Staff expenses

29 Jul 2010

Improvements to the reimbursement process

During the last few months, the Directorate of Finance has been working on a project to improve the process of reimbursement of staff expenses.

These are currently paid through the payroll along with salary. As a result, if a payroll deadline is missed, the claimant may have to wait seven or eight weeks from the receipt of the paperwork by the Payroll Office to payment of the money in his/her bank account. In addition, the detail on the payslip is very sparse.

A first step towards improving the process has been to develop an expenses module within the Resourcelink payroll system. This separate module will allow the Payroll Office to provide payment runs weekly.

The new module will come into use from 1 August 2010.

The current deadline of the 10th of the month for receipt of documents will therefore no longer be applicable.

Instead of a payslip, claimants will receive a message via their University email addresses to advise them that the expenses have been paid.

The Payroll Office will aim to ensure that all claims received during the week Monday to Friday (provided they are properly completed) are processed the following week and paid into bank accounts on the Friday - a maximum of two weeks from receipt of paperwork to cash in bank accounts.

However, it will take six to eight weeks to achieve the new target, as the Payroll Office will be paying claims received since the last payroll deadline of 10 July and also inputting more information to the system.

Please note that this process will apply only to staff expense claims. It does not relate to external fees and expenses, which will still have to go through normal channels, as they will need to be assessed for tax and National Insurance deductions.

A further enhancement will be the introduction of an electronic claim form to replace several of the old forms - this should become available during September. Old forms will, of course, be acceptable for a period after that.

If you require further information on the new process, please contact:

• Ben Henshall on 52151
• Chris Collins on 61995
  or
• Margaret Laithwaite, Head of Financial Operations, on 58852 or margaret.laithwaite@manchester.ac.uk