Meetings and Entertainment: Meetings

Learn about meals and light refreshments for university business meetings, including allowable per-person amounts and procedures for approval and payment/ reimbursement.

Meetings that include UCSD-paid meals or light refreshments must serve a substantial business purpose and have at least one employee present.

Types and purposes

Meetings can be between:

• University employees on an infrequent basis if the meeting cannot be scheduled during regular, working hours
• Faculty, staff, and students
• Employees and other participants

For the following purposes:

• Administrative, planning, workgroups
• Planning, mentoring, workgroups (faculty, staff, and students)
• Formal training sessions, conferences (not on travel status)
• Professional association, scholarly society, external organization
• UC-wide meetings, Academic Senate, Regents

Reimbursements and payments

Use MyMeetings and Hosted Events (MyEvents) to claim expenses or request payments.

Frequency

UCSD does not pay or reimburse frequent or routine expenditures for meals or light refreshments for employees, which are treated as taxable income by the IRS.

For meetings, limit the frequency of:

• Meals to once per month, per group
• Light refreshments to twice per month, per group

Approval

Meetings require approval by employees with delegated signature authorization. Some circumstances, such as exceeding per-person meal maximums, require special approval by either the vice chancellor or a designee. See approval routing guidelines.

Notice: UCSD policy for meetings, entertainment, and hosted events, as published in Blink, is decisive. It has been adapted to UCSD's organization, delegation of authority, terminology, chart of accounts, and processing applications. The source is UC Expenditures for Business Meetings, Entertainment, and Other Occasions (PDF).

Travel

Overview

• Maximum Meal Expenses
• Standard Entertainment
• Special Entertainment
• FAQ
• University-Hosted Events
• Meetings
• Programmatic Activities