Employee Reimbursements Tutorial

Original receipts must be retained for ten years and should be kept in the department funding the travel. If there are multiple departments funding the travel the original receipts should be kept in the primary funding source. In addition, the audit notification from the Accounting Office is being sent to the funding department; therefore, for ease of retrieval of receipts it is recommended that they be stored in the funding department. One option to help with filing receipts is to attach the receipts to a printout of the Daily Expense Detail or NT Expense Detail, although printing this piece of paper is not required.

For travel reimbursements the threshold for requiring receipts is $75.00, with the exception of hotel receipts. Hotel receipts must be retained regardless of the amount. For other travel receipts, the university does not require receipts if the individual expense was less than $75.00. Individual departments can choose to require their employee to obtain receipts for all amounts.

For non-travel reimbursements, receipts are required for all expenses, regardless of the amount.

Receipts for group meals must be itemized to indicate if alcohol was included. A credit card receipt showing only the total is not sufficient documentation.

If your receipts are in a foreign currency you need to provide a conversion calculation on each receipt to allow the auditor to match it to the expenses you claimed in dollars on the Reimbursement.

If an original receipt is not available any of the following are acceptable: 1.) a photocopy of the image of the canceled check; 2.) a photocopy of the bank statement (for ACH debits or checks that were not cleared through the Federal Reserve); or 3.) a photocopy of the credit card statement showing that charge to the employee's account. Whenever the original receipt is not available a written explanation is required for each unreceipted charge. For security and confidentiality purposes, we recommend that you blacken or otherwise hide personal credit card numbers on any credit card statements submitted to the Accounting Office for processing.

The Accounting Office will select some travel reimbursements to be audited, based on an algorithm we have developed. All non-travel reimbursements will be selected for audit. If your reimbursement is selected for audit you will be notified by e-mail to fax the receipts to the Accounting Office.

The audit message will be sent to the Designated Verifier/Faxer 1 listed on the Employee Reimbursement System routing form for the department code of the first funding source used. This may be a different department than the VSL department of the employee.

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