Looking for a way to process credit card payments without using Expense Pay

[vipardi]

We just turned on a new feed but our bank is not listed as one of the options to pay using Expense Pay.  In cases like this, how do companies handle the issue?  Are there other options?  We discussed internally to create an sftp process to send a payment file from Concur, but before doing that, we'd like to explore best practices other clients use.  We have a meeting tomorrow to discuss this issue, and it would be helpful to have a bit more information.

Thanks for your help!

[leela2516 · Accepted solution]

@vipardi - We do not use Expense Pay. So, in our case, we have an AP/GL Extract that extracts all the expense data from Concur and we load it into our local ERP for payment processing. With that said, I would expect you could do something similar with a payment file. As you mentioned above, this would be an option that is similar to what we do for our processing but yours would be a payment file where our file is all the expenses, and they get posted accordingly in the local ERP. Good luck!

[leela2516 · Accepted solution]

@vipardi - We do not use Expense Pay. So, in our case, we have an AP/GL Extract that extracts all the expense data from Concur and we load it into our local ERP for payment processing. With that said, I would expect you could do something similar with a payment file. As you mentioned above, this would be an option that is similar to what we do for our processing but yours would be a payment file where our file is all the expenses, and they get posted accordingly in the local ERP. Good luck!

[vipardi]

Thanks for your feedback @leela2516 .  This approach makes sense.  

[rohanpatil · Accepted solution]

@vipardi I am missing the liability for your cards. I can only assume that you have IBCP since IBIP would mean paying employees and CBCP cannot be posted claim by claim. For IBCP, my experience with multiple companies is in line with what @leela2516 mentioned. Expense reports are transferred to accounting system and then payments are executed from there. All the best.

[vipardi]

We do reimburse employees for the cash portion of their expense reports through Concur, so that piece is working well -- both the liability portion and the payments.  For the credit cards, it makes sense to transfer the file to the ERP system for payment via AP.  Thanks so much for your feedback!

[vipardi]

Thank you so much, this is very helpful.  

[Dave1984]

We use IBCP in the U.S. and CBCP cards elsewhere.  We do not use Expense Pay.  We get a standard accounting extract (SAE) file from Concur every day. 

For IBCP, we use the data in the SAE to generate payments due to the credit card company / bank in our several business systems (ERPs.)  The normal processing of AP in each system then generates payments to the credit card company.  We also use the SAE data to create payments due to employees for out of pocket items, and again, normal AP processing will pay the employees.  If employees are slow to file their expenses and late fees are assessed, they are the employee's responsibility to pay.  If they can show a reason why they are not at fault, the company may pay the late fees for them.

Our CBCP locations typically use a different process, paying the credit card bill in full when it arrives and generating a balance in a central account.  Then, the data in the SAE file is used to generate "internal transactions" that move expenses from the central account to the individual departments or cost centers for each employee's credit card charges.  There is quite a bit of reconciliation every month to make sure expense reports were filed in Concur to offset the credit card bill already paid.

This is pretty brief, but I hope it is helpful.