Understanding Reports Approved But Receipts Not Viewed

[Efox]

Hi all,

Is anyone using the report  "Reports Approved But Receipts Not Viewed"  for credit cards claims? It is found under expense processing in the intellegence reporting 

Trying to understand the difference from Report Receipt Viewed and All Entry Receipts Viewed columns.

I believed the 'report receipt viewed' would mean a individual receipt to be viewed and the 'all entry receipts viewed' would mean the approver has reviewed all receipts and ticked the mark as reviewed box. However, our report has some claims as Yes for 'all entry receipts viewed' and No for 'report receipt viewed'      

Can anyone assist in understanding this report ?

Thank you

[Josh]

Hi @Efox,

So yes, this is a slightly confusing topic, and I recently researched this very thing. Here is the deal: there are two places users can attach receipts.

1) To the report itself, labelling it a Report Receipt
2) To a single expense item, labelling it an Entry Receipt

An entry receipt is probably the type you're most familiar with, and the one most commonly used. You enter in an expense, click the Attach Receipt button on that expense, upload receipt, bada boom - Entry Receipt. However, if a user uses the Attach Receipt Images option under the Receipts menu option, and does not select to upload to a specific expense, this will attach a receipt to the report, and not to an individual expense.

The options right above that one, 'View Receipts in (new/current) window,' are where an approver / reviewer would go to look at Report Receipts. Viewing those receipts will render one long PDF of all receipts on a report, Report Receipts and Entry Receipts.

If a user has a receipt uploaded to the report, and the approver / reviewer doesn't use one of those menu options to view them, it would mark those receipts as Not Reviewed. As far as I know, those menu options are the only way to view Report Receipts. Also, I can confirm that a report would be flagged as No for 'Report Receipt Viewed' if there simply were no Report Receipts attached.

For my company's purposes, we do not utilize Report Receipts, as they are kind of buried, and not easily accessible for our approvers, so we essentially ignore this column.

I also spoke to Concur about this as it relates to multiple approvers, and they confirmed that in a situation where a report passes through multiple tiers of approval (e.g. if the Approve & Forward button is used, or if the first approver's approval limit is too low), the receipts only need to be reviewed once in order to be flagged as Yes on this report. So if you have someone who's pre-approving reports, checking all the receipts that they match up and look good, and then they forward the report to an executive for final approval, they don't need to review all the receipts in order for them to be flagged as reviewed. As long as at least one approver reviews them all, you're good.

Hope this was helpful; let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

[TRedman]

Reporting: Reports Approved Receipts Not Viewed

Take a look at this fact sheet, it explains the logic behind this report.  

[Josh]

Hi @TRedman,

Thanks for the document, but I'm confused about a few points:

1. My company requires receipts at the Expense Entry level, and does not utilize nor informs our users about Report Receipts. On several reports I examined, there were no Report Receipts attached, and only Entry Receipts, which were all reviewed. On this report, they all registered as No in the Report Receipt Viewed, but Yes on the All Entry Receipts Viewed.

Since this document asserts that a report will only fail that test if Report Receipts are required, does that mean that all reports are required to have Report Receipts? I can't see any option in Compliance Controls > Receipt Handling Options to disable requiring Report Receipts. Is there a way to disable that, if that is the case?

2. I opened a case with Concur support and in great detail asked him about the multiple approvers topic (#4 in the FAQs of this document), and his response on March 26th 2018 was, and I'm quoting here,

"Once the receipt has been reviewed for the first time, it will now be marked as Reviewed and no need to review for the 2nd approver once it has been reviewed for the first time."

Was he just mistaken? Is it possible we have a customization active to make this true?

This document says it was last updated 10/2016 - is that the most current version?

Thanks again!

[TRedman]

Hello Josh, I would like to learn more.  Could you please follow up with me directly @ tiffany.redman@sap.com.  I would like to research the specifics you identified within the report.  Also, I would like to review the case you referenced.  Thank you

[TRedman]

Josh and I took his question offline, but I am posting my findings here in the event anyone else has a similar issue.  

There are two places within your configuration where receipt requirements are set.  One is Receipt Handling Rules which triggers audit rules and the other is the Receipt Status Requirement on the Header/Entry forms themselves.  In Josh's case, there was a mismatch in the requirements which was causing false positives in his report output.  

If anyone else has this issue, I would suggest logging a support case and having someone look into your settings to ensure both areas are aligned.  If you have an exception, such as a country specific or regulartory requirement for a mismatch, then your alternative option would be to customize the standard report to accomodate these exceptions.  

Hope this helps!

[Josh]

Thanks again, Tiffany!

Also, for anyone curious, on the multiple approver topic, Tiffany expalined it to me this way.

If a report has multiple approvers, it will essentially be checked multiple times, and for each approver that does not review all receipts, it will show up on this report multiple times. So if Bob and Jane are approvers for Sam's report, and Bob reviewed all the receipts and Jane did not, the report would show up on this report, listing Jane as the approver, but the report under Bob's name will not be present.

It would be great if there was a report that had this info, but listed *all* reports in a given period, and not just reports that register as No for one of the categories. So reports that have multiple approvers would show up multiple times, listing Yes or No for each instance. That would ensure that such reports would be fully represented. In the example I listed above, since the report name and ID did not show up under Bob's group, there's no way to know that the report even had multiple approvers, unless that detail is alread known by the person reviewing this report.

Either way, thanks again for your help on this!

[SandraA]

HI Evan -

For us the important aspect missing is that it only tells you what was NOT viewed.  It does not tell you how many were viewed.   No context.  For us that makes this report useless.   

Someone could have viewed 850 receipts and not viewed 20.  Which is stellar.   Or they could have not viewed 20 and viewed 4 which is bad.   We customized the reports so it reports both viewed and not viewed.   

[Josh]

Hi @SandraA,

If you don't mind sharing, how did you customize the report? Did you build a custom report, or did Concur modify this report for you? If you did build a custom report, which fields did you use? Just curious; thanks!

[SandraA]

In order to change how this report works I made changes to the Concur version and saved it as our own report.

The main change I made was to remove the filters in Query 4 that say - Report Receipt Viewed = 'N' and All Entry Receipts Reviewed ='N'.

It has been a long time since I did this so there may be other changes needed.

[Josh]

Hey @SandraA, this may be a dumb question, but how did you make changes to the report? Is this a function easily done in Professional / Intelligence? We have the Standard / Analysis platform and I'm unable to see a way to change a standard report. I can copy it and create a Report View version of it, but I can't adjust any filters, fields, or anything else.

[SandraA]

Hi Josh ,

Yes this is an example of what you can do in Intelligence and not in analysis.  I wouldn't say it was easy - because the report design gets pretty complex and it's especially hard to reverse enginer the Concur created reports.   We do have full access to either change the report design or create our own reports.

It seems like it would be possible to create this report in analysis.