To improve the process for creating and clearing Advance Requests and reduce clearing errors, the Payment Services team has made several changes to system messages in the Expense Request System.
Advances are most commonly used to pay in advance for Stanford-sponsored travel (although the Travel Card is the recommended payment choice) or to pay human subjects.
What has changed
New message when creating Advance Requests:
- When the expected clearing date entered is too far in the future, a new message will appear stating “Expected Clearing Date cannot exceed 120 days from today.” This change helps reduce the number of open, uncleared advances in the system.
- A new help link, "Step by step instructions on how to enter an Expected Clearing Date", is provided below the Expected Clearing Date field. This link takes you to the appropriate section in the How To instructions.
When clearing existing Advance Requests:
- A new warning will appear if a remaining balance is left on the advance after the amount to be cleared is entered in case the transaction was partially cleared by accident. The warning states: “There is balance left on the advance, are you sure you want to proceed?”
- If the PTA used on the original Advance Request has expired when an Advance Request is cleared, an error message will appear stating that the PTA must be reactivated in order to submit the clearing transaction. The error message states: "To clear the advance you must contact the Award Manager to reactivate the original advance PTA." The error message will include the specific PTA to assist you in taking this action. Save your transaction and exit because the original PTA must be reactivated before submitting this Expense Report.
For detailed instructions about creating and clearing Advance Requests, please visit How to Request and Clear an Advance.
