Direct expenditures are payments made against a department’s account for those expenses that do not require a purchase order AND when a procurement card is not accepted by the vendor.
Please see the list of eligible items and restrictions below PRIOR to committing your department to a purchase or submitting a Direct Expenditure Form (DEF) to Accounts Payable.
Please ALWAYS use your department procard as the first option to pay for these items. It is more cost effective and quicker to use a procard than it is to process a physical check. Only when a vendor does not accept a credit card payment should a department turn to payment via a DEF.
Eligible direct expense items include:
- Subscriptions (individual paper versions of magazines, periodicals, journals, and newspapers)
- Memberships
- Permits/license fees (excludes software licenses)
- Accreditation (fee only; no training and services)
- Payment to University Enterprises Corporation (UEC) or Philanthropic Foundation. For payment to ASI and SMSU, contact Accounting Services for interunit transfers.
- Freight bill/shipping charges (outbound)
- Physicals/medical services (HR & Athletics use only; service must be provided off campus)
- Contractor deposit refunds (CPDC & Facilities use only)
- Extended and Global Education tour arrangement
- Insurance (Athletics and CEGE use only)
- Game Official - payment to CCAA only (Athletics only)
- Game guarantees (Athletics only)
- Postage -
- requires preapproval of Purchasing
- no invoice required, but dept should retain receipt for their records
- Personal reimbursements -
- the campus does not encourage employees to pay out of pocket for goods; procurement cards, purchase orders, and petty cash are the appropriate methods of purchase
- personal reimbursements requests under $50 and meet petty cash requirements (please see Student Financial Services website for guidelines, restrictions) are not required to be submitted with a signed Generic Invoice and a completed Unauthorized Purchase Explanation/Certification Form
- personal reimbursement DEF payment requests must be submitted with original itemized receipt(s) of items purchased, signed
- no food – personal reimbursements for food purchases must be submitted via a Hospitality form and meet University Hospitality Policy requirements
- Non-travel related participant fee -
- includes workshops, seminars, conferences for which no physical travel will occur and no other expense will be claimed by the attending individual
Payments to new vendors may be delayed or denied until a properly completed Payee Data Record (Form 204) is received by Accounts Payable from the vendor.
If a document (e.g. order form, application, etc.) needs to be sent with the check, two copies of the document must be included with the signed original of the DEF. It is the responsibility of the ordering department to accurately complete and/or update order forms/applications as one copy will be mailed with payment to the vendor address shown on the document.
All invoices/order forms/applications must identify the University as the bill to party, the University address as the delivery address, and reference the contact name/department responsible for placing the order. It is the sole responsibility of the requesting department to ensure all information necessary for proper delivery of items is provided the vendor on the order form.
Any problem resolution regarding the order is the requesting department's responsibility.
Unapproved, non-qualifying, or incomplete DEF requests will be returned unprocessed to the originating department along with an explanation of why the expenditure was denied.