iExpenses Introduction

Product Introduction

Overview

Copyright © Oracle Corporation, 2004. All rights reserved.

Product Introduction document.docEffective Paradigm_effective Page 1 of 41 Rev Paradigm_revision


System References

iExpenses > Expenses

Oracle Payables > Setup > Invoice > Expense Report > Templates

Distribution

Job Title*

Ownership

The Job Title [[email protected]?Subject=EDUxxxxx] is responsible for ensuring that this document is necessary and that it reflects actual practice.






Objectives



Agenda



Overview

Overview

Oracle Internet Expenses helps employees to enter and submit expense reports using a computer or standard Web browser, Web-enabled mobile device, or Excel spreadsheet.

• Oracle Internet Expenses integrates with Oracle Payables to provide quick processing of expense reports for payment.

• Oracle Workflow automatically routes expense reports for approval and enforces reimbursement policies.



Overview

Overview (continued)

Advantages of Using Oracle Internet Expenses

OIE streamlines and automates expense management for a higher return on investment.

• It reduces administrative costs and data entry errors since data entry is streamlined and accessible anywhere online (mobile, desktop, browser) or offline (spreadsheet).

• It enforces spend policy to control expenses, showing any policy deviations.

• It eliminates expensive IT customizations through global accommodation for local statutory regulations and automates audit management, conserving staff for analytical work and providing better information to management.

• It increases productivity when employees can flexibly create expense reports using a standard Web browser, a connected Web-enabled mobile device, a disconnected spreadsheet, and/or downloaded credit card transactions.

• It improves cycle times by routing expense reports via workflow to managers for approval and to accounts payable department for reimbursement.

• It increases employee satisfaction when their status-related questions can be self-answered within the application.



Expense Reporting Process

Instructor Note

You create and submit an expense report using either expense reporting methods: using computer or web browser, mobile device, credit card, or Excel spreadsheet.

1. The Expenses Workflow notifies the approving authority for online review.

2. If the report is rejected, the Rejection process notifies you by email. You can access and update the rejected expense report from the Expenses Home page.

3. For AP approvals, the AP Approval process determines whether a report requires audit. It automatically approves if audit is not needed. The audit rules determine whether audit is required. If required receipts are missing or there are questions about policy compliance, auditors can request more information, shortpay, reject or adjust the expense report. For all cases, notifications are sent to the preparer.

4. After manager and/or accounts payable department approval, the Expense Report Import program converts the expense report into an invoice and Oracle Payables creates payment or prints the Invoice Import Exceptions Report for expense reports that cannot be imported and have to be resubmitted.

5. The employee is notified and receives payment by check or direct deposit, depending on the company policy or setup.



Expense Reporting Process (continued)

Expense Report Import Program

The Expense Report Import Program converts expense reports created in Oracle Internet Expenses into invoices in Oracle Payables for payment.

• During the Expenses workflow process, it only processes an expense report that has been approved by the authorized manager and the accounts payable department.

• It verifies that all information necessary for invoice creation is provided and is valid.

- Reports that fail import appear in the Invoice Import Exceptions Report in Oracle Payables.

- The accounts payable department modifies data in the Audit Expense Reports page and then re-imports the report.



Expense Management

Expense Management

Expenses Home

The Oracle Internet Expenses Home Page allows users immediate access to a variety of expense reporting information, workflow notifications, and their corporate credit card account information. Employees are alerted to changes and transactions that require their attention, and these items are highlighted and linked, so that they can be addressed in a timely and efficient manner. You can easily configure the application to include your own links in the Shortcuts section. You can also access expense reporting, credit card account information, preferences, and projects and tasks.

• The Update Expense Reports table displays saved expense reports pending submission.

• The Track Submitted Expense Reports table lists submitted expense reports outstanding or paid within the last 30 days.

Expense Reports You can create new expense report, import spreadsheet expenses, export, perform a save and advanced search in this window.

Instructor Note

Navigate through the different tabs of the homepage and describe the functions.



Expense Management (continued)

Expense Management (continued)

Credit Card Transactions

The Credit Cards Transaction History page allows employees to view Internet Expenses credit card transactions in a way that is similar to the card issuer statement. Employees can query the credit card transactions for a date range. The page lists the transactions, shows transaction detail information, and displays status, transactions in dispute, totals, and any classification to business or personal.

