Internet Expenses - Key to speedy...
Transcript of Internet Expenses - Key to speedy...
2
Agenda
• Business Objectives
• UnOptimized Process Characteristics
• Objectives Focus
• Requirements for speedy processing
• Internet Expenses Overview
• Objectives Focus
• As is process
• To Be process
• Challenges
• Best Practices
• Process comparison
• Questions
3
Business Objectives
• Establish centralized Travel & Expense Management Function
• Reduce expense processing time and transaction costs
• Establish and Enforce Company wide policies
• Eliminate manual process and increase productivity
• Automate and Simplify Expense Report submission, approval and tracking
• Enhance reporting
• Enable alerts and notifications
4
Unoptimized process characteristics
• Delayed processing and approval
• Policies not enforced
• No visibility of Expense Reports status
• No tracking of Expense Reports
• Extensively manual process – ER generation, Matching, Accounting
• Error prone - Difficult to reconcile
• Corporate Pay – not a suitable policy for such a system
5
Requirements for speedy processing
• User Friendly system that encourages employees to report on time.
• ER Templates, Copy feature, re-usability – productivity enabling features
• Credit Card integration to ease Expense Report filling and submission
• Support for Rules and Policies – approval becomes easy
• Online checks for violations at data entry – reduces rework, shortens cycle time
• Simplified and workflow driven approval mechanism
• Notifications to concerned employees and approvers
• Automatic updates on employee information
• Online ER tracking and status availability
• Payables integration
• Integration with payroll
Internet Expenses Overview
7
Internet Expenses Features
• Paperless expense reporting with workflow based approval process – Key to speedy processing
• Automatically enforced business policies - support staff can focus on more value added activities
• Enforce itemization for certain expense types using Itemization Rules
• Reminder and Policy Violation Notifications
• Authorized delegation – Entry as well as Approval
• Context sensitive configurable fields for capturing additional information
• Integration – Oracle Payables, Projects, Time & Labor, Grants Accounting
• Highly secure transaction environment – SSL, access limits, encryption
• AME Enhancements
• Contingent worker expense reports
• Approver can request information w/o rejection
• Future dated expense business rules
• Cash usage (versus credit card) policies
• Personal Lines only expense reports
• Automatically itemize hotel charges
• DBI includes T&E top spenders
8
Inter-modular integration
• Integrating with Oracle Projects
Add project-related information
• Expenditure Type - derived from the Expense Type
• Projects Expenditure Organization - derived from the employee’s organization assignment
• Expenditure Date from receipt date.
• Quantity from receipt amount.
• Oracle Approvals Management (AME)
• Build routing and approval rules
• Establish rules based on header or lines information.
• Automatically route expense approvals to cost center owners, cost center business managers etc.
• Control the escalation of expense reports for policy violations.
• Oracle Grants Accounting
• Grants management solution for organizations that rely on grants funding
• Introduces an Award field in Internet Expenses.
Meet Key Objectives
10
Objectives Focus
• Lower Your Expense Processing Costs• Business pressures on Margin Improvement
• Process all expenses fast, at lower costs by using automation
• Improve Control • Avoid illegitimate expenses payments
• Enforce common travel policy to reduce T&E spend
• Enhance Employee Productivity & Satisfaction• Bring in a process that is quick, easy, and hassle-free
• Improve employee productivity
• Encourage reporting
11
• Lower Your Expense Processing Costs
• Improve Control
• Enhance Employee Productivity & Satisfaction
Internet Expense Objectives
12
Lower Cost
• Dramatically reduce the amount of time and effort required to submit,
approve, process, and pay expense reports.
• Employees can enter and submit expense reports quickly and easily from
anywhere in the world just using a Browser.
• Workflow automatically routes expense reports for approval.
• Frees accounts payable staff from data entry and moves them into an auditing
role where they can monitor compliance with policy.
• Eliminate rework and correction of errors
• Exceptions and adjustments are processed automatically.
13
• Lower Your Expense Processing Costs
• Improve Control
• Enhance Employee Productivity & Satisfaction
Internet Expense Objectives
14
• Rules to Define Corporate Policies
• Meal allowances
• Hotel allowances
• Per Diem Rules
• Mileage Reimbursement Calculation Rules
• Exchange Rate Verification
• Maximum “Cash” Expense rule
• Enforce Compliance
• Timeliness
Policy Setup – Business Owner
15
iExpense – Credit Card usage policy
16
iExpense – Configure Expense Fields
17
Policy Violations Management
18
Policy Violations Management
19
Enforce Transaction Submission
20
Audit Features
• Oracle Workflow routes expense reports for approval and enforces company policy, and any deviations from policy are highlighted for manager review.
• Expenses and violations reports provide top management a multi-dimensional view of employee expenses.
• Decision makers use information in forming new policies or evaluating employees.
• Dimensions: management hierarchy, expense category, time period, violation types.
• Drill down to the details of expense receipts and expense policy violations.
• Paperless audit process flow.
• Automatic selection of expense reports for both audit flows, so the auditors do not review 100% of all expense reports.
