COVID cancelled travel over 60 days

[aune...@umn.edu]

I have an person external to the University who was going to come to the U of MN to present in relation to a grant in March. Of course, due to COVID that presentation was cancelled. He did get a voucher that is good through January 2021 and was hoping to come back and use that voucher or use it for personal use. Unfortunately, travel has been cancelled for longer than expected and he will not be able to use this voucher. This means that he is now asking for reimbursement for that flight. 

Would this be allowed on an NSF project because the cancellation is due to COVID? Is there an issue with the 60 days or are we being flexible because of COVID? Thanks!

[Erin Flathmann]

Curious how each department might handle this.  Seems very specific to standards certain colleges or departments might take.

We had various speakers who were cancelled (both for graduate seminars and for a conference planned on NIH grant funds).  Some speakers may have gotten a credit, others not.  We viewed it as a sort of "lost cause" we'd pay for either way.  Either they got a credit and would use it to come later, or they didn't get a credit and we still chose to reimburse them for unused airfare due to our previous commitment to do so.  We encouraged reimbursing right away so that it was still charged in a timely fashion.  I believe we did charge it to the NIH grant, whose budget included funds for a yearly conference.  Seems NSF would be okay with this too (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/M-20-17.pdf). 

As far as abiding by the 60-day reimbursement policy and how it applies to visitors (still not 100% clear to me in policy), I would certainly view this as a very strange extenuating circumstance.  Our unit would likely choose to reimburse the visitor, especially if we had originally encouraged delay in reimbursement to "wait things out" for credit utilization. 

Hope this is helpful, though I can see other units making different decisions.

[Nicole Pilman]

Happy Friday!  I agree with the various details Erin provided in her response.  From the sponsored perspective, you should check the sponsor's guidelines on charges impacted by COVID-19.  A good starting point is SPA's website that provides such guidance (https://research.umn.edu/covid-19-guidance-research/overview).  Otherwise, you should check in with your SPA GA.  Related to the 60-day rule, I agree that it should be waived given these highly unusual circumstances.  You should still check in with Purchasing Services to get an exception to policy.  In order to do so, you can submit a ticket to contr...@umn.edu and it will get routed accordingly.