Traveling

If personal travel (e.g. vacation) will have an impact on research goals and meeting attendance. please communicate as soon as possible with Prof. Huff regarding scheduling and expectations. Beyond this, please simply submit a travel request form to register your absence for any personal travel impacting your availability.

Traveling for ARFC purposes (conferences, workshops, etc.) should be done in these steps:

1. Plan Ahead!

You will need :

• A duration. For example, you may want to travel from April 9th to 13th.
• A destination. For example, you might be traveling to Charlotte, NC.
• A purpose for travel. Perhaps you want to attend the International High Level Radioactive Waste Conference.
• A justification for travel. For example, you may want to present an accepted paper. Prof. Huff is not likely to approve travel if the student has no research to present.
• Release from campus duties. If you are in classes, determine a plan for making up homework and exams. If you are a TA, make sure you communicate with your supervisor, the course instructor, regarding the absence.

2. Create a budget.

You will need to estimate the cost of the trip. Consider:

• Flights. Find an example itinerary.
• Hotel. Check if there is a discount provided by the conference.
• Registration Fee. If this conference requires registration, how much?
• Other items. Cabs, bus rides, per diem…
• Offsets. Can you apply for a travel grant? Is there a student program to reimburse costs?

3. Decide : Pre-Paid or reimbursed?

Once you have created a budget, decide whether you would like to make these purchases yourself (to be reimbursed later) or if you would prefer these purchases to be prepaid by the department. note: If you want to pay and get reimbursed, it can take as much as 5 months to receive reimbursement.

4. Get approval from Prof. Huff.

Email or set up a meeting. She will need all of the above information to give her approval.

5. Submit a Travel Request Form

• Go to my.npre.illinois.edu -> HR APPS -> Travel
• Click ‘Create Request’
• List Prof. Huff (kdhuff) as your supervisor.
• Fill out the form.
• The account number must be provided by Prof. Huff Note: It differs by what grant you are under! Never use someone else’s!

6. Wait for approval by the supervisor

If it seems to be taking a while, check in with Prof. Huff. She, or someone else in the chain, may have missed the approval email.

7. Make purchases

Please see this completed quickly. It’s best to get government rates for the hotel where the conference is at. Airbnb can be unreliable.

• If the department will make the purchases, work closely with Prof. Huff and the department staff to make these purchases.
• If you’re going to make the purchases yourself go right ahead, and keep the receipts.

8. Go on the trip. Be safe! Have fun!

Please note that even while on travel, students, staff, and faculty are representatives of the university and our ARFC research group.

9. Acquire the Travel Form

1. Click here to download the Travel Itinerary Reimbursement Form.
2. You have 60 days to complete your Reimbursement Expense Report or it becomes taxable income.

10. Fill out the Travel Form

You must be very, very detailed. Consider using the following strategy:

1. Enter your basic information (name, contact, account number etc)
2. Create a separate document sheet for the descriptions and include ‘SEE ATTACHED’ in the actual form example
3. Scan any paper receipts and keep copies of digital receipts from the travel (airfare, registration, lodging are major ones) and compress them into an archive.
4. The table is PER DAY, which means that each row is a day. If your travel is for more days than are in the table, you must fill out another form with the remaining days.
5. For the first and last day, you must state the day of departure and arrival of your mode of transportation
6. Per Diem - Check meals requested is where you circle meals that were NOT PROVIDED BY THE CONFERENCE, and the ones you had to pay for. The reimbursements are set as $6.50 for breakfast and lunch, and $19 for dinner, total up to $32 per day.
7. Explain EVERYTHING at Other details or further explanation, and why it was of benefit to the University.

Recommendations and Tips:

1. If you presented a paper (or a poster presentation), it is beneficial to include a copy of your paper in the archive.
2. Always try to include Who, What, When, Where, Why.
3. Be EXTREMELY detailed (if you think ‘do I really need this?’ - just attach it and write it)

11. Get the form signed

If Prof. Huff was the sponsor of the trip, she will need to sign the form.

13. Submit Travel Form

1. Organize receipts and supplementary documents in an archive (use descriptive file names)
2. Attatch the archive and the filled and signed Travel Reimbursement Form(s) in an email to the email address in the top right of the Travel Reimbursement Form
3. Send the email.

If you followed this guide, your submission will be pleasing to the business office’s eyes.

18. Wait

In a few days, you will get an email from a staff member from EBSC who will fill out an online form for you.

1. The EBSC staff will complete your Expense Report for you, and let you know when it is ready for review and submission. If there is any error in your paper form, or if your submission needs revision, they will let you know.
2. Go to Chrome River
3. Enter your NetID and password and click the LOG IN button
4. Note: If you are not authorized to log in, you will need to fill out the Security Compliance Form, then contact Nicloe M Elliot (elliottn@illinois.edu) with your UIN noting you’ve completed the form. You should have accessin 1-3 days
5. The first time, you may need to add EBSC people as a ‘proxy’ by logging into Chrome River > Account Settings > Delegate Settings > Add New Delegates and add tjconner, mbelsis2, and cmaylmer
6. On the dashboard under Expenses will be your Expense Report to review and approve.
7. Please review the form for accuracy and that all the expenses are listed (print mode makes it easier to see).