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General Provisions

A state agency must maintain supporting documentation specifically required by state travel rules and guidance, as well as any other documentation that is reasonably necessary to prove the legality and fiscal responsibility of the agency’s travel reimbursements. The documentation must be maintained even if the Comptroller does not require the agency to make it available to the Comptroller.

Electronic versions or copies of the documentation (including receipts) are allowed as long as all required information is included. Document requirements can be found in the individual categories in this publication; documentation must be legible and contain sufficient detail to verify that the expenditure was appropriate and allowable. Electronic documentation can be maintained within a system, including CAPPS, or maintained in a structure outside of a system (i.e., a folder on a LAN, a database, etc.). Documentation to support a specific document must be maintained together and be readily available.

The supporting documentation must satisfy all the following requirements:

  • The documentation must be legible.
  • Documentation must be maintained in agency files for the current year in which the document is processed and three subsequent years (current year + 3).
  • A state record whose retention period has expired may not be destroyed if any litigation, claim, negotiation, audit, public information request, administrative review or other action involving the record is initiated; its destruction must not occur until the completion of the action and the resolution of all issues that arise from it.
  • Supporting documentation for all transactions in a particular travel document must be grouped together.
  • Once the transaction is submitted to the Comptroller as part of a travel document containing one or more transactions, the supporting documentation must be cross-referenced to the travel document and the transaction that the documentation supports. The cross-reference to the travel document must consist of the document’s USAS document key, which consists of the document agency, the document number and the fiscal year the document was initiated in. The cross-reference to the transaction consists of the transaction’s suffix number.

The Comptroller may require a state agency to make supporting documentation available in the manner and at the time required by the Comptroller, including during a post-payment audit, a pre-payment audit or at any other time. The Comptroller is not required to search the agency’s files for the documentation, determine which documentation corresponds with which expenses, documents or transactions, or otherwise sort or organize the documentation.

If the agency does not provide supporting documentation for a particular expense, document or transaction according to applicable requirements, then the Comptroller may reject the document or transaction or deem the resulting payments or reimbursements to be unsubstantiated or erroneous.