Overview
Travelers seeking reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses or needing to reconcile travel card expenses must do so by submitting an expense report via the UT travel system, Concur. All expense reports must be approved by the cost object approver (COA) of the funds charged and, in cases of expenses with exceptions to policy, approved by additional approval stops before posting to IRIS. Approvers responsible for reviewing and approving travel are maintained in IRIS and automatically populated in Concur. Expense report workflow stops are determined by the presence of expense items that are marked as an exception to UT FI0705 – Travel policy. Reports with an exception will be routed to the campus Chief Business Officer and/or the University’s Chief Financial
Managing Expense Report Approvals
Approvers may choose to actively monitor their Report queue within Concur; however, as a new report is submitted, Concur automatically issues a ‘pending approval’ notification to the approver and their delegates. This message contains brief details about the report and serves as a prompt to review the submission. Additional reminder email notifications will be sent periodically to ensure reports are processed in a timely manner.
Approvers can validate the use of substitute or preview approvers by reviewing their Request or Expense Delegate settings under Profile Settings. They can also ensure both roles receive email notifications by checking the Receives Approval Emails option selected for substitute and preview approvers, if appropriate.
Reviewing and Approving Expense Reports
Login to Concur at travel.tennessee.edu with your UT NetID credentials with DUO two-factor authentication. Click the Required Approvals area of the summary bar or the Approvals title on the main navigation bar to access active reports. This will provide the options to review, return or approve expense reports.
NOTE: Authorized, substitute and preview approvers must use the delegate function available under their Profile to ‘Act as other user’ to access the approver’s Required Approvals.
Select the Expense Reports tab to view submissions ready for review and open a report by clicking the Report Name. Items with the green icon on the left indicate a request that has been reviewed by a preview approver. An automatic notification is also sent to the approver once a preview approver has completed their review.
Upon opening the report, the approver can see the expenses, requests and cash advances associated with the report. The approver can access the report header information under the Details dropdown menu. This menu contains access to the audit trail, approval flow, comments, cash advances, allocations, and travel allowance details. Receipts and attached supporting materials can be viewed using the Receipts dropdown menu. Individual expenses can be reviewed under the Expenses list by clicking the expense line item. This will expand details of the selected expense item in the Report Summary area.
If the report contains any exceptions to policy or warning messages, they will appear in the Exceptions summary area.
When the expense report is ready to be approved, click Approve. If the request needs to be returned to the user for follow-up, click Send Back to User. You will be prompted to enter comments to explain to the traveler why the request is being returned.
If you have questions or need additional assistance utilizing the University’s travel system, please contact travel@tennessee.edu.