Travel and Expense Claims

Full-time students are eligible for these assistantships if they are presenting the results of research they conducted while at the University of Waterloo at professional or academic conferences. Students are normally expected to be first or second author of the paper or poster and must present the paper or poster at the conference. Confirmation of presentation and abstract do not need to be submitted prior to handing in the application. Applications must be received by the Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) by the following deadlines to be considered for the funding:

• Spring term: April 1 (for conferences during May 1 – August 31)
• Fall term: August 1 (for conferences during September 1 – December 31)
• Winter term: December 1 (for conferences during January 1 – April 30)

Please ensure that you provide a copy of your application to the Graduate Program Administrator (Alan Anthony – EV1-308 – aanthony@uwaterloo.ca) a minimum of 10 days before these deadlines.

Graduate studies research travel assistantships are cost shared by the student's supervisor (if possible), the school/department, the Faculty of Environment, and the GSPA. GSPA will normally pay expenses up to the total amount paid within the faculty, with a maximum of $500. These dollar amounts may be adjusted from time to time depending on the budget available and the number of travel requests. Please note that a student will not normally receive funds more than once per fiscal year (May 1 – April 30).

Application procedures:

• Submit the Graduate Studies Research Travel Assistantship application form (signed by the student and advisor) to the Graduate Program Administrator (EV1-308 a minimum of 10 days before the above deadline. Applications after the conference will not be considered.
• The Graduate Program Administrator will circulate the form for department, faculty, and university approvals.
• Once approval has been received from the GSPA, the Graduate Program Administrator will provide an electronic copy of the approved form to the student prior to the conference. It is the student’s responsibility to follow-up if they do not receive a copy of the approved form within a reasonable amount of time.

Expense reimbursement procedures:

It is important that you submit your expense reimbursement documentation timely upon your return or your Graduate Studies Research Travel Assistantship funding may become void.

At least two weeks prior to the expiry date on your form, submit the following documentation together as one package to Teresa Wilson (EV1-315):

1. Expense Claim Form from the Finance website
2. ENV Travel Expense Spreadsheet (XLS)
   • If your claim has less than five receipts and is paid in CAD currency, the ENV Travel Expense Spreadsheet is not required.
   • If your claim has more than five receipts and/or includes expenses paid in a different currency, then the ENV Travel Expense Spreadsheet is required and proof of currency conversion used is required.
     • Please ensure the currency rate is the same date as when the expense was incurred or an average for travel dates.
     • Proof of currency can be either a print out from OANDA or a copy of bank/visa statement showing the cost paid (please black out personal information).
   • NOTE: if you are using the ENV Travel Expense Spreadsheet please do not enter the expenses on the Expense Claim Form – indicate "See attached spreadsheet" on the Expense Claim Form
3. Original receipts
4. Research abstract (version submitted to conference; must show student as first or second author)
5. Proof of conference attendance and presentation e.g. conference agenda indicating student’s name and type of presentation (paper/poster)

A copy of your approved Graduate Research Travel Assistantship application will be added by the department before final submission to GSPA.

Original receipts

Must be detailed (showing itemized list of purchases) and must include proof of payment:

• $0 balance on receipt; or
• Payment information on receipt; or
• “Paid” noted on receipt; or
• Credit / debit card statement (confidential information removed); or
• PayPal details; or
• Wire transfer details
• In extenuating circumstances when an original receipt is not available, please use the Declaration of Meal Expense form for a meal or the Travel Claim Supplementary Explanation form for expenses other than meals. These forms must be completed by the claimant and submitted with their paper claim, where applicable.

Boarding passes/airfare receipt (if applicable)

• All boarding passes and travel invoices must accompany the reimbursement request. If you are using the e-boarding passes, make sure to take a screenshot so that you can print later. Boarding passes are required, not optional!
• If you plan on extending your trip for personal days please ensure that you get a quote for price comparison at the time of booking your flights showing the cost of flights the days you should be travelling for the conference and then submit the price comparison with the actual receipts of the flights booked. Normally, you are allowed only one day before and one day after the conference to be claimed. Price comparisons cannot be done when you return from the conference so make sure this is done at the time you book your flight.

Meals

• Per diems are now accepted on most research accounts but you must confirm with your supervisor before your travel on their preference, actual cost (itemized meal receipts) or per diems. Some faculty members still require itemized actual meal receipts so please ensure you confirm with your supervisor.
• If per diems are claimed, the per diem rates will be reimbursed regardless of the actual meal costs. Receipts are not required to be submitted or retained for per diem meal claims. Note that a single claim cannot include both per diems and receipted business meals.
• If claiming per diems, users must indicate how they derived the number of days/meals claimed by attaching the per diem calculator .
• Each per diem is allocated to individual meals as follows:
  • for breakfast
  • for lunch
  • for dinner
• Partial per diems can be used where a full per diem is not eligible; for example:When breakfast was provided by a hotel
  • When lunch was provided by a conference
  • When a dinner banquet was provided by a conference
  • When someone traveled only part of the day:
    • E.g., evening flight to go to conference (breakfast and lunch are ineligible)
    • E.g., arriving home in morning after a conference (dinner is ineligible)
  • When someone does not eat a meal that was provided to them, they must claim the actual cost of the meal they purchased (supported by a receipt):
    • E.g., when someone does not eat the conference meals because of a dietary restriction
  • Meals cannot be excluded from a hotel bill and replaced with a higher per diem

