SUFS requests and the portal helper¶

The SUFS Tracker browser extension (Chrome and Edge; how to install it) connects the tracker with the SUFS reimbursement portal in two ways:

• Your requests come into the tracker. While you use the portal, the extension reads your reimbursement requests: their status, change requests and payment dates. The tracker matches each one to its expense, and linked expenses follow the status SUFS gives them.
• The portal's form fills from an expense. On the portal's new-reimbursement form, a small panel suggests the next expense to submit and fills each step from it when you click.

The extension reads only what the portal already shows you, never submits anything, and sends nothing anywhere except to your own tracker.

Tell the extension where your tracker is¶

The extension comes in two versions: bundled, with its own copy of the tracker, and light, without one. In the extension's options, under Your tracker, choose one of these:

• Built into this extension (bundled version only): the tracker that opens from the extension's toolbar button. Nothing to set up.
• A tracker page on a website: this tracker opened at an address, such as the public copy, with its data in your browser or in a folder on your computer. The address https://sufs-tracker.myjigs.de/ is filled in; change it if your tracker is elsewhere, click Save and allow access to that site, then reload the page. From then on the page receives the SUFS requests the extension reads, keeps them in its own data and its folder with everything else, and the portal's form fills from the page's expenses. The extension has access to that address only. To put a receipt into the portal's form, the tracker page must be open in a tab, since the receipt is read from there. The light version opens its options for this right after it's installed.
• A tracker server: see Connected apps.

How requests are read¶

Open the SUFS portal and sign in as usual. When you open Reimbursements, the extension reads the list the page loads. From any other portal page it refreshes that list at most once a day, repeating the request the Reimbursements page itself makes. A small note in the corner of the portal says when it reads, and how many requests changed since last time.

Match requests to expenses¶

On Submissions, the SUFS requests panel lists the requests not yet linked to an expense.

• Which student is which? The first time, match each SUFS student to a tracker student. The tracker preselects a student with the same first name; check it and click Save students.
• Link. For each request, the tracker suggests the expense it looks like: one with the same invoice/receipt number; otherwise the same student and total, and a date within a month of the purchase date or the same vendor. Click Link to approve it, or Not this one to dismiss the suggestion. Link all suggested approves every suggestion at once.
• Link to…. Any request can be linked to an expense you pick from the list (the request's student's first, nearest date first). Use it for a draft, whose total stays 0 until its items are filled in, so it can't be matched by amount.
• Add as new expense. A request you never logged becomes an expense with its SUFS details: date, vendor, student, and one item per SUFS line, with its form line, quantity, price and tax/shipping. Add … without a match as new expenses does this for every request without a suggestion.

Every request ends up linked to one expense. A linked expense shows the request under its status: its SUFS number, SUFS's status and the payment date. Unlink separates them again if the link is wrong.

Statuses follow SUFS¶

An expense's status is where its request stands; each item has its own result once SUFS decides it.

Each item is tied to its SUFS line: by total and form line when you link, by its line when it was added from SUFS. When SUFS changes anything on a request, the expense's status and its items' results change with it, and item details still empty in the tracker are filled from SUFS (a service SUFS lists with only a total gets that total as its price). A status or result you set by hand stays until SUFS changes the request again.

In the log, an expense shows its results next to its status, for example 1 paid · 1 denied, and a group of expenses adds them up. The totals count approved and paid items as Approved / paid and denied ones as Denied; the filter can show expenses by status or by an item's result.

Change requests. While SUFS asks for changes, the panel says so at the top with SUFS's reason, and so does the expense in the log. Once the request is resubmitted, the notice goes away.

See a request's details¶

Click an expense's row in the log (anywhere but its buttons and selects) to open its details below it, without the edit form: each item with its form line, quantity and price, total and result, and the SUFS line it went in as, with that line's status, payment or approval date, SUFS's Reason and the Reviewer's comment. Below come the expense's files (with Open), its note, the request's number, status, submission date, program, provider and total, and the SUFS history: every status, reason and comment the extension has seen, with dates, kept even after SUFS clears them. Click the row again to close it.

Fill the portal's form from an expense¶

In the portal, click New Reimbursement. A panel opens in the lower-left corner:

1. It suggests the expense to submit next: one still To submit and not linked to a request, or a Draft. Ready ones come first, then the oldest. When you reopen a request in SUFS (a draft, or to make the changes SUFS asked for), the expense linked to it comes first, marked This request: tick Replace filled fields too to update what SUFS has from the tracker. Once you've chosen the student, that student's expenses come first. Pick another from the list if you like. Anything missing for SUFS shows in red, such as no receipt, an item without a form line, or a receipt larger than 5 MB.
2. On each step, click Fill this step:
3. Student Selection picks the expense's student.
4. Receipt/Invoice Upload adds the expense's receipt. It must be a PDF, PNG or JPG of 5 MB or less.
5. Item/Service Details adds one SUFS item per tracker item. It fills each with the purchase date, the invoice/receipt number, Category, Type and Description, quantity, price, tax/shipping, who you paid, the educational benefit and the item's web address.
6. Additional Documents adds the expense's supporting files.
7. Summary compares SUFS's total with the tracker's.
8. Check what was filled, then click Continue yourself. On the summary, you submit.

The panel fills only empty fields. Tick Replace filled fields too to overwrite them. Every field it fills is outlined for a few seconds, and a list under the button says what it did and what it left for you. That includes a vendor missing from SUFS's list, which needs Provider not Listed and the provider's credentials as an additional document. It never clicks Continue, Back, Delete or Submit. The – button shrinks the panel to a small button.

Once you've chosen the student, SUFS gives the request its number. From then on, filling a step tells the extension which expense this request comes from, and the tracker links the two by itself when the extension next reads your requests (or at once, if it already has). A request already linked, or an expense linked to another request, is left alone; Unlink in the log undoes a link.