Dear colleagues,

We, the University of Bremen's Travel Management Office, are now taking the next step towards digitizing our administration.

From December 1, 2024, all travel expenses claim forms must be submitted by email in PDF format. The general forwarding of travel expenses claim forms in paper form is no longer necessary.

At the same time, the previous option of submitting travel expenses in advance (and sending the paper version later) will be discontinued.

Important!

The procedure for requesting work-related travel will not change and will remain paper-based until further notice.

The new central email address reiseabrechnung@vw.uni-bremen.de has been set up for the submission of travel expenses claim forms by email and is to be used exclusively for this purpose.

Other emails (e.g. inquiries about the processing status) should be sent to our general email address reisen@vw.uni-bremen.de.

Please note:

Paper travel expense claims (travel request form, travel expense claim form, all receipts, supporting documents, justifications and explanations) must be kept by travelers for 2 years starting from the date of submission of the travel expense claim form) and only made available to the Travel Management Office upon request.

For legal reasons, the Travel Management Office requests the original travel expenses claim form (paper version) from the traveler for approx. 10% of the submitted travel expenses claim forms on a random basis. This original remains in Department 3.

A description of the procedure and further information can be found on our staff portal pages:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/intern/staff/work-related-travel/travel-request-form-travel-expenses-claim-form

This new method of submission offers various advantages:

• Certainty that the expense report has been received by the Travel Management Office, e.g. to meet deadlines (e.g. the 6-month cut-off period)
• Minimization of the risk of loss via internal mail
• Faster and simpler answering of questions about the processing status and queries about the submitted travel expense documents
• Guaranteed legibility of receipts on thermal paper
• Fast approval of third-party funds if these are missing
• Sustainability through reduction of paper consumption

Note:

To increase data protection security, we recommend sending encrypted emails.

This requires a one-time setup of your email program.

The public key of the recipient email address (reiseabrechnung@vw.uni-bremen.de) must be saved. You can find the key here.

You will also need a personal certificate (user certificate) which you can obtain from the Center for Networks (ZfN) (https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/zfn/other-it-services/security-and-pki/personal-certificates).

If you have any further questions about the use of digital certificates and the encryption of emails, please contact your IT administrator.

Kind regards,

The Travel Management Office