Project Overview

The primary focus of the Travel Reimbursement Information Processing System (TRIPS) project is to provide State employees with the ability to electronically process travel claim requests. TRIPS provides the ability to record relevant travel expenses, which are validated and processed for payment, and are maintained for future reporting.

The Division of Accounts of the Department of Finance and Administration is responsible for processing travel and other reimbursable expense claims submitted by State employees. The purpose of this project is as follows:

• To provide a centralized, accessible, easy to use, travel claim filing and reimbursement system for state employees,
• To facilitate a more efficient and effective travel claim-auditing process for departmental fiscal office personnel,
• To provide the basic management reporting needed to support those responsible for travel claim trend analysis for the State of Tennessee.

Each year, State employees submit approximately 15,000 travel claim reimbursement requests. Prior to TRIPS, paper forms were routed to each appropriate approval level for review and signature. In addition, claim information was manually audited resulting in the labor-intensive task of error checking and validation.

The TRIPS project supports the statewide effort to revise existing accounting processes within the State. The Division of Accounts is working to provide methods by which agency fiscal office staff can reduce resources spent on non-value added or low-value added accounting processes. This effort has become more significant as fiscal offices continue to be required to process more transactions and provide more financial management support to their agencies.

Functional Description

The Travel Reimbursement Information Processing System (TRIPS) is an Internet-based expense reimbursement system that State employees use to create, organize, submit, approve, and audit employee Expense Reports.

• TRIPS can be accessed using most PCs that have high-speed Internet connections. State employees use Submitter/Approver functionality to enter, validate, print, submit, and approve all reimbursable expenses.
  


• Expense Reports can be started, saved, re-opened and modified as many times as necessary before submitting. Once submitted, the Submitter may not modify an Expense Report unless an Approver has rejected it.



• Submitted Expense Reports proceed through an Approval Hierarchy consisting of one or more Approval Chains. Each Approval Chain consists of one or more Approvers who may electronically:



• Approve the Expense Report as submitted,
• Approve the Expense Report after making changes, or
• Reject the Expense Report, returning it to the Submitter.



• Expense Reports that are approved by the last Approver in the Approval Chain are automatically batched to STARS (State of Tennessee Accounting and Reporting System) for payment.



• Up-to-date status information is provided by automated E-Mail messages and an on-line Event Log.

The project involves the use of Necho System Corporation’s NavigatER software for processing employee claims for reimbursement of travel-related costs and other miscellaneous costs. Additionally, Prophesy Transportation Solutions, Inc.’s point-to-point mileage calculation software is used to automate the calculation of reimbursable mileage amounts for traveling employees. Reporting capabilities are provided by the use of Crystal Reports to develop the reports, and the use of Crystal Enterprise to provide web access to published reports.