Meal Reimbursement
Who picks up the tab for dinner?
General guidelines:
If the visitor is in travel status while visiting a WRITE site, and a breakfast/lunch/dinner meeting with the student, preceptor, and possibly other local physicians or medical personnel is scheduled, WRITE faculty visitors can pay the entire meal check and be reimbursed from the UWSOM. It is also permissible for the WRITE site to provide meal(s) for the visitor faculty.
If the UW faculty picks up the tab, the following rules apply to reimbursement by the UWSOM:
All attendees at the meal must have legitimate UWSOM business. Spouses of students or clinical faculty are not generally recognized as having legitimate UWSOM business at meetings and their meals are not reimbursable.
Food purchases are only appropriate when they occur during legitimate business: all-day or half-day meetings/training sessions; meetings during lunch or dinner hour in order to accommodate faculty/student clinic/class schedule.
The amount reimbursed for the meal is limited to the federal per diem rate for that location. Amounts beyond the federal per diem rate will not be reimbursed out of the WRITE budget. UW faculty may have access to a departmental budget that can pay the above per diem amount.
*Alcohol is not a reimbursable expense unless it has been pre-approved. To request approval for alcohol purchases with site visit meals, contact UWSOM Administrative Director, Jonas Louie, jinl@u.washington.edu for a preapproval e-mail confirmation (pre-approval for business meeting meal reimbursements during site visits is not necessary, unless alcohol will be served). Alcohol must be paid for separately from the food portion of the meal, and a separate receipt must be obtained. Note that alcohol is discouraged and may only be reimbursed using SOM Dean’s office discretionary funds and not all requests are approved.
UW faculty and staff who attend the meal and are in travel status may not also claim the per diem allowance for meals provided at meetings and paid for by another UW faculty/staff member. Meals purchased for meetings must be reimbursed using the eReimbursement feature of the ARIBA system.
After travel is completed, your department can process your travel and meal reimbursements through the ARIBA system using the WRITE budget: 07-9632. Do not send receipts, forms or other documents to Academic Affairs for processing. If also requesting meal reimbursement for meals paid during meetings at WRITE site, the Food Approval form and the List of Attendees must be submitted with the reimbursement request in ARIBA.