Hi Jonathan,

Every University is unique in their specific processes and I've heard of similar set ups like yours, but do not believe it is common. Here at WesternU we have a single travel program, primarily managed by our travel management company, Christopherson Business Travel. The office of the CFO (me) Administers the program, when needed. Everything runs through Concur (Request, Travel, Expense, Reporting) and we load the data into our GL (Banner) on a daily feed. Our policies and procedures were revised to support and adhere to the travel and expense program. We find that having this hierarchy of the travel program gives the program more compliance. I could only imagine if we split this up, travelers would tend to choose what works best for them. Ultimately it will come down to what you have in your P&P's.

Kindest regards,
Raquel

Jonathan,

We had a similar situation arise at UNC! Purchasing and A/P (both under the Procurement umbrella) got siloed from each other at the beginning of last year and they had to determine what to do with Payment Cards and Travel. At that point in time, they decided that the front end of travel (including myself) would be housed under Purchasing and the people processing travel reimbursements would be housed under A/P. This was ok in early 2020 because a) no one was traveling and b) it made some sense with our home-grown expense system and the way that operated. Now that we're launching Concur (Request, Travel, and Expense) we realized that it did not make sense to have the Processors separate from the rest of the travel team. It created significant confusion for us because while I'm administering the system and creating policy, the people supporting that system and policies weren't on my team. I discussed it with my Director and CPO and we ultimately brought the Travel Team all back together under Purchasing.

The two functions were also separated at my last institution, the University of Massachusetts - Lowell. Since it was a smaller university, it did not pose as much of a challenge. I collaborated with A/P on a daily basis regarding policy and procedure. UML was using their ERP (PeopleSoft) for employee reimbursements at the time. I think it really depends on the size and structure of the organization and everyone's willingness to work together. Please let me know if you have any other questions that I can help with!

Univ of utah is using concur and we are not split. We have travel advisors who handle the booking of air, car and hotel and then we have the "accounting" side who handles Request and expense reports.

Now that we are traveling again and we are fairly new with concur we are definitely noticing that there are the people that have general questions not with travel advisors or the accounting side. Recently, the travel advisors said they would pick up questions that involve the Request side of concur but the profile has both sides (advisor and accounting)

But both advisors and accounting side report to the purchasing office now.

I "concur" with Raquel that we are all unique universities. 🙂 HAHA

At Vanderbilt, our teams are split between Travel and Expense/Payment Cards. However, we work extremely close together (e.g. know each others processes/procedures, share the Travel & Expense Policy, and back each team up when we are out on PTO. Both teams report up to Purchasing and Payment Services Director and work closely with AP, Supplier Records, and Procurement teams.

At Johns Hopkins we have actually just consolidated Travel, Expense, and Card programs. We all roll up to Procurement, as does AP, so we are a true procure to pay environment.

At the University of Southern Indiana, we are split between Travel Procurement (housed under Procurement) and Accounts Payable (housed under the Business Office). As Sabrina, from Vanderbilt, mentioned, we too work closely with each other to help the travel process, front and back, run smoothly.

Thank you everybody for your comments I really appreciate it!