Travel

Effective June 23, 2025, all flight bookings in Business or First Class will require an additional layer of approval. Please plan travel accordingly, as this change may impact on the timing of your ticket purchase and approval process.

University travel should be booked in Economy Class. Exceptions for Business, First-Class, or Premium Economy may be considered under the following circumstances and must include appropriate documentation:

Subject: Introducing UC Merced Instant Card

The Travel & Expense Management team is excited to announce that starting Thurs Jan 9, 2025, a new workflow will go live in the Concur system. This update will streamline the approval process and improve efficiencies by routing approvals based on the allocations entered in a Request or Expense Report.

Key Dates to Remember:

• Thurs Jan 3: Final date for submitting all requests and expense reports.

  • Reports and requests not submitted by Thurs Jan 3 will need to be deleted and recreated after Wed Jan 8.

Effective Friday July 14, updates will be implemented within Oracle and Concur to streamline approval workflow for Research Administrators (RA) and Fiscal approvers.   

Oracle Updates

Oracle approval workflow has been updated to note that only one approver will be required for each requisition.  In the case that an additional approver is required, the requestor may utilize the “overriding approver” field.  Specifically: 

The Office of the Controller receives numerous requests for exceptions to policy every week. We would like to reiterate that exceptions to policy should be infrequent in nature and must align to a bona fide University business purpose.

An announcement from Associate Vice Chancellor and Controller Amanda Preston-Nelson:

We are happy to announce the appointment of two directors in the Division of Finance and Administration’s Business and Financial Services. Christie Harvey, who has held several key roles at UC Merced, has been named Director of Accounts Payable, Travel and Tax. Carol Dinuzzo, a Merced native with an extensive background in financial management, has joined the university as Director of Financial and Accounting Services.

Division colleagues,

As part of DFA’s ongoing effort to improve service times, streamline processes and create synergies in the campus community, Business and Financial Services (BFS) will realign some of our core teams. This alignment uses the strengths of BFS team members who perform similar bodies of work, allowing us to balance our service offerings.

​Effective June 1, the changes are as follows:

The University’s mileage reimbursement rates for expenses incurred in connection with the business use of a private automobile will increase in accordance with the Internal Revenue Service standard mileage rates published in IRS Notice 2022-03. The following new rates are effective for expenses incurred on or after January 1, 2022:

• The reimbursement rate for the use of a private automobile for University business travel will
increase from 56 cents a mile to 58.5 cents a mile.

Campuses have been experiencing difficulty arranging meals for events based on the existing rates for business meals and entertainment. The last time the meal rates for business and entertainment were increased was in 2016. After discussing with the campus controllers, we have elected to increase the rates by 5% in 2021 and another 5% in 2022. Effective November 1, 2021, the maximum per person amounts for the reimbursement of business and entertainment meal expenses have been revised as follows:

Breakfast $28

Lunch $49

Dinner $85

Light Refreshments $20

Controllers and AP Directors/Travel Managers,

The California Attorney General’s office updated the list of states where state funds may not be used for travel.

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-add-five-s...