Hiding travel agency fees

[sethwood]

Hi everyone/team,

We are switching travel agencies and they will be assessing point of sale/travel agency fees on our centrally billed credit card (similar to airfare). Because of this, the fees are showing within Concur and ending up in people's profiles for expensing.

However, we'd like to hide these fees because we handle reconciliation on this central account behind the scenes.  Employees also tend to book outside the agency and Concur if they see service fees, so I'd like to hide the fees from being shown.

The agency is using the standard travel agent service fee (ARC) code of XD/890.

Can you tell me how we can have these charges automatically hidden before they make it into the employee's profiles?  We do still need the air tickets to flow in their available expense, however.

I see that there is a way to determine ARC/service fees under "Settings" in the company card administration, but I'm not actually sure how that works or what it does.

I believe some companies set foreign exchange fees to hide automatically, so I am hopeful that there's a way for travel agency service fees.

Thanks for any help!

Best,

Seth

[KevinD]

@sethwood I did a little looking and found a case the same as yours. The Support Engineer from SAP Concur confirmed that Agency fees cannot be hidden automatically. I know you mentioned foreign transaction fees being hidden. The difference is, a foreign transaction fee is a bank initiated charge. Bank or card issuer initiated fees can be configured to hide automatically.

What is the expense type that your company uses for the travel agency fees? I was told that you could use Merchant Code Mapping and an audit rule to prevent users from submitting the expenses to be reimbursed.

[sethwood]

Hi @KevinD ,

We don't currently have an expense type for travel agency fees (our current agency invoices us), but our new agency will charge fees at the point of sale to our BTA--which is imported into employees' available expenses.  Because the fees are being hidden on the travel agency's receipts, it will be even more confusing and problematic  for them.

We also don't allow people to delete credit card charges, so they will be stuck in limbo forever and send reminders to employees and their managers until they are cleared (somehow).

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

[KevinD]

@sethwood Is your worry that employees will be submitting these fees and possibly getting reimbursed for them?

If so, maybe the screenshots below (taken from my actual expense report) might assuage your worry. We have a Company Paid AMEX card that all airfare and agency fees go onto. When I add this to my expense report, the Payment Type is defaulted to Company Paid, ensuring I don't receive the funds. You can also configure your site to have Airfare and Agency Fees default to Company Paid as the payment type. This way, I can get them out of my Available Expenses, without being reimbursed for these charges.

As you can see in the next screenshot, I have a total report amount, but of that total, $994.05 is being paid to me and the remainder is due to the Company Paid AMEX. I still submit the Company Paid expenses.

 Many of our customers have the same situation as you described (even us here at SAP) and it works just fine.

Maybe I am misunderstanding something in your description, but from you last post, it sounds like you will be using Concur Travel exactly how we are with a BTA/Company Paid card. It is just a little bit of education to your users of what to do when they see something showing as Company Paid. I believe you could even create an audit rule that wouldn't allow users to change the Payment Type for these items.

[sethwood]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you so much for your thorough research on this.

Our main concern was that the POS fee from the agency would act as a deterrent for travelers for booking on Concur or with the agency.  There's a certain attitude of "I can do it better/cheaper" that lends to people booking externally--particularly if they see an extra fee on top of their transactions.  Therefore, hiding them makes the service appear "free" and encourages booking within preferred channels.

We decided to put the POS fees on a separate credit card that wasn't a "lodge card," so now those should no longer flow into individual travelers' profiles. 

Thank you very much for all of your assistance!