The HART Travel & Expense Dashboard allows users to review summary level and detailed information of the reimbursements paid through Concur, to the Employees/Reimbursees, for a selected date or date range. Analysis and monitoring to ensure travel expenses are compliant with sponsored rules can also be performed by using this dashboard. Data analysis queries can be found in the table below.
Summary Objective for Federal Awards | Control Objective | Reporting Recommendation |
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Fly America Act | To comply with the Fly America Act, which requires the use of a U.S. flag carrier when travel is paid for by federal funds. Exceptions must be documented at the time of booking. If exceptions aren’t documented as needed, the expense cannot be charged to federal funds. |
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Fly America: Specific airfare requirements for DoD awards | To comply with the Fly America Act and the terms of Department of Defense (DoD) awards. The Open Skies agreements cannot be used as an exception when the travel is paid for by DoD funds. |
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Purchase of lowest economy fare | To comply with federal regulations, which stipulate that airfare charges in excess of the lowest economy class fare cannot be charged to federal funds unless an exception is met. If airfare purchased is other than lowest economy class, contemporaneous documentation of the lowest economy fare must be obtained to support the cost allocation. |
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Unallowable Costs | To comply with federal regulations, alcohol and related tax and tip cannot be charged to a Federal award. |
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Unallowable Costs – Limos | To comply with the University Travel Policy: “Harvard will NOT reimburse for limousine expenses under any circumstances.” |
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Local meal restrictions | To comply with federal regulations and in accordance with the Sponsored Expenditures Guidelines, meals in the local environs are rarely allowed to be charged to federal awards but may be charged if related to a formal meeting or conference and must be documented accordingly. |
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Risk of duplicate payment | To reduce the risk of error and fraud in the form of duplicate payments which could occur when an individual is reimbursed multiple times for the same expense. |
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Adherence to consistent use of payment method (per diem or actual) | To support compliance with federal regulations and to comply with Appendix G of the University Travel Policy: “Travel expenses that directly support the sponsored project may be charged on an actual expense basis, on a per diem or mileage basis in lieu of actual expenses incurred, or on a combination of the two, provided the method used is applied to an entire trip and not to selected days of the trip.” |
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Documentation when allocating an expenditure | To comply with federal regulations which stipulate that expenses that benefit multiple funding sources “can be distributed in proportions that may be approximated using reasonable methods.” Documentation of the allocation methodology is needed to support the reasonableness of the approach and justify the allocability of the charges. |
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Combining business and personal travel | To comply with IRS regulations around business-related expenses, as described in Appendix E of the University Travel Policy, “Incremental costs that result from combining business and personal activities may not be reimbursed.” |
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