Unable to change expense type "Hotel" in processor role

[monteypoo]

Employees in my team with the processor role are able to change the expense type when employee's don't get it correct for most of their expenses, however for some reason whenever "Hotel" expense type is selected we are unable to edit it and are currently having to return these expenses to the employee. Is there a setting that we can change to enable this expense type to be changeable when auditing an expense?

[MelanieT · Accepted solution]

@monteypoo  Hello!  

Expense Approvers and Expense Processors cannot change any Expense Types once the Line Item has been itemized. If the line item has been itemized, the report should be sent back to the user to make the necessary changes. 

An Expense Processor will not be able to modify to/from the following Expense Types in the Expense Report:

• Air Fare (with space between Air and Fare)
• Parent Expense Categories
• Mileage
• Cash Advance
• Cash Advance Return
• Currency Gain/Loss
• Expenses linked to Travel Allowances​
• Hotel
• Expense types that have been renamed or created through a mobile app are not editable

For Hotel expenses, if the Spend Category is set to Lodging - Track Room Rate Spending/Lodging - Track Hotel Spending, only the employee would be able to select this expense type. Therefore, a submitted report would need to be returned to the user to make the required changes.

• Track Room Rate Spending relates to Travel Allowances and breaks the expense out on a separate line within the extracted file
• Hotel/Lodging expense types has to be itemized, and the employee can only do itemization
• If you do not use Travel Allowances and are not tracking your Room Rate spending, then the Spend Category can be changed to Lodging - Do Not Track Room Rate Spending - please get in touch with Support to request that this is updated
• The above expense types will not be available on the Expense type dropdown when the processor tries to change an expense type of an expense report

An Approver and Expense Processor will also not be able to itemize any expenses. Whenever new Itemizations are required, the report must be sent back to the user.

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[devarah]

Hello Melanie,

Thank you very much for the information. Does SAP Concur currently offer or plan to provide the ability for processors to itemize and add new expense lines in expense reports? Has this feature been announced in any recent release notes?

[KevinD]

@devarah Hello there. I'll jump in for Melanie as her time with our team has ended. I've not heard of any plans for what you are asking about. 

I like to explain it this way. The reason that we give approvers and processors very little options for changing expense reports is because the report actually belongs to someone else. The owner of the report should be able to review changes that have been made to their report as they have technically agreed that they have submitted the expenses according to company policy. If Processors are allowed to add expenses for employees, how would that employee get to review the report to make sure what was entered by the Processor is accurate? 

Also, allowing this sets a bad precedent for employees to not really care about being accurate in their expense reporting as they will quickly figure out that the processor will just correct if for them. 

[monteypoo]

Hi Kevin,

I can't say that I necessarily agree with this logic when applied in a real life scenario. In contrast this is like saying that as an AP department we should not code our own supplier invoices and should instead rely on what the supplier tells us because it's their invoice and not ours,  I would completely agree that certain aspects of the invoice should never be changed for example the invoice amount or the invoice date etc... but its still ultimately our job to ensure that what enters the ledger is correct. For expenses, as a processor we are able to modify the transaction date and approved amount without any input from the employee so this is why I would say this logic doesn't hold up, because why would it only apply to things such as itemisation that bare no impact on the employee in terms of how much or when they will get reimbursed? I would also argue that it isn't the responsibility of the employee to review expenses in accordance with company policies, yes they should aim to submit expenses within company policy guidelines but it is the job of the processor to review and decide.

Sending back expenses because the itemisation isn't correct in practice only causes frustration with employees and an increased burden on the business because their managers then also need to re-approve the expenses, sending back the expense rarely results in lessons being learnt and training needs to be given to employees to address the problems head on.