Deceased employee with unpaid personal charges

[KKing]

When employees mark expenses as personal expenses (for any sort of reason), but they unexpectedly pass.. and Concur has no way to reverse the report/fix mistakes (not that this is a mistake, but Concur cannot fix mistakenly submitted expenses)... and we cannot make payments to AMEX for AMEX charges except for the expense report... and manual payments are not an option. How do other companies handle paying these charges?

[KevinD]

@KKing great question. I think you are more likely to get some responses by posting this in the Admin Group. You must first request to join that group and have your admin credentials vetted before you are admitted. 

The Admin Group is only for site admins, who are more likely to have experienced what you are asking about.

[KKing]

Hi Kevin, 

I requested access, I was denied. So are back to square one. Is there anyone else you can ask or get information for how to do this? We have 2 deceased employees in this situation right now.

[KevinD]

@KKing you are now a member of the Admin Group. I checked you profile and see you do have site admin permissions. 

I see you have several different AMEX payment types in your site. I'd like to check something, so could you private message me the last names of the two employees, please? 

[Nancyagfa]

Being an admin, and depending on the amount of personal charges, the company may want to make the payment to Amex.  This may have to be done by sending payment directly to Amex for the card acct.  You would need a statement from the card admin.

[KKing]

There isn't the ability to send manual payments or directly to AMEX unless it was a AMEX submitted business charge... hence my question. We don't have the ability to create and make manual payments... and we never used to have this problem with our previous system so we are kind of stuck now with how to fix these kinds of issues.  I am the card admin, so I can get statements. 

[DeanR]

Hi @KKing

This is an unusual situation that I thankfully have never had to deal with as an admin.

How are payments for employee personal expenses usually handled?  Does the employee make payments direct to AMEX?  If so, can't you replicate that payment process through your accounts payable system?  Or you could just leave AMEX to chase the employee's estate for the money - I'm not a lawyer but would imagine that's where the liability now sits.

[KKing]

Hi @DeanR ,

Yes. It doesn't not happen that often, but often enough that we need a solution. 

Personal expenses are usually the responsibility of the employee to pay to AMEX. Not really. We have tried issuing paper checks from AP to AMEX once.. and it was a disaster. It took multiple teams, multiple weeks to figure out how to get the check payment approved, sent to AMEX, found at AMEX, posted to the accounts.. headache.  Our old system, we used to be able to reverse the reports and get them paid, but we cannot do that option any longer. It makes a lot of things so much harder these days. But usually yes, now we just let the balance go to collections for their personal charges they "chose" to not pay. But when the employee is passed away, it gets a little more complex.. in that you don't really want the widow to deal with that while grieving their spouse. 

I'm just trying to figure out what other companies do, because I cannot imagine we are the only company that has run into these types of situations, but I keep coming up to a dead end with no solution. It stinks. 

[DeanR]

@KKing 

I presume from your description that you use Expense Pay, so all payments to AMEX are generated through Concur?  That would make it trickier, as otherwise you would make the changes in your financial system from personal charges to corporate card charges and process the payments from there.

I would reach out to your company's AMEX contact and explain the situation.  Surely they must have a way for you to pay off the card balance on behalf of the cardholder via some method that doesn't involve the paper check rigmarole.  Do your employees have to pay AMEX via paper check for their personal expenses on corporate cards?

I've been using Concur for 7+ years and there has never been functionality to amend approved and processed expense reports, nor have I seen any indication that it's on their radar.  I wouldn't be expecting a change there anytime soon - @KevinD can correct me if I'm wrong there.

Other companies may have their card program set up as Company Billed Company Paid (CBCP), in which case the company pays the card provider for all card expenses (both personal and business) and then the employee pays back the company for personal expenses.  The 'debt' for a deceased employee with unpaid personal expenses would be owed to the company and probably written off as a compassionate measure.