The information in the charts below:

• States the maximums per day in Canadian dollars by geographical areas. The maximums includes taxes and gratuities. It should be noted that the rates (for both receipted meals and per diems) are not intended to render Claimants expense-free. It is assumed that the Claimant would have incurred some personal meal cost whether they were travelling on University business or not.
• Provides the amounts for specific meals as a guideline only, except where a traveler is only eligible for certain meals (i.e. a day trip extending over the lunch hour).
• Provides the rates for meals that are eaten. Meals must be purchased in order to be able to submit a claim for reimbursement.

Canadian dollar amount for permitted per diems

Gas expenses

• To ensure the eligibility of the fuel purchased and to ensure the completeness of the documentation, please specify which vehicle or equipment this fuel was purchased for (i.e. UWaterloo owned vehicle or rental). Gas for personal vehicle is not eligible.

Mileage expenses (claiming KMs) for personal vehicle

• Please ensure to include a Google Map print out showing kilometers driven from points A to B. Mileage may be claimed for transportation in a private car at the rate of $0.45/km up to a maximum of a 500 km radius. Gas receipts are not eligible for private cars.

A traveler is not expected to use personal funds to incur excessive out-of-pocket expenses. The university will pay an approved travel advance for a reasonable amount where the expected travel expense is for university business, in whole or in part. The university will not pay a travel advance where the travel does not relate to university business or where the entire travel expense will be recovered from a third party.

Requests for travel advances must provide sufficient processing time (Finance must receive an approved travel advance at least ten business days prior to the departure date) and be settled promptly.

The money payable for a travel advance may be directed to the Claimant and/or in the case of airfare only, directly to the university’s contracted service provider.

Graduate students submitting requests for travel advance use the online claim submission system called Concur. Cash advances are approved by your supervisor please ensure you list them as cash advance approver.

If you do not yet have access to Concur, please request access by emailing Susie Castela at scastela@uwaterloo.ca. Provide your WatIAM user ID and your student ID number. You will receive a confirmation email once you have been added to Concur.

When you log into Concur, you can access the Concur User Manual and other training materials by clicking on the ‘Help’ link on the upper right hand side.

In Concur, travel advances are referred to as cash advances.

• Enter the amount of the cash advance that will be required and the currency. The University will only disburse Canadian or US funds. (Do not include any amounts to be paid directly to Frederick Travel for airfare.)
• Provide information about your trip purpose. Note: this filed only contains 48 characters so longer trip purposes should be attached using the Additional Documentation expense type in the body of the claim.

Graduate students submitting expense or travel claims must use the online claim submission system called Concur. This does not apply to travel claims being funded by several sources like the Graduate Studies Research Travel Assistantship application.

If you have a claim to submit, and you do not yet have access to Concur, please request access by emailing Susie Castela at scastela@uwaterloo.ca. Provide your WatIAM user ID and your student ID number. You will receive a confirmation email once you have been added to Concur.

When you log into Concur, you can access the Concur User Manual and other training materials by clicking on the ‘Help’ link on the upper right hand side.

You will need to update your profile settings and ensure that you list Susie Castela as your default approver. She is listed as Snezana Castela (page 11 in the Concur User Manual has instructions on how to do this). Please remember to save the settings once you add Susie as approver.

You will need to confirm with your supervisor (professor) the work order and activity number to use for the expenses, this will need to be listed in the header portion of the claim. You will need to scan and upload your trip purpose sheet, all your receipts, boarding passes (if you do not have your boarding passes please add a comment explaining why), agenda, etc.  to the claim individually and make sure you enter in the date listed on the receipt. You are not able to combine multiple receipts to one expense line – they need to be entered in separately. Add all the necessary information such as trip purpose, scanned boarding passes, conference agendas (links are not accepted), continue to add comments if you need clarify an expense i.e. purchased ziploc bags for soil samples, gas was purchased for a rental car, equipment was used for…. etc. If you are claiming meal receipts and they are not itemized please add comments to the expense line with a list of food purchased and you must declare no alcohol was purchased.

Original receipts and boarding passes are still required in hard copy, submitted to Susie Castela (EV1-318) along with a printout of the expense report (from Concur). Normally this would be submitted prior to your claim being approved, but at this time, we will be approving online claims without submission of original receipts/boarding passes, but you will need to keep them and submit them once UW campus is open again.

