Business & Administration

The School of Education and Social Policy defers to University policy regarding business and finance. See below for some SESP-specific information.

Budget Statements

Principal investigators will receive via e-mail two statements for each chart string. There is a GM045 summary for grants or a GL005 summary for non-grants followed by a GL008 detail. Program directors can expect these reports from their program assistant or coordinator. Statements can be accessed via the NU BI tool. Instructions for running reports can be found here.

Travel and Entertainment

The goal is to purchase as much for travel directly (i.e., not via reimbursement) as possible. This can usually be done for plane tickets and conference registration. This is especially beneficial to you because we cannot reimburse for these until after the trip. Please see our "How to Buy and How to Fly" tip sheet. Remember that even if there are direct expenses for your trip, they still need to be reported on the employee expense report as "not reimbursable." So you must provide those receipts to whoever is entering the report.

Contracts

No one at the School of Education and Social Policy is authorized to sign a contract on behalf of Northwestern University. Please route any contract that requires a signature through the Dean’s Office. We will submit to the Office of the General Counsel on your behalf. Please allow at least three business days for this process. Hotel booking, restaurant reservations and catering agreements do not need to be reviewed by Office of the General Counsel. You should review the cancellation and attrition fees and the food and beverage minimums before signing.

Reimbursement

Key Steps

• For all reimbursements, you will need to submit your receipts to your program administrator within 30 days of expense.
• Human Development and Social Policy and Learning Sciences faculty and students can submit their purchasing, reimbursement, and contractor requests through the financials portal. 
• After the reimbursement is entered into the system, it will require the traveler's signature you can review your submissions and make changes here.
• Students and staff will need a supervisor's (e.g., academic program coordinator or principal investigator) signature.
• For reimbursement on sponsored projects (grants) please complete the sponsored project purchase justification and submit either before or along with your reimbursement request. 

Troubleshooting Reimbursement Issues

It's important to read the university's travel and entertainment policy. The following are issues that frequently delay reimbursements, all of which can be found in the university policy. These include:

• A lack of itemized expenses AND proof of payment receipts
• Business/travel purpose and how the expense relates to the project from which it is being funded
• Conference brochure or flier (can be printed from the Web)
• Attendee names and affiliations and purpose for group meals

The more organized and detailed the receipts and explanations are, the faster you will get your money back.