Credit/Charges submitting differently

[KKing]

Within Concur, when employees do not submit the charge/credit the same... they do not pay the same, which ends up in a debit payment to AMEX and creates a balance on AMEX for something that was refunded. Seeing as there is no way to fix or do an adjustment in Concur, how do you prevent this from happening? We cannot be the only company that has this issue. 

We have set alerts. We have posted in a Yammer community that we have. It is not helping. This is creating so much extra work. Why is there not a way to do adjustments in Concur for when employees make mistakes? Our old system had a process, but now with Concur, we do not. It just seems silly seeing as employees do not understand the difference when they submit this way. 

[DeanR]

Hi @KKing ,

Have you targeted your communications to the expense report approvers and processors?  End users will always make mistakes occasionally, but if it's a specific recurring issue then putting the onus on the reviewers - who should be more familiar with Concur and are smaller in number - may yield better results.  They should be identifying these and rejecting the reports back to the employee to correct.

Also, in your screenshot example is it the charges incorrectly marked as Personal, or the credits incorrectly marked as not Personal?  If it's the latter and this happens often then it may indicate a wider issue with employees using corporate cards for personal expenses.

Cheers

Dean

[KKing]

Hi Dean

The processors would not see the issue unless the credit was flagged to be audited. Most of them are not flagged, so they get through. Approvers do not always look at every expense, and if they are not on the same report they would not know it was wrong. They would not know to look at a report from 6 months ago now that the credit is being submitted. 

Correct. Employees should not be using their cards for personal. That is a whole issue in itself. But sometimes mistakes are made, so they get a refund to rectify the issue.. but then submit the credit as business, instead of personal, thus creating the debit payment and balance on their card. And this is not something we always know about until the employee asks why they have a balance on their card, or what the debit payment is. If they leave the company and don't fix this before that, they will have a balance that is unable to be paid due to the fact you cannot do adjustments in Concur. There has to be a way to fix a mistake. I find it crazy that a system has no way to fix human error. I'm trying to find a solution for human error, and it seems there is none?

[DeanR]

Are you advising the employees to get a refund from the vendor when they inadvertently use their corporate card for a personal purchase, or are they taking it upon themselves?  That may be complicating the situation and it could be easier to get the employee to either reimburse the company or make payment direct to the card provider for personal expenses (depending on how your card program is managed). 

[KKing]

Hi Dean!

Both. When we advise to get a refund, we also advise how to submit both the charge/credit in Concur so they net to $0 and we do not need to add additional manual work to correct the mistake. 

When the employee is getting the refund on their own, they are submitting incorrectly. They are submitting the incorrect charge as Personal, then submitting the credit as business which then results in a debit payment to the card. Then because the originally submitted personal charge was not paid to AMEX due to being submitted as personal it is leaving an outstanding balance on the card. We do not know it happens until they reach out due to a past due balance on the card.. which could be months later once they notice it/lack of spending/start incurring late fees. 

Our old system had a process to fix this. It is creating a ton of extra work for our team/employees to fix this mistake due to no solution anymore. 

This will become a bigger issue when it is learned after the employee leaves and there is no way to fix it at that point without the employee intervention. Due to not being able to reverse the incorrectly submitted charge to make it payable to AMEX in Concur. 

[KevinD]

@KKing have you considered creating an audit rule that would block submission if there is a negative amount entry and an entry marked as personal? If there are other "mistakes" the users are making, I would create audit rules for those. Block submission until they get it right. That is one of the only ways I know to change user behavior. 

[DeanR]

I presume the process in your old system was to either:

• re-open processed expense reports and amend them; or
• allow you to manually create card transactions

Would that be right?  I can understand your frustration but there are pitfalls with either option so I also understand why Concur wouldn't allow it.

However I'm still not sure how it is such a common issue that it is requiring a lot of manual work on your part.  If I understand correctly, a lot of things need to occur and the processes/rules to stop any of them all need to fail:

1. Employee uses corporate card for personal purchase, against company policy
2. Employee requests refund from supplier
3. Employee incorrectly codes refund as a business transaction
4.  Processor/manager fail to pick up incorrect coding before approving

I'd be looking at Concur Audit Rules around 3 and 4 (e.g. additional comment required for any credit transactions on corporate cards) to try and stop the incorrect coding getting through, or tell employees not to initiate refunds for personal purchases and just to pay the card provider direct.  

[KKing]

Hi Dean, 

Apologize for the delay in replying. 

Yes, what you are presuming is correct. We were able to adjust the incorrectly submitted expense so it could be paid correctly to fix a mistake that was made. 

It is a very common issue. We are having to correct multiple issues a week when this happens. And that is only the ones we KNOW about. This will become a larger issue when the employee leaves and they have unpaid balances on their card. Or when they have accidentally submitted many charges as personal that should have been business and now they have left the company so we can no longer fix it and pay it via Concur. 

Processer/manager will not know it was submitted incorrectly unless they are able to see the original charge, and it is flagged. Not every charge/credit is flagged for an audit so most of them will not get caught. Managers will also not know how the original was submitted, and mangers do not always look at every single line item on reports before they approve them.. and sometimes managers are the ones who make the mistake. 

We are working on creating many, many more audit rules to hopefully prevent this. The other issue is the employees do not even  understand the audit rules that are in place now to begin with, so having more I fear will just create more confusion. Case in point I am fixing today. Accidental use of card for personal, got a refund. Submitted charge as personal, tried to submit credit as personal, but Concur audit alerts makes a note about not submitting credits as personal and to make sure it is correct. Employee only sees the first part, so they just change it to business to get it submitted. This leave the charge submitted as personal, credit as business and now they have a balance due on the card. 

We have 100,000 employees, it would be very hard to tell people to not initiate refunds. And often times, they get a refund because whatever they accidentally used the card far was indeed returned and a refund was issued, so the refund is correct. We do tell the employees to pay it direct when it is accidentally used, but when a refund happens... that is where the issue comes into play. Sometimes the refund is for a business expense as well, but they submitted the original charge as personal due to the fact they didnt' have a receipt, or they knew a refund was coming and they just wanted it out of the queue. It is not a simple situation every time, which is why there is not a cut and dry answer to tell them what to do. We do tell them not to use the card for personal. We do tell them to submit both the same. But, not everyone follows directions, reads emails, reads posts, takes trainings, etc...  The system just does not seem very friendly for mistakes that happen due to human error which creates so much extra work for many teams involved. It is unfortunate, really.