Do we have to create separate expense reports for company card expenses and reimbursable charges?

[bchoate]

I have tried to find this topic but haven't seen it... 

We currently have to create a separate expense report for charges that are on a company card, and another report for any charges that are valid business expenses that are reimbursable to the employee.  

I believe that this should not be the case, but I wasn't here when our system was set up, so I would like to confirm that you can create one expense report for all expenses on a trip, and the company card charges get paid through our normal process, and if there are any employee paid expenses on this trip and report, that the employee gets reimbursed normally also, all on one expense report... this is how it should work, right?

[AliciaHansen]

Currently, my company has an audit rule that all personal reimbursements be submitted separately. 

We implemented this rule because it makes it easier for accounts payable to calculate accruals. Plus, sometimes the employees were not receiving their reimbursements because it was lost within the credit card reports. This also speeds up the reimbursement process because credit cards are only processed/reconciled monthly, where reimbursements are handled weekly. 

[bchoate]

Thanks for your feedback, and the reasons you mentioned make sense to consider.  Appreciate the input. 

[KevinD]

@bchoate keeping company card transactions and out of pocket/cash expenses separate is a decision made by each company. Most of our customers allow for mixing company card and out of pocket expenses on the same report as they find it more efficient. However, other companies have their business reasons for keeping them separate. Sounds like your company is one of these. 🙂

[bchoate]

Thanks for the confirmation Kevin.  Our company was set up to keep this separate, but we currently want to change back to being able to have reimbursable expenses on a report with company card charges and reduce the number of overall expense reports.  

Do you know where this setting / audit flag might be where I can toggle it the other way?

[rohanpatil]

Hi @bchoate ,

As @KevinD said in his response, this is not a Concur product requirement by one set by the company.

In the past, I implemented such limitations to apply in three scenarios

1. Company has CBCP cards and I want employees to create expense reports that match monthly statement. This is to ensure that I can reconcile against the monthly invoices that I post to pay the card provider.
2. Employees are not submitting card transactions in a timely manner and I wish to force them to submit all overdue card transactions prior to allowing them to claim any cash reimbursements (along with more recent card transactions.
3. The integration into ERP needs the expense reports to be separate. This could be because the expense reports are posted to different ERP systems (less likely) or because there are technical challenges in posting combined expense reports.

The limitation will be implemented using Audit rules. Thus, if you no longer wish to limit employees, you simple deactivate the corresponding Audit rules.

Hope this helps.

[bchoate]

@rohanpatil thank you so much for your reply, very helpful.  

I searched the audit rules yesterday, but the only rules pertaining to payment type were:

Payment Method Check

Payment Type Check

Travel Payment Check 

And we don't have any audit rules turned on or activated for any of those actions... 

[rohanpatil]

Hi @bchoate ,

I assume that you checked the audit rules in the configuration report. Many times the names do not do justice to the conditions included. If not, I would search for the term 'payment type' in the column Comparison Field of the configuration report-audit rules section.

Another possibility is that there is a validation audit rule in place. This will be a bit more tricky to check.

Other unlikely possibility is that you have it in the workflow conditions somehow.

If you can share a screenshot of the error (when you mix the items) it will help provide more insights.

[bchoate]

Thanks again Rohan.  We don't actually see any errors when submitting a report, that's the problem with tracking this down... 

Something errors out after the report is released and submitted for payment... 

[KevinD]

@bchoate according to what I see in your site, you should be able to create one report that contains both company card and out of pocket expenses.

Have you tried this and received a red alert stating this isn't allowed? Or when you say "We currently have to create a separate expense report for charges that are on a company card, and another report for any charges that are valid business expenses that are reimbursable to the employee" is it because that is what people are told?

I don't see anything blocking users from mixing these payment types on one report. In fact, I just went in and added an out of pocket expense to one of your expense reports to test and it wasn't flagged with a Red Alert.

[bchoate]

@KevinD so THAT is why this problem has been so hard to find... I've got the audit flags memorized and know it's not in there, lol.  

So, today, we 'can' create a report that lets us add a reimbursable expense to a report with several corporate card transactions, and submit the report, without seeing any errors... so the user doesn't know there is anything wrong... 

And our AP folks see the reports come through, set them up to be batch released, and they don't see any errors either... 

UNTIL the next day when our AP folks review the reports that had issues and didn't get processed correctly... that is when the AP person has to recall the report, and tell the user to break the expenses apart by payment type... 

What could be set up wrong for this to not process, after it's been released for payment?

[KevinD]

@bchoate I wouldn't be able to answer that question until I see an example of a report that didn't process correctly and what the error is the AP person sees. Do you happen to have an expense report that was recalled I can look at? The Audit Trail should show any errors that happened at the time of batch processing.