Mileage rate updated. What happens to retroactive expenses?

[tannertamondong]

Hello,

I am an administrator and it was brought to my attention that our company had not updated the mileage reimbursement rate since 2021. I updated it in our configuration to the correct amount and set it to be effective 1/1/2024 and I am now wondering what will happen with expense reports since that date?

When I look at processed reports from this year, they now indicate that they’re being calculated with the new rate, but they were originally calculated and paid out using the old rate. 

What will happen to these transactions? Will concur correct the payments and automatically process retroactive payments and send to each user? Would it also do the same if I updated the rates for prior years? 

thank you

[PoojaKumatkar]

Hi @tannertamondong ,

With reference to your statement "When I look at processed reports from this year, they now indicate that they’re being calculated with the new rate, but they were originally calculated and paid out using the old rate. "

As per my understanding, new rate is only applicable for the reports which are currently in process and not yet fully approved. Regarding the old reports in which it is showing amount as per new rate, I think you don't have to worry about that because those reports are already extracted from Concur and paid out to the employee. And amounts have already been updated in Concur database as per old rates. 

One important point you need to consider here is, expense reports which are already extracted form Concur cannot be recalled and re-process it again. And once it is extracted and paid out means it has already completed end-to-end processing cycle. So, as per my understanding it shouldn't matter, even if it is showing amount as per new rate. 

I would like you to verify my understand whether its correct. For that you can take any existing old report which is already processed and paid out and under audit trail check its extraction date. Go to import/extract admin/monitor and from extracts, download the extract for the same date and check what amount it is showing. If it shows amount as per old rate it means my understanding is correct and if it's not, then my understanding is wrong. 

Let me know the results/observations.

If this answers your query, then please mark solution as accepted.

[KevinD]

@tannertamondong the new rate will not affect any fully processed and paid reports. 

So, if your company decided to pay employees the new rate retroactive from the day you entered the new rate, you would need to have employees submit some sort of expense report for this. The system will not go back and look at all past reports that had the old rate and generate automatic payments. 

I might recommend creating a new expense type if the plan is to do the retroactive payments. I would name it something like Retroactive Mileage or anything similar. Now, the users would need to do the math to figure out what this would be or your Finance team could run a Cognos report to see how many miles were submitted company-wide this year, get the average amount, then multiply it by the difference between the old rate and new rate. So, it would come out to one lump some retroactive amount all employees could enter. 

I'm just throwing out options on how you could handle this. My other suggestion would have been not to change the rate this late in the year, but it is a bit late for that now. 🙂