• All the previous travel policies remain the same, however, the online processes may differ slightly.
• You do not need to print off the trip purpose or conference/meeting agendas, they need to be scanned and uploaded to the claim as additional documentation. If the agenda is too big to upload just scan in the top sheet showing the start and end date along with your section showing, please also upload your abstract if applicable
• No google map is required for KMs being claimed the system calculates this for you once you enter in the information
• Meals - please continue to use the per diem calculator this must be approved by your supervisor first before claiming per diems. Upload the information as a receipt under per diems expense (please note you will need to convert the excel sheet to a PDF to upload into Concur), please remember to exclude any meals provided i.e. at the conference, flight times leaving late and coming early (you would exclude breakfast and lunch and dinner), etc. If claiming actual meal receipts please ensure that the receipt is itemized and shows proof of payment
• Please upload the trip purpose form into Concur as additional documentation
• Currency rating sheets are not required, once you enter in the amount in that currency for that date, it will calculate it to CAD dollars for you. If you paid by credit card and want to be paid out exactly what was paid you can enter in the amount as CAD dollars and upload your credit card statement for proof of currency conversion
• the ENV Travel Expense Spreadsheet is not required and the system allows for many expenses to be entered and does the math for you

Receipts

Must be detailed (showing itemized list of purchases) and must include proof of payment:

• $0 balance on receipt; or
• Payment information on receipt; or
• “Paid” noted on receipt; or
• Credit / debit card statement (confidential information removed); or
• PayPal details; or
• Wire transfer details
• In extenuating circumstances when an original receipt is not available, please use the Declaration of Meal Expense form for a meal or the Travel Claim Supplementary Explanation form for expenses other than meals. These forms must be completed by the claimant and uploaded to Concur.

Note: Currency-rating sheets are not required, once you enter in the amount in that currency for that date, it will calculate it to CAD dollars for you. If you paid by credit card and want to be paid out exactly what was paid you can enter in the amount as CAD dollars and upload your credit card statement for proof of currency conversion

Boarding passes/airfare receipt (if applicable)

• All boarding passes and travel invoices must accompany the reimbursement request. If you are using the e-boarding passes make sure to take a screenshot so that you can print it and upload it to Concur later. Boarding passes are required, not optional!
• If you plan on extending your trip for personal days please ensure that you get a quote for price comparison at the time of booking your flights showing the cost of flights the days you should be travelling for the conference and then upload the price comparison with the actual receipts of the flights booked. Normally, you are allowed only one day before and one day after the conference to be claimed. Price comparisons cannot be done when you return from the conference so make sure this is done at the time you book your flight.

Meals

• Per diems are now accepted on most research accounts but you must confirm with your supervisor before your travel on their preference, actual cost (itemized meal receipts) or per diems. Some faculty members still require itemized actual meal receipts so please ensure you confirm with your supervisor.
• If per diems are claimed, the per diem rates will be reimbursed regardless of the actual meal costs. Receipts are not required to be submitted or retained for per diem meal claims. Note that a single claim cannot include both per diems and receipted business meals.
• If claiming per diems, users must indicate how they derived the number of days/meals claimed. Upload the per diem calculator as a receipt under per diems expense (please note you will need to convert the excel sheet to a PDF to upload into Concur). You cannot claim per diems for any other attendees.
• Each per diem is allocated to individual meals as follows:
  • for breakfast
  • for lunch
  • for dinner
• Partial per diems can be used where a full per diem is not eligible; for example:When breakfast was provided by a hotel
  • When lunch was provided by a conference
  • When a dinner banquet was provided by a conference
  • When someone traveled only part of the day:
    • E.g., evening flight to go to conference (breakfast and lunch are ineligible)
    • E.g., arriving home in morning after a conference (dinner is ineligible)
  • When someone does not eat a meal that was provided to them, they must claim the actual cost of the meal they purchased (supported by a receipt):
    • E.g., when someone does not eat the conference meals because of a dietary restriction
  • Meals cannot be excluded from a hotel bill and replaced with a higher per diem

The information in the charts below:

• States the maximums per day in Canadian dollars by geographical areas. The maximums includes taxes and gratuities. It should be noted that the rates (for both receipted meals and per diems) are not intended to render Claimants expense-free. It is assumed that the Claimant would have incurred some personal meal cost whether they were travelling on University business or not.
• Provides the amounts for specific meals as a guideline only, except where a traveler is only eligible for certain meals (i.e. a day trip extending over the lunch hour).
• Provides the rates for meals that are eaten. Meals must be purchased in order to be able to submit a claim for reimbursement.

Canadian dollar amount for permitted per diems

Gas expenses

• To ensure the eligibility of the fuel purchased and to ensure the completeness of the documentation, please specify which vehicle or equipment this fuel was purchased for (i.e. UWaterloo owned vehicle or rental). Gas for personal vehicle is not eligible.

Mileage expenses (claiming KMs) for personal vehicle

• The system will calculate distance travelled in KMs for you once you enter the information so no google map is required. for KMs being claimed the system calculates this for you once you enter in the information. Mileage may be claimed for transportation in a private car at the rate of $0.45/km up to a maximum of a 500 km radius. Gas receipts are not eligible for private cars.