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MIT has many out-of-town visitors, both domestic and foreign, who visit the Institute for a day, a week, or several months. These visitors—speakers at public lecture events, conference attendees, or scholars engaged in research collaborations—often have travel expenses related to their visit.

In many cases, MIT reimburses visitors for travel expenses. If you need to reimburse a visitor for travel, you must use your DLC’s Guest Profile in Concur, MIT’s online expense reporting tool. If your DLC does not have a Guest Profile set up in Concur, the VPF Travel and Card Services team can create one for you. Please note that the expense report in a Guest Profile includes additional fields in the report header for the guest traveler’s name and address. It is essential to fill out these fields completely and accurately if you want the check mailed to the visitor directly, since checks for visitors are processed and mailed by a third party, and not mailed by MIT.

Sending the check to your department for mailing

Some DLCs prefer to have the visitor’s travel expense check sent to their department so they can mail it to their guests with other correspondence, including thank-yous. If the check is being mailed outside the U.S., DLCs often FedEx it to the recipient for faster and more dependable delivery. Therefore, if you want the check mailed directly to your department, you must put in MIT’s mailing address (77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139) and your department’s building and room number in the address field, and write the guest’s name, followed by “c/o” (in care of) and the MIT expense submitter’s name. This step will ensure that the check will be sent to the host department. Please note that the MIT recipient’s name and MIT address will also show on the visitor’s check under her/his name, so you might want to ask the visitor if this will cause any issues when they cash the check. If so, call VPF Travel and Card Services to discuss other options.

A note on foreign addresses

Many names and addresses of our visitors from outside the U.S. contain foreign characters, such as é or ñ. While we use the appropriate foreign characters in personal correspondence, our financial systems are not as accommodating. When the expense report goes from Concur to SAP for payment, these characters are not recognized and are replaced with question marks. As a result, the visitor’s check may not get delivered or their bank won’t accept the check with a misspelled name. When this happens, the expense report has to be resubmitted in Concur without foreign characters in the visitor’s name and address. To avoid this extra step and delay, please do not use foreign characters in your visitor’s expense reports in Concur.

If you have any questions, please contact a travel representative at VPF Travel and Card Services.