ticket report, altered to include the department codes and account numbers charged, with the actual UATP account report of all credits added. This will assist the finance department in accurately crediting the accounts.)
 Tulane’s finance department will add a new expense type in Expense to facilitate UATP charges. (when a UATP credit is used to purchase airfare, we will add the charge to their Expense account, the employee will be required to allocate the expense same as they would if the corporate card was used. This will continue until all the UATP funds are depleted.)
 Each UATP card will be configured in Concur to automatically apply to straight ticket purchases for each airline, respectively. (the traveler will book airfare as normal, no additional steps needed for unless they want to split tickets)
Split ticket purchases currently require agent intervention**
The TMC can implement an inhibitor to prevent split ticket purchases if requested
**Standard agent assist fees will apply
 Service fees cannot currently be issued against the UATP card so all UATP transactions will require agent intervention to process service fees. A GDS system upgrade planned for 10/1/2020 will allow our TMC’s back office quality control system to utilize the traveler’s profiled card to process the service fee via automation, eliminating the need for agent intervention.
We are currently waiting for all our UATP accounts to be finalized, we have two already, and then we will send the communication out to all travelers.

Kelsey, I can have my account manager at the TMC send me the steps to add the UATP credits in Concur to auto deduct when a flight reservation is booked on that airline. It all happens in the background, so the traveler doesn't need to take extra steps. I will let you all know what he says.

Hi Laney,

I'm interested in hearing more about your approach using UATP cards. I sided against using them here at USD due to the count of unused tickets, fees associated with UATP conversions, airline contracts/agreements required, etc.

We now have an airfare requirement that travelers need to use our TMC. However, I have travelers prior to implementation that may have unused tickets directly with airlines. We allowed reimbursement to some travelers in good faith that they would have traveled otherwise--this is going to be extra work to verify we didn't already reimburse the fare.

UATP cards are a great solution for managed carrier credits – and they are easily assigned to a cost object or account code, user profile or category of traveler in SAP Concur. Be careful not to associate ‘group’ travel credit with individual air ticket credits – some carriers that have issued UATP credit for impacted groups travel might not allow utilization of the UATP for individual issued tickets.

For Covid related tickets, Delta does not apply a fee to convert to UATP credit. I also agree, the UATP card is an easier way to maintain unused values vs the administration of large amounts of unused tickets.

We converted Southwest unused tickets to UATP as they waived the fees. We are still pending information from the other airlines. American allows for 1 free name change due to our Business Advantage Account. We are struggling to have contact with Delta and Alaska Airlines which I'm sure is a result of the lowered workforce.

Thanks Jim for your input - I'll ask our CTP agent to reach out to Delta again in regards to UATP.

Camilla, I agree with your approach of reaching out to your CTP. Our CTP has been guiding us along the way, for each specific airline, ensuring we are doing what is best for our organization with each one. We only qualified for a Southwest UAPT, which we did get. We will have to stick handle and push for usage of our remaining balance of credit, which we will enforce through policy (within reason). WesternU is a small university (3800 students, 1200 employees), so our travel spend did not buy us much leverage with the airlines. The more leverage you have the better your options will be, all of these your CPT should be working on for you.

Best,
Raquel

Thanks Raquel! Yes - our size at University of San Diego didn't give us much leverage with other airlines and the conversion fees turned us away from UATP initially (most of our flights were 250$ range with a few international flights). We are hopeful they may change their mind. *fingers crossed*

(Hope to see you again soon! Hope all is well!)

My pleasure, Camilla! We WILL see you in 2021 in Atlanta! And we are ALL very much looking forward to it. Happy Holidays!

We (Emory) have taken the UATP card approach as well. Since we have contract relationships with Delta and Southwest, we were provided the option of 10 UATP cards per airline, which we have assigned to our 10 largest schools/units. Each card will be managed at the schools CBO level. Happy Holidays!

For those who have converted to UATP Cards: did you treat unused ticket credits from Federal Funds any differently? We are interested in an approach similar to Tulane's where we would centrally refund the original ticket purchase back to the departments. Our concern is ticket credits for Sponsored Projects (specifically Federally funded ones) where the project has already closed. I'd love to hear how others have approached this. Thanks!

Hi Rebecca, Not sure this is any help, we never charge cancelled travel to federally funded accounts. If a flight is cancelled it is charged to the departments business account and when the credit is used that account would be whole again and the grant account was not affected. If the flights need to be rebooked in the future for the grant account, they would start the process again. We also credited all the business accounts in FY20 for the credits we put on the UATP accounts to make them whole, giving us the ability to use the credits on a first come first serve basis without pushback.

Laney: that does help for the future, thank you! The issue we're facing is the cancelled travel was already charged to the Federal Fund accounts. It's likely that some of those projects have closed so we can't credit the funds back. We want to implement a similar process to what you did so everyone has the ability to use the UATP accounts. But if we can't credit the federal money back, in some cases, we may need to treat it differently than the rest of the unused credits. According to our Office of Sponsored Research, the funds could be reused by other Federal projects but not for travel which is not federally funded.