• Process owner can setup rules that control what type of expense reports are selected for audit.
• Audit rules enable automatically routing selected expense reports either to the traditional receipt-based audit process or to an online audit queue.
• System then balances the work queue between the auditors based on setup definition.
21
• Lower Your Expense Processing Costs
• Improve Control
• Enhance Employee Productivity & Satisfaction
Internet Expense Objectives
22
Productivity improving features
• Easy to use process means faster entry of Expense Reports
• Online policy violation checks reduce rework & iterations
• Faster processing means faster payments
• Create, edit, and submit expense reports using a wireless Web-enabled mobile device
• Managers can even approve or reject expense reports from their mobile devices.
• Automatically pre-populate expense reports with transactions from your corporate credit card -
increase efficiency, reduce errors
• System-provided and user-defined default values speed up the completion of the expense report.
• Copy saved or submitted expense reports to expedite the entry process for repeating expenses
• Withdraw expense reports from the approvals process if they need to make corrections.
• Default expense preferences data from prior expense reports.
• Enter expenses offline using Excel Template and upload later.
• Excel Template includes all validations for lookups like expense type, currency codes etc
23
iExpense Home – One screen view
24
Add CC transactions
25
Review & Submit Expense Report
Implementation Overview
27
As is Process
Employee downloads
Expenses Report
template from Quick
Expenses system
Employee fills the form
submits for
Supervisor's approval
with original Receipts
Supervisor approves
the Expenses Report
Sends the approved
report to AP
AP Manager
approves
Expenses Report
in legacy system
Enter Expenses
Report into
Legacy system
Import approved Expenses
Reports as Standard Invoices in
Oracle Accounts Payable
Validate the
Invoices
Approve
Invoices
Travel Accountant
verifies the approved
expenses report with
Company Travel Policy
Yes
Is
Expense Report
in order ?
Travel Accountant
clarifies the issues
with the Employee
No
Employee/Travel
Accountant makes
necessary changes
to the Expenses
Report
Payment to /
Refund from
Employee
Apply
prepayment if
any
End
28
To Be Process
Credit CardTransactions
Employee enters
expense report forOPE and Credit
Card Transactions
System findsapprover
Approververifies report.
and takes
action
Approved
Rejected/
More Info
AP executesExpense Report
Import
AP Manager
appliesprepayment
Approved Travel
advance request inForm 801
AP Managerprocesses
prepayment in
Oracle AP
AP performsInvoice Validation
AP Manager runsPayment batch to
clear expense
reports
AP audits and
takes actionMore Info
required
AP runs CreditCard Invoice
Interface program
Expense Report
Invoice is Created
T&E, travelpremium,
excess perdiem data
extract
Outbound
Interface
Approved/
Adjusted
Employee makesan expense
Approver
has signinglimit?
Yes
No
29
Implementation Challenges
• Employee data had to be cleaned and synchronized with PeopleSoft master as part of this
implementation.
• Controls – it is all in the setup
• Signing limit updates – in case of shared HRMS
• Supervisor Changes – modifying supervisor assignment for an employee whose DoJ is earlier than that
of new supervisor
• Reimbursement through PeopleSoft Payroll required Interface to be developed
• Custom solution to split the allowance amounts into taxable and non-taxable buckets based on
location.
• Cancellation of invoices having AMEX corporate pay credit card transactions wouldn’t release those
credit card transactions to be used in new expense reports.
• Custom reports were developed to identify such transactions and help reconciliation process.
• For security reasons Employee number display on various Internet Expenses screen had to be removed
• Approval hierarchy modifications
• Attachments
30
Best Practices
• Custom solution developed to reconcile cc charges, travel advances and employee
payment
• Accurate and updated employee information maintained
• Reusable code components were deployed for loading employee data into Oracle HR.
• Mapping model developed for mapping between AMEX transactions folio type and MIC
codes
• Execution of payments accelerated as well to complete the cycle quickly
• Extensive QA – Dedicated teams for QA only
• Multiple CRPs
• Intense UAT
• Use Individual Pay Policy
31
Process Comparison
Employees can track and find up to date status
online
AP bogged down with calls requesting status of
expense reports
Individual Pay program brings in efficiency and
timely reporting allowing greater control
Corporate Pay program increases Corporate
responsibility and diminished control over the
entire process.
Totally automated approval process supporting
vacation handling and delegation
Approval process manual and paper based
Policies defined at the system level get enforced
automatically reducing substantial manual
effort and errors.
Manual and error prone process to check for policy
violations poses financial burden in terms of
administrative costs and unauthorized
reimbursements.
Automated policy verification, approval and
payment turnaround time reduces to 3 days.
Turnaround time for a typical expense report t
around 15 days
User friendly web based system available to every
employee, accessible from anywhere
Paper based system involving lot of manual
efforts, errors and delays.
Post ImplementationPre Implementation
Questions
33
THANK YOU
Chetan Manjarekar
Patni Computer Systems, Inc.
One Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02142617 - 914 - 8000