Online Travel Phase II: Corporate Card Initiative Update - 11/25/2013

November 25, 2013

As a follow up to our recent Online Travel Phase II:  Corporate Card implementation on October 21, 2013, we would like to share several updates on the overall process.  We know that you and your teams have been introduced to significant technology changes during the last 18 months and as a result have been implementing numerous business process changes.  We would like to extend a special thanks to each of you for your support and patience as we implement the corporate card transition for all University and Health System representatives concurrently.  Your feedback has been helpful and we are continuing to partner with our colleagues in Administrative Systems Management to resolve any issues and assess opportunities for efficiencies with the tool.

Email Reminder Notifications
In light of the email volumes related to all of the concurrent technology initiatives, we have discontinued the process of sending email reminders at any point in the process.  As a result, approvers at any point during the workflow will receive only the initial approval email notification.  We will reassess this option within the next few months; however, it will be very important that departmental TRaC representatives review the transactions to ensure they are processed in a timely manner.  We will continue to evaluate options for streamlining the email notification process to optimize efficiencies.

Default Cost Center for Online Expense Reports
We are happy to announce that you can now designate a separate default cost center for the corporate card.  Currently, the default cost center is the same as the one associated with the employee’s position.  If this default cost center should be different, your Departmental Payroll Representative can now process changes using the Personal Data Change iForm.

Online Travel and Corporate Card Reporting Tools
We are experiencing some performance issues related to the reports.  Our colleagues on the technical teams are assessing options to resolve these issues.  We will distribute a follow up communication when the issues are resolved and the Corporate Card reports are available for use.

Upcoming Refresher Sessions
The Employee Travel and Reimbursement team will be partnering with colleagues from our Financial Training team to host overview and refresher sessions related to the new processes.  Now that departmental representatives have had the opportunities to use the tool and assess business process changes within their own areas, we would like to reconvene groups to provide updates included below.  Please register for one of the sessions: 

  1. Share an overview of how to use the tool
  2. Share Best Practices developed among Departments
  3. Provide a Question and Answer period based upon questions submitted prior to the session

Helpful Hints

  • As a reminder, please remember to bundle transactions as appropriate before submitting expense reports for review.  If your volumes of corporate card transactions are high, then we recommend creating a weekly expense report.  If you have low volumes of transactions, you can create an expense report on a biweekly or monthly basis.  If you choose to create an expense report on a monthly basis, please allow adequate time for the approval process to ensure the expense reports are approved and posted prior to the fiscal month end. 

  • The North Carolina Sales tax will default automatically to a funding source of 100-1000 with a corresponding 146100 G/L account.  Although the tool appears to charge to the departmental cost center, this will not be charged.  This is a display issue and will be reassessed as we continue to evaluate the tool.

  • The weekly email notification will be distributed each Monday to reflect all corporate card transactions posted through the prior week.  Only those which have not been incorporated into an expense report will be displayed.  If adjustments need to be made to the recipient list, initiators should coordinate changes through their Department TRaC representative and Business Managers.

We appreciate your partnership and continued support.  Please feel free to contact the Employee Travel team at OnlineTravel@Duke.edu