Good morning.

Excellent question. Michigan State University does not require use of an MSU issued payment card to pay for travel expenses. We do, however, encourage use of University issued cards.

Cheers, Ed

The University of Southern Indiana does not require travelers to use our University Travel Card (TCard). However, it is highly encouraged, and we make travelers aware that should they choose not to use the available TCard, they are responsible for payment of their travel expenses and will not be reimbursed until after the trip is completed.

At the University of Connecticut we issue Travel Cards (TCards) but do not mandate them. However if an employee chooses to not get a TCard we offer no options for direct payment for travel expenses so employees will need to pay out of pocket and wait till after their trip to be reimbursed. Employees cannot even receive a travel advance for expenses that can be paid via TCard. Our University's leadership deciding to limit direct pay options to just TCards forced a higher adoption rate I believe.

Brigham Young University - Idaho is not required, however if they don't use our OneCard then the process to get a refund is longer and a little more cumbersome.

Similar to others, Western WA University does not require use of university issued cards, but the use of department managed OneCards is encouraged. If a traveler purchases travel expenses out of pocket, they can't be reimbursed until after the trip.

Florida State encourages it, but does not require. Either a traveler-held t-card or wholly out of pocket travel is less cumbersome than those instances where a department admin holds the only available travel card where a single trip is a mashup of OOP and T-card expenses across two profiles. That archaic practice is the one that causes us the most problems.

Good morning,

We are really pushing to get our policy mandated requiring the use of our travel agency as well as use of the travel card. I am hoping to start this conversation again and see how many of you are mandating the travel card/pcard for all travel related expenses. We really want to push the travel card because we want to maximize our rebate from the bank. I have noticed that some universities only require a virtual/ghost card be used for airfare. How are all of you handling this?

Thank you,
Emily

We do not require it but strongly suggest it. I feel like it would be better and cut out a lot of panic for the employees when we cannot approve their report yet but their own bill is due.

We released the TCARD program when we rolled Concur out. Highly encourage the use of TCARDS for our travelers but not required.

The University of Miami has a hard time "mandating" unfortunately. One suggestion I have proposed before, is to have the hard rule that if you use a personal card, you wont be reimbursed until AFTER the travel takes place vs travel card can be right away.

@Amanda Garcia - You can't mandate? Why? It's so easy to mandate in higher education. HAHA

I love the idea of making them wait till after trip to reimburse.

Our policy pre-pandemic has that language as well. We are hoping to push to have the Travel card required. It is cleaner for reconciliation with credits on the travel card and also helps with the rebate.

We are requiring use of the new T&E Card at UNC for employees who are frequent travelers and/or who incur frequent business entertainment expenses. We are not requiring it for all University travelers as we determined that it's not in everyone's benefit to issue a card to someone who travels once every three years (as an example). For those who don't qualify for a T&E Card, we still have a Ghost Card in place for airfare and allow registrations to be paid for on a P-Card (separate card program). We also want to explore virtual payment options in the future for lodging to better support infrequent travelers.

For everyone who does qualify for a card, we will be monitoring for card use. There will be allowable instances where we will reimburse out-of-pocket expenses (i.e. pulled out the wrong card, T&E Card was declined at POS, etc.) but we cannot reimburse OOP expenses until completion of the trip per State policy. The card can be used for all allowable travel expenses except personal mileage and meals (i.e. per diem). This is a brand new program and policy so I'll keep y'all posted on how it goes!