Terminated employees final expense reports

[StaceyS]

How do you handle final expense reports for employees that are immediately terminated, but still have expenses to submit?

[jsportsman]

First, HR sends me anyone with volunteer terminations. I send a message at that time to submit before termination and copy in their manager. Also, follow-up the day before.   

We have a checklist that is verified when they leave. If they don't submit, my Expense Auditor processes the expense and manager must approve. We don't accept anyone sending expenses for reimbursement once they have officially been terminated. 

[adamr]

For terminated employees with outstanding transactions, our company card admins will transfer the expenses to their manager or another user within the department who can reconcile on their behalf. Our departments will let the admins know who to transfer outstanding charges to when completing the form to close/cancel their company card.

[kristyhourd]

Would you mind explaining how you transfer oustanding expenses to a manager? Are you able to actually move company card expenses to another Concur profile?

[SandraA]

In Company Card administrator you could assign the corporate card to the manager.   You'd have to make sure the transactions are not assigned to  a report.

For us that would cause too much confusion in terms of ownership of the expense.   Especially If the charges were questionable the manager would not want those under their name.

[SandraA]

We contact the manager and ask them to identify an employee to set up as a delegate.

It is often difficult to get them to take action.  Sometimes we end up reconciling them ourselves.

[AmberLee]

Any out of pocket expenses are deleted unless specifically requested by HR to pay them

Card expenses must be processed so we put "termed employee/final expense report" in the business purpose.

If the receipt is missing we login as them to use the MRA.

[RichardG]

Hi Stacey,
Our procedure is exactly as per @SandraA.

Kind regards

[walshgroup18]

We contact the manager to find out where to code the outstanding credit card charges and then we code and submit them.

We only submit the out of pocket expenses if within 30 days of purchase.

[DavidW]

Our expense processors contact the term'd employee's supervisor and they work together to process the outstanding expenses. Sometimes I'm involved (concur admin) , if the employee is already terminated in the Concur system in order to reactivate the account, delegates, etc.

We have also implemented a process where as part of the exit process the employee must submit their final expense report (prior to termination). If they don't, their exit will be incomplete and will delay their final paycheck. That has addressed the issue 99.9% of the time.

Who doesn't want their last paycheck ASAP?

[Entrepreneur64]

doesnt witholding their check kind of get you in hot water legally?

[AmberLee]

Yes and no. Some companies include a section in their policy saying the employee agrees to the company withholding any personal/unapproved amount from their paycheck. This technically covers them legally but I e only ever seen it actually done one time and that was a case of employee theft/fraud over $10k that was already being dealt with in court.

[Nancyagfa]

Upon termination meeting with mgr or HR, they are given a paper final expense report to submit with receipts and we create the final report for the mgr to approve and then pay out.  Employyes have also scanned them over and we attach the entire scan to the report.

[MGordon]

We received a daily file from HR of all terminated employees.  We review these to determine if they have a corporate card, any balance and any outstanding transactions in Concur.  If there are outstanding transactions, we work with the manager to determine if these are business or personal and help to complete the final expense report for the employee.  This is then routed to the manager for approval.  For any personal amount due, we work with payroll to deduct from their final paycheck.

[PamSciarra]

We have the same process as Sandra A (identify someone to act as delegate on behalf of the employee.)  We will then change the email on the account (not the log-in) to be the delegate's email so any follow up messages (especially automated ones) are sent to the delegate.

Because corporate card charges can come in after an employee has left the company, we don't deactivate their account until everything has been resolved.

Also, because we are a California employer, we can't hold up the final paycheck just to address outstanding expenses.

[AmberLee]

The delegate option works for most cases when the employee resigns or has time to add receipts. An employee who's been fired is walked out with barely a chance to pack their things, much less finish their expense reports. The reason I mentioned logging in as the termed employee was because that's the only way to use the missing receipt affidavit. 

Since we require receipts, and even a termed employee's use of the MRA has to be documented, that's the only way to attach one. If you don't require receipts to submit or you don't mind not documenting missing receipts you could add a blank piece of paper or upload a hard copy of the MRA and kick it old school. 

Now, if we want to get on to solving this problem, since signing-in as someone else is a huge no-no (that's the legal term), what we need is a 'termed' status with a unique missing receipt affidavit a delegate can use legally. It can be set to automatically change to inactive after 30 days to limit the amount of account management needed. It doesn't even have to be a new field, it can be as simple as setting the term date in the future so any day before that the delegate can use it.

OR if you want to get real crazy and make things a lot easier, let's just create that unique missing receipt affidavit designed with the delegate in mind. That way all the Executive Assistants doing expense reports for their executives who refuse to sign in will have the option as well. 

The reason it's not an option now (I've been told) is because the MRA is a legal document the employee is signing every time they use it. The delegate version would be the same thing but with the added line saying, "I have been granted authority to use this affidavit."

[patilr1982]

I think you have enough responses from a process point of view. So I will not talk about that.

Most of my clients have integration with SAP i.e. Master data comes from SAP to Concur and expenses posted to SAP

So in addition to establishing a process to actually do the expense report, two things are done.

1. Employee profile in Concur is kept active (without the approver role). The period varies from 60 to 90 days based on the company. This allows for claim creation as a delegate. A delegate also means that you have a history in the Audit trail. Delegates obviously are set up to receive emails.

2. Employee vendor in SAP is kept open to allow posting of any expense reports created/approved after the last day.

[StaceyS]

Thank you to everyone who responded!  It is really helpful to see and know what other companies are doing.   We currently use a delegate at the location as our process.  Many comments confirmed others do the same thing. 

Have a wonderful week-

Stacey

[KathyT]

We also setup a delegate.  Since this is a repetitive task throughout a day we wanted to automate the delegate setup with the 550 record every night.  Unfortunately, a delegate can't be assigned to a termed employee with a 550 record.  We've submitted an enhancement request and solution sugggestion.  Anyone else ran into this?  

[AmberLee]

Is there a way to set it up where it can't deactivate a profile with unsubmitted expenses/reports and then send an alert to the team so they know action is required?

[lperez-lopez]

Hi Stacy,

We submit the expense report on behalf of the associate.

1. If we receive prior notice of a termination, then we ask the associate to send us the final receipts in an email. We then create the report and attach the receipts provided. If any receipts are missing for credit card transactions then we use the statement as documentation.

2. If we did not receive prior notification, we only process the credit card transactions for reimbursement and attach the statement as documenation.

Let me know if there are any questions. I am curious how other businesses are handling.

Lisa