TPWs for review: (TPW is travel planning worksheet).


How to:


  • Pull up the TPW (travel planning worksheet) in MIS/Savannah under Home/Travel Planning/Travel Plan. You can do this by navigating to the full list of ‘Approvable Records’ under Home/Travel Planning and clicking on the record ID or you can click on the link provided in the daily email from mis@ncsa.illinois.edu (the Accountant listed for relevant TPWs will be you). Ideally, these will be reviewed daily and approved as soon as possible (depending on resolving any issues you discover). In the Finance column a workable record will show ‘received on [date]’.
  • If you are in Home/Travel Planning and click View All in the ‘Navigation’ block at the left the ‘Approvable Records’ are on top. You can also scroll down and see the ‘Viewable Records’ – these are waiting on some approval before they come to finance. To be proactive, look for viewable records that were received a while ago. Can/should send an email with the link to the record to approve.
  • In the record you’ll see three main blocks – ‘Travel Plan Status’, ‘Travel Plan’, and ‘Comments’
  • Travel Plan Status is a quick glance of the record and where you’ll enter your comments when approving the record or marking it pending. The comments field is at the left – enter any comments, select ‘approved’, ‘pending’, or ‘denied’ in the dropdown and hit ‘submit’.
  • In the ‘Travel Plan Status’ block the PM/PI, Mgr and AD columns are those who will or have approved the record. If the record shows ‘received on [date]’ in the Finance column all approvals necessary for finance to do our work have been received. The system will decide what approvals are needed. Once an approval comes in the system will ping the next needed approval. Top-line approvals will fill in with the person and date, but will be blank if the system doesn’t need that approval.
  • Travel Plan is the granular detail of the record. Items to verify in this section before approving:
    • If Traveler Type is listed as Non-NCSA make sure the Traveler Organization field is populated.
    • If Traveler Type is listed as NCSA the UIN will populate next to the Traveler name.
    • Pull up the account as listed in BA4 and verify the ‘To-Date’ value of the TPW is available in that account. To do that, type the CFOP as listed in MIS/Savannah into the CFOP field in BA4 (copy/paste does not work). Click on ‘Activity Codes’ to find the activity code after the listed CFOP in the TPW and confirm there is budget remaining for the ‘To-Date’ amount. Always do the math, so within the activity code find balance – expenditures for your total to make sure you have enough to cover the expense. If the fund is participant support cost (PSC) and there aren’t sufficient funds, then those can be pulled from the main account (the main account fund is likely one digit +/- the PSC fund number). You can overspend PSC and pull from the main fund, but not vice versa. If the main fund is also overspent, you’ll need to check with the PI to see if more funding is coming in.
    • Under Travel verify that the position, dates, and justification are reasonable and note if international travel or personal time are included.
    • Under Tracking Numbers add the ER number from the TEM system. (Richelle does this part.)
    • Under Payments verify that the total of any amounts listed matches your ‘To-Date’ figure.
    • Under Per Diem the system automatically calculates this to add to the estimated costs. The estimated and to-date costs will most likely be off because of this amount.
    • For the entire Travel Plan verify that the costs listed seem reasonable and work with the admin (generally listed by NetID in the ‘Submitter’ column of the Travel Plan Status block) and/or the PM/PI to provide justification of any unusual amounts.
    • Work with your supervisor as needed for any issues.
    • Add any comments needed in the bottom of the Travel Plan block if you are working on any issues with the record, add a note in the Travel Plan Status block, change the dropdown to ‘Pending’ and click Submit. Similar procedure for approval or denial of the record, notes may or may not be needed depending on if there are any special items that need to be noted.
    • When you approve the record will either move to the ‘airfare ER’ column in Travel Plan Status, or it will move to the ‘final travel reim ER’ column. If it moves to the ‘airfare ER’ column, delete out the ER and amount information and click ‘XXXXXXX’ – this will push the record to the ‘final travel reim ER’ column and you are then done with this record. The TEM approver will then continue the process. Do not hit ‘Submit’.
    • The TEM approver periodically checks the NCSA Savannah tool to reconcile with the TEM system. The TEM approver ensures that all documentation and receipts are present before approving the file. We also keep a screenshot of the report and receipts from TEM in the PDF - TEM Files folder under the B:\faservice folder.
    • If the estimated and to-date costs have only a small variance, the TPW will be marked as completed. If not, then do not close the TPWs yet.
  • If you need to edit information in the Travel Plan, hit ‘edit’ at the left in the ‘Actions’ block. Make your edits and hit ‘Submit’ at the bottom of the Travel Plan block. Once you submit the record will be updated and your action will be logged in the ‘Comments’ block.



Completing a ‘travelplan outstanding…’ JIRA request:

  • Go to the travel plan tool in Savannah and search the TPW #.
  • Delete out the ER $ (if present), select ‘complete’ from the dropdown and click ‘submit’.
  • In JIRA, click the ‘close issue’ button at the top of the screen.
  • In the popup window, change the resolution to ‘complete’ and add a comment and click ‘close issue’.




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