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[larryc]

We have a set amount for "professional development" that we can spend on anything from books to equipment to travel. Flights have to be booked through the campus travel agent, you can make any other arrangements yourself. A rule I like is that you get your per diem for meals and such automatically and do not have to produce receipts.

[totoro]

For domestic flights we are supposed to book through a particular service if we are spending money in university accounts, which could be from various sources. If you are travelling on someone else's budget - e.g. they invited you to talk then you can book whatever you want. For international travel we can book whatever we want and either charge direct to the university if the agent has that option or get reimbursed. We need to submit a travel permission to do any business travel. The purpose is for travel insurance and fringe benefits tax if it were to apply (private travel component to business travel). These are pretty much automatically approved. We need to also submit a "travel diary" afterwards for all travel of more than 5 days.

There are no limits on what you can spend etc. if you have the money. Money is from grants, start-ups, and we get money returned to us which the government pays per publication etc (yeah this is Australia). Also if we teach extra courses for executives or whatever that can generate extra money into our research account.

This is very different from the R1 I was at in the US. There we got $1000 a year in good years to use for travel and that was it unless you had a grant to pay for it. As well you had to travel with US airlines unless absolutely not possible.

[totoro]

PS - our university reimburses pretty fast but I am still waiting for the guys who invited me to India in August to reimburse me. I just got a paper check in US Dollars from a US university (even though I gave them all my account details at a US bank for them to do a transfer). I had to go to the post office and mail it back to the US to be deposited. Workshop was in September.

[idspike]

My uni has travel policies out the whazoo.  One of which (and I kid you not) is that we are not allowed to charter a hot air balloon without permission.

I believe you.  I once took a how-to-fill-out-the-travel-request-form workshop for one of my jobs and was given the procedures to:

1) get a burro ride approved if that was the most reasonable form of travel
2) get local bribes approved and reimbursed if such was needed for access to work sites
3) get a boat rental approved, again if that was the most reasonable way to travel

I personally know people whose travel and field work has required not only baksheesh but also boats, rafts, canoes, helicopters, snowmobiles, skis, yaks, and human porters (other than grad students, that is), not to mention assorted climbing harnesses, ropes, ice axes, and whatnot.  I have no idea how they got the forms through. I've never expensed anything more exotic than boots.

There are no hot air balloons on that list, but I have a piece of equipment we designed to launch on an unmanned balloon.  The experiment would actually work better in some ways on a manned flight, and now I am feeling some temptation to write a small hot-air ballooning proposal. 

[paprof]

My uni has travel policies out the whazoo.  One of which (and I kid you not) is that we are not allowed to charter a hot air balloon without permission.

I believe you.  I once took a how-to-fill-out-the-travel-request-form workshop for one of my jobs and was given the procedures to:

1) get a burro ride approved if that was the most reasonable form of travel
2) get local bribes approved and reimbursed if such was needed for access to work sites
3) get a boat rental approved, again if that was the most reasonable way to travel

I personally know people whose travel and field work has required not only baksheesh but also boats, rafts, canoes, helicopters, snowmobiles, skis, yaks, and human porters (other than grad students, that is), not to mention assorted climbing harnesses, ropes, ice axes, and whatnot.  I have no idea how they got the forms through. I've never expensed anything more exotic than boots.

There are no hot air balloons on that list, but I have a piece of equipment we designed to launch on an unmanned balloon.  The experiment would actually work better in some ways on a manned flight, and now I am feeling some temptation to write a small hot-air ballooning proposal. 

I have to say that I had not expected hot air balloons, burro rides, and yaks as part of any travel policies!!!

[bookishone]

My uni has travel policies out the whazoo.  One of which (and I kid you not) is that we are not allowed to charter a hot air balloon without permission.

I believe you.  I once took a how-to-fill-out-the-travel-request-form workshop for one of my jobs and was given the procedures to:

1) get a burro ride approved if that was the most reasonable form of travel
2) get local bribes approved and reimbursed if such was needed for access to work sites
3) get a boat rental approved, again if that was the most reasonable way to travel

I don't remember any examples of getting a hot air balloon charter approved, but I bet that company had an explicit policy on it.  I also took safety training that both included how to pick up a paperclip from under the desk and how to secure the circuit breaker box in the lab in case I needed to do my own electrical work.  I think tickets should have been sold to some of these trainings.

This is hilarious. It would almost have been worth the wasted afternoon, to be there.