Expenses Preferences

Through this window, you can define default values for fields that are consistent from one expense report to the next, define certain data entry preferences, such as the time entry format to use, and authorize another user to enter expenses on their behalf and check which users they are authorized delegates for.

Dispute Credit Card Transactions

End users can mark questionable credit card transactions as disputed, while following up on the dispute with the card provider. The employee can enter and save notes on interactions with relevant parties concerning the dispute. If a credit is received, they can match the disputed item to the credit.



Expense Reporting Methods

Expense Reporting Methods

Online Using Standard Web Browser

You can access expense reports using your computer and a standard Web browser and the workflow process routes the expense reports for approval. You can import corporate credit card charges if your system administrator has implemented the feature.

Online Using Web-Enabled Mobile Devices

You can create, edit, and submit the same expense reports while online, using a wireless Web-enabled mobile device, such as a Web-enabled phone, a pager, or a PDA: Palm Pilot, Pocket PC, and other similar devices. Managers can approve or reject expense reports from their mobile devices.

The following demonstration shows how to create an expense report using a standard web browser.

Note that how the system administrator sets up the system determines the fields in the Expense Report page and related pages.

Refer to Guided Demonstration Create an Expense Report Using a Standard Web Browser [LAB2EA5Y]



Expense Reporting Methods: Credit Card

Expense Reporting Methods: Online Using Credit Card

You can include your corporate credit card transactions in your expense reports. You can automatically pre-populate expense reports with transactions from the employer’s credit card, increasing service levels by reducing the time required to complete expense reports and increasing information accuracy, reducing manual correction errors.

• You can establish whether the employer or employees pay for card charges, improving cash management and increasing service levels to travelers.

• You can maximize cash flow and decrease total costs by paying your charge card issuer based on more extended terms or direct payment for discounts.

• Oracle Internet Expenses provides aging reports to identify users with outstanding charges not submitted on expense reports. Oracle Workflow sends notifications to them and their managers to submit reports for these transactions.

Reimbursement for corporate credit card transactions depends upon company payment policy.

Instructor Note

Mention the three reimbursement policies: Employee pays, Company pays, Both pay, or refer to Module 9, Credit Card Administration, of the 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.



Expense Reporting Methods: Disconnected Expense Reporting

Expense Reporting Methods: Disconnected Expense Reporting

You can create expense reports out of the office or without access to the corporate intranet. Using the Export Expense Spreadsheet function while connected to your company intranet, you can export and save the expense spreadsheet template copy to enter expense report data when offline. You upload the data entered into Internet Expenses to create an expense report. The transferred data appears as an expense report in Oracle Internet Expenses that you can update, save, or submit for approval.

The Excel Expense Spreadsheet Template is downloaded from OIE to enter expenses when away from the office, contains the same fields as your OIE implementation, is used with Microsoft Excel 5.0 or higher to enter expenses in the spreadsheet, and supports descriptive flexfields and project-related information. How the template is set up by the system administrator determines what fields appear in the spreadsheet and which are required. The expense report does not have to be complete to upload it to Internet Expenses.

The following demonstration shows how to create an expense report using the disconnected expense reporting method.

Refer to Guided Demonstration Create an Expense Report Using the Disconnected Expense Reporting Method [LAB2EA6Y]



Expense Reporting Features (continued)


Third Party (Proxy) Entry

OIE enables entering expense reports for others.

Changing Cost Centers

Oracle Internet Expenses defaults the employee’s cost center based on human resources table information. You can charge expense reports to other cost centers by changing the default value.

Designating Approvers

You can direct your expense reports to a manager other than the one responsible for approving employee expense reports.

If you enter a different cost center when creating an expense report, you can configure Oracle Internet Expenses to enter an alternate approver. In this case, the approver specified must have authority to approve expense reports assigned to that cost center. Also refer to Module 6, Expense Report Workflow Processes, of the 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.





