Making Travel Arrangements

Indiana University has contracts with several travel agencies who are official Designated Travel Agencies. Travelers may make travel arrangements through any travel agency or directly with the airline. However, for the traveler's convenience, the air charges may be prepaid by the University through IU corporate air card if a Designated Travel Agency is selected or booking through IU's online travel planner. If travelers choose to use an agency other than one of our designated agencies, they should pay these charges and submit receipts for reimbursement after returning from the trip.

In order to allow business travelers a way to charge their hotel expense to the university, IU has teamed with Hotels.com, an online hotel booking agency.  With Hotels.com, you will be able to make your hotel reservations online and charge the expense to the IU hotel credit card.  You no longer have to personally incur the expense and be reimbursed after your trip.  If travelers choose to use an online agency other than Hotels.com to make their lodging arrangements, they should pay these charges and submit receipts for reimbursement after their trip.

Out of State Claims Processing:  Travelers must complete the Department Travel Authorization form and obtain appropriate signatures from account manager(s) prior to travel. The original form must be kept in the department for three years. The account manager is responsible for maintaining these travel documents and should be aware that they are being routinely audited. Please advise travelers to keep their own records for the filing of tax claims and other personal use.

Note: Send photocopies of the Department Travel Authorization form to Travel Management Services. The original authorization form must remain in your department.

The department assigns a department request number and includes the official department code and appropriate campus code on the Department Travel Authorization form. This department request number, combined with the department code, and campus code, is the actual authorization for the trip to occur and is used to track all of the charges on a particular trip. The authorization number is used in charging airfares to Designated Travel Agencies, for prepaid registration and for charged limousine fares. Travelers must pay for their own lodging expenses and then request a reimbursement after the trip

The department request number can be up to 5 alphanumeric characters. Do not include slashes, dashes or other symbols. These numbers cannot be re-used. Three days before the ending date of the trip a Travel Reimbursement Form will be mailed to the traveler. If the reimbursement form is not received after the travel is completed, please check to make sure the authorization form or data was received by TMS.

The traveler provides an itemized list of expenses on the reimbursement request, attaches original receipts, provides the complete purpose of the business travel, indicates if personal time was involved, and forwards the reimbursement request to the fiscal approver for signature. Photocopies of receipts are not acceptable for travel reimbursement purposes.

Retired IU employees, and students are paid using the same procedure used for paying current IU employees.

Combining personal and business travel is acceptable if the personal travel does not occur before and after the business portion of a trip. If a traveler does include a personal trip in an itinerary and the trip includes a fare to another city, IU's portion of the airfare is calculated by doubling the one-way charge of the business segment of the airfare.