Hotel Itemization - do you or don't you?

[tvarner]

I’m receiving push back from upper management on the need for itemization. We have already been through the initial conversation with them on the needs, but we were told to find out what other companies do as management has heard from some of “our” customers that they don’t do hotel itemization. So, here are my questions to the community:

Do you do hotel itemization?

If yes, then do you do standard itemization or a modification of some sort?

If no, why not and how do you handle hotels in Concur?

We are thinking that the above response may also be based on if your company has a company card or not. So, my additional questions are:

Does your company have a company a company credit card?

If you do, how is it billed and how is it paid?

I appreciate each of you taking the time to share insight into how your company handles this aspect of expense reporting.

[Munari_alEXPert]

dear tvarner,

I have worked and implemented concur in 5 differnt companies, and yes, all the time the itemization of hotel, was a requirement. We did accept average cost per night or average cost for meal... no needed to itemized every night with the specific rate.

Just putting the total amount of hotel apart if your company doesn't have expense limit on cost Hotel night, it wouldn't give exact data of the expense behave of employees.

In some occasion, with e-receipts upload from hotels, the itemization would be even done authomatically without the employee entering details.

I would definetely include on the program a Company Credit card, as it feeds authomatically the transactions and apart avoiding expenses submitted multiple times, details will be fed on the system without the employee entering it (date, amount, vendor).

About the credit card program, depend how well behave will be your Company employees, the best for me was IBCS (Individually billed, Centrally settled) however it would give some liabilities to employees if they don't submit timely their expenses and late payment fees from Card provider. Otherwise, CBCS (centrally billed, centrally settled) which would assure that cards are always paid, but if you have some employees doing personal expenses (yes it happens more than you could immagine) and/or they don't submit their expenses, it would be getting difficult to chase and reconcile the account each month.

You have even Individually billed, Individually settled, which I don't find it convenient, as employee have tendency to use in this case their personal credit card which might give personal rebate into their account.

The main point, is to engage with the employees, making sure they understand SUPER CLEARLY the process, and have a clear policy in place, working with Head of Finance and or HR to coordinate in case credit card missused.

I hope this clear your doubts.

Kind regards

Alessandro 

[tvarner]

Alessandro,

Thank you for your response. We currently have a company card that is CBCS and CFO support. Our push back is from others asking if we really need to do itemization. I know that Concur doesn't spend time on an enhancement unless multiple clients are asking for a solution. I would love to move to the new UI as it would solve all of my problems but we are unable to as we also use CBS which is not ready. I believe the other company that is being refered to also uses expense it which my company will not invest in since we have the company card as well as ereceipts. The number complaining are few but extremely vocal. I am just trying to find what others are doing.

Again, thank you.

Tiffany

[Munari_alEXPert]

dear Tiffany,

I would guess there were not much employees travelling for the last while so not many needed to do itemization of hotels. Does your company have cost limit per night for hotel spending?

I got similar feedback from employees once they were not guided, but once you take the time to explain how they are done, showing that is not that difficult to do itemizations, and actually help to to strenghten analysis for potential savings, the employee should understand.

I do not have accesses to Concur at the moment, but if your CFO agrees, I think is possible to remove the itemization feature from Hotel (however you will have inconsistent data on this expense type). If not possible, it would be possible by changing slightly the name of the expense type (e.g. Hotel Lodging) and add an extra field with the "number of nights". During Cognos reporting you might can play with it.

Please know that in some countries, e.g. Germany, individual meals (including at the hotels) are not reimbursable directly to the employees, so the itemization from an hotel bill would be actually needed.  

Another option would be to discuss with the account manager who implemented Concur in your company, to reach out for a call, which they can also give you best approach based on your Company.