Entering Foreign Currency Expenses

When entering foreign currency expenses for cash and other expenses, you must enter the exchange rate between receipt and reimbursement currency when the expense was incurred. You can also set up default exchange rates. Credit card expenses retrieve the appropriate exchange rate automatically.

For example, an employee at a US company travels on business in Europe and incurs expenses in Great Britain. When creating an expense report for the trip, the employee must enter the exchange rate between the US dollar and the pound sterling on the date each expense was incurred.





Saving In-Progress Expense Reports

Oracle Internet Expenses performs no required fields validation on a partially completed expense report saved as a work-in-progress report, even with missing information. You can then access the saved expense report, add or update information, and submit the report for approval.

Reviewing Expense Reports

When reviewing an expense report summary before submission for approval, for each report item, Oracle Internet Expenses displays the amount, the expense type, and other data you entered, including each expense type totals and expense source subtotals. You can also display charges either by expense type, expense group, or project.

Viewing Expense Report History

You can check the expense reports status. The status display indicates whether a report was approved by management or the accounts payable department. You can also view payment information, drill down to view individual expense line data, and search the reason for an expense report adjustment.





Itemizing Receipts

You can track detailed expenses by itemizing receipts to separate a receipt into multiple expense lines and assign an expense type to each line. You can also designate a receipt portion as personal expense.

Withdrawing Expense Reports

When you want to update expense data after submission, you can withdraw an expense report from the approval process until you receive both manager and accounts payable approvals. The expense report remains in your queue for fixing, resubmitting, or deleting.

Duplicating Expense Reports

If you repeatedly incur the same expenses, you can copy prior expense reports for faster entry. All cash and other expenses are copied to the new expense report.



Product Features

Product Features

Descriptive Flexfields

By setting up descriptive flexfields, you can enter information for which there is no corresponding field in Oracle Internet Expenses.

Descriptive flexfields are fields used to collect expense information that your organization requires. You can also map descriptive flexfields to expense types that you define. When you select a specific expense type, Oracle Internet Expenses displays fields defined specifically for that expense type.

Note that descriptive flexfields collect receipt-level information only, not header-level information, meaning that the information a user enters in a descriptive flexfield relates to a specific expense line, not to the entire report.



Product Features (continued)


Multiple Reimbursement Currencies

The currency in which an expense report is paid is the reimbursement currency. You can set up Oracle Internet Expenses to let employees specify a reimbursement currency different from your functional currency.

Multiple Expense Templates

An expense template defines the list of expense types such as airfare, car rental, and meals, that users choose from when they enter their expense reports. You can define multiple expense report templates for use with Oracle Internet Expenses. Employees can then select one of the values when they create expense reports.

Applying an End Date to Expense Types

By applying an end date to expense types, you can retire expense types no longer in use and exclude them from appearing in user interface choice lists.





Flexible Requirements for Original Receipts

An original receipt is a receipt issued by a merchant as a record of a transaction and usually accompanies expense reports. When you define expense report templates for use with Oracle Internet Expenses, you can indicate whether an original receipt is required for an expense type.

You can also indicate that an original receipt is required only if the expense exceeds a certain amount. If you do not submit required original receipts, your expense reports may be short paid.

Missing Original Receipts

When you indicate the absence of original receipts, the status of a receipt remains required.





Line Level Accounting

You can split expense reports across cost centers at the line level. To obtain manager approval for charges to different cost centers, you must implement Oracle Approvals Management. See Module 2, Applications Setup, of the 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.

Refund Tracking

You can set up Oracle Internet Expenses to enter refunds on expense reports, such as an unused airline ticket refund. You report the refund of a previously reimbursed expense by entering a negative receipt. Depending on your company policy, you can apply the credit lines to other expense lines in the same expense report, enter the credit lines on a future expense report, or require payment remittance to the company for the refunded amount.





Required Justifications and Purpose

You can set up Oracle Internet Expenses to require employees to enter justifications for specific expenses and a purpose for all expense reports. When you define expense report templates for use with Oracle Internet Expenses, you can indicate whether a justification is required for an expense type such as airfare, meals, and car rental. If an expense report contains an invalid or unapproved justification, the report may be short paid.

Expense Report Number Prefixes

You can define a prefix for every expense report entered in Oracle Internