The following is a message from the district Business Office:

Historical OSD procedures, and updates adopted in 2016, require that Travel Expense Reimbursement submittals be submitted within 60 days post travel. Our district must meet these guidelines to ensure that budget managers know how much budget capacity they have remaining because payments of past activity are being taken out of accounts within a predictable time period. As our budgets become tighter due to constrained resources, the ability to manage budgets and cash flow becomes more important.

For the last two years we have been transitioning to a new travel process; new travel request authorization form, new policies surrounding expense reimbursement (no receipts required for meals), and Skyward processing of expense reimbursement. Each year, we have discussed timely payment with our auditor and asked for leniency as we adopted electronic processing of travel expense reimbursement. The auditor has provided leniency, but it is now time to return to compliance of OSD policy and state auditor expectations for timely processing.

In order to align practice with our travel procedures; beginning the 2018-19 school year we will again be requiring travel expense reimbursement be submitted within 60 days post travel. 

This will require prompt submissions of expense reimbursement (in Skyward) for travel expenditures incurred. For example, travel expenditures occurred on 9/1/xx must be submitted via the Skyward Expense reimbursement module prior to 11/1/xx to be allowable. Effective 9/1/2018, the Skyward Expense reimbursement module will restrict you from submitting expenses older than 60 days.

Keep in mind; law requires expenditures for travel be posted in the same fiscal year they are incurred. Therefore, expenditures for the month of July and August 2018 should be submitted in Skyward by August 31, 2018 to be posted to the 17-18 fiscal year.