Travelers:

1. What do I do if the city or country I’m traveling to is not listed?
2. How do I submit my receipts?
3. What are Chartfields?
4. The account for Travel and Mileage is defaulting to an account different from what my department has instructed me to charge it to.
5. How do I authorize entry authority to someone to enter an Expense Reports on my behalf?
6. What are Accounting Defaults?
7. What are Accounting Details?
8. What does the following error message mean: "Budget reference on user profile is blank", transferring to set up to correct (28000, etc) Maintenance transaction cancelled, please ensure user has budget reference populated before attempting to re-enter transaction?
9. What do I do on a zero dollar travel?

Approvers/Budget Managers:

1. How do I approve travel for an employee who reports to me but is hired in HRMS in another department?
2. How much time are we given to approve a request?
3. What do I do if the “Approve” button is not available?
4. How can I view the Budget Checking error so as to inform the employee on what needs to be corrected?
5. What do I do if I receive an error message of “Budget Tolerance Exceeds Limit”?

Travelers:

1. What do I do if the city or country I’m traveling to is not listed?

The best way to search for a city is to click on the lollipop/magnifying glass and change the search by from “Expense Location” to “Description” and key in the name of the city. If no results come back do one of the following:
• If the city is in the state of GA place an IT Helpdesk work order to have the city added
• If the city is outside the state of GA use the “Expense Location” of OTHUS.
• If the city is outside the United States place an IT Helpdesk work order to have the city added.

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2. How do I submit my receipts?

Send your receipts to Accounts Payable via inter-campus mail and reference the Expense Report # that it corresponds to.

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3. What are Chartfields?

Chartfields are a series of numbers that when use correctly will charge an expense to the department’s budget and can be obtained from the department’s administrative assistant. VSU’s chartfields are as follows:
Account = Will default in based on the Expense Type selected by the user (i.e. Lodging will default to account 640110)
Fund = This is a 5 digit number (i.e. 10xxx, 12xxx, 13xxx, etc)
Department = This is a 7 digit number
Program = This is a 5 digit number (i.e. 11100, 14600, 14800, etc)
Class = This is a 5 digit number (i.e. 11000, 42100, 43000, etc)
Project = This field is only applicable to those with a grant on file with the Office of Grants and Contracts and should be left blank unless the user has a grant account number.

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4. The account for Travel and Mileage is defaulting to an account different from what my department has instructed me to charge it to.

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5. How do I authorize entry authority to someone to enter an Expense Reports on my behalf?

This is called a delegate. To authorize this place an IT Helpdesk work order. Indicate the name and BlazeNet userid of both the authorizing employee and the delegate.

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6. What are Accounting Defaults?

Accounting defaults are the chart strings (expense codes) that feeds from HR and represents where your salary expenses are charged to. Because travelers may obtain funding from other sources outside of the hire department it is necessary to update the Accounting Defaults on each expense report to reflect the correct chartstring of the department that will be paying for the expense.

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7. What are Accounting Details?

Accounting details allows the user to allocate expenses to more than one department as well as edit the following fields:
a) Amount
b) Account
c) Fund
d) Department
e) Program
f) Class 
g) Project

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8. What does the following error message mean: "Budget reference on user profile is blank", transferring to set up to correct (28000, etc) Maintenance transaction cancelled, please ensure user has budget reference populated before attempting to re-enter transaction? 

To avoid this error on your future transactions please log into Self Service – Financials and perform the following: Click on Employee Self Service>Click on T and E Center>Click Review/Edit Profile>Click the ‘Organizational Data” Tab and fill in the Chart Field values. The Chart field values can be obtained from your Budget Manager or Administrative Assistant. For example: Fund 10000/Program 11100/Class 11000/Bud Ref 2009 (represents 7/1/08 to 6/30/09). Save then exit. You are now ready to complete a T-Auth and/or Expense Report as needed.

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9. What do I do on a zero dollar travel?

Create a Travel Authorization and obtain approval to ensure that the travel is recorded for insurance purposes.
The best way to search for a city is to click on the lollipop/magnifying glass and change the search by from “Expense Location” to “Description” and key in the name of the city. If no results come back do one of the following:
• If the city is in the state of GA place an IT Helpdesk work order to have the city added
• If the city is outside the state of GA use the “Expense Location” of OTHUS.
• If the city is outside the United States place an IT Helpdesk work order to have the city added.

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Approvers/Budget Managers:

1. How do I approve travel for an employee who reports to me but is hired in HRMS in another department?

HRMS is the place of record for all employee data and the department of hire determines workflow.  The employee can edit the Accounting Detail on the Expense Report which will route the transaction to the correct department for approval.  Additionally, if the Expense Report is routed to the wrong department it can be reassigned to the correct approver but the approver must edit the chart string so the other department’s budget is not affected.

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2. How much time are we given to approve a request?

A T-Auth must be approved before the departure date of the employee, but all transactions must be approved before the end of the month as we close our books by the 3rd business day and would need all pending transactions cleared before then.

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3. What do I do if the “Approve” button is not available?
Options:

  • The transaction has not been budget check as yet which occurs at the top of every hour so just give it time.
  • The transaction has a Budget Checking error which is usually the result of the wrong Fund-Dept-Program-Class being entered.  Send back the Expense Report to the employee to correct.  A budget error can also be caused if there is no budget in the department in which case a budget amendment should be prepared and submitted so that the transaction can go through.

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4. How can I view the Budget Checking error so as to inform the employee on what needs to be corrected?

To get the details click “Budget Options” located at the bottom of the page.  Then click “Go to Transaction Exceptions”. The 1st tab “Budget Overrides” tells you the problem (example No Budget Exist) the 2nd tab “Budget Chartfields” gives the chart string that was used so that you can verify if it is correct.  If the chartfield is correct it could be that the budget reference year (currently 2009 as the FAQ is written) is incorrect.

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5. What do I do if I receive an error message of “Budget Tolerance Exceeds Limit”?

Submit a budget amendment to increase funds. If you know that funds should be there and a Budget amendment is not needed then check the Budget Progress report to ensure that all expenses are legitimate. 

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