Direct Bill System Updates
The travel team has updated the Direct Bill system to improve the user experience, which allows you to charge airfare directly to the university for business travel. With the changes now live, you can use the system to generate a Direct Bill ID number which is used in place of a payment method when booking air travel through the UC systemwide travel program, ConnexUC.
There are several small improvements to the system, but the two key changes are:
- We will require the user to select a "Preferred Approver" when creating the ID, which will then send an email notification to that individual. The email will inform the selected approver that the Direct Bill ID has been generated and that it will be used to bill airfare directly to the university and to a specific chartstring. As long as the travel was authorized and the chartstring is appropriate, then no action is required on the part of the approver, the email is simply a notification. This will improve the accuracy of the approval process and the response time.
- There is a new prompt in the updated system which will ask "Is Berkeley the travel destination?". If the answer is yes, then it will ask an additional question, which is "Where is the traveler coming from?". Then it will base the account code off of where they are traveling from, instead of where they are travelling to. This improvement is to make it easier to set up a Direct Bill ID if you are traveling to UC Berkeley from another location.
Please note that Direct Bill must not be used for personal trips. Direct Bill can only be used for approved UC Berkeley business travel.
If you have any questions, please contact the T&E team at travel@berkeley.edu.