Effective October 1, 2005, OMB Circular A-123 mandated the use of split disbursement for government travelers. Split disbursement is the process of dividing a travel voucher reimbursement between the charge card vendor and the traveler. The balance owed to each is sent directly to the appropriate party. On April 21, 2005, the Department of the Treasury formally waived requirements of 31 CFR 208.6 and 210.5. This waiver allowed Federal agencies to issue part or all of an employee’s travel reimbursement to the travel card-issuing bank for crediting to the employee’s travel card account. For more information on the split disbursement waiver, you may visit this website:
http://www.fms.treas.gov/news/split_travel_disbursement_waiver.pdf
Split disbursement offers a higher level of convenience by eliminating the hassles of writing a personal check, the cost of a stamp, and the worry of getting the payment in by the due date.
The traveler remains responsible for timely payment of all charges to the Government travel charge card and should verify that payments have been credited properly on subsequent statements. The traveler should contact the charge card provider if payments were not credited as expected. Collection of any overpayments made to the credit card company is the responsibility of the traveler.
For my agency, these expenses are set up in the travel system to be paid to the individual credit card account via split disbursement:
- All airfare, lodging, and rental car reservations made in the travel system are automatically paid to the traveler’s credit card account (including TMC fees).
- All TAV fees for vouchers and local vouchers are automatically paid to the traveler’s credit card account.
- Non-mileage expenses (Optional: Travelers may change the method of reimbursement in the system if they want these expenses to be paid to their credit card account).
- Travelers may also request additional amounts be paid to their credit card account by indicating the amount in the appropriate field in the travel system. Travelers use this option for expenses that were charged to their credit card such as meals, parking, incidental expenses, etc.
Many travelers have access to their IBA on-line which allows them to easily calculate the split disbursement payment amounts in order to pay their account in full each month.
by Julie Gilchrist
“The contents of this message are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the Government or my agency.
Why don’t transportation security administration use split pay? Why is it so difficult for them to do such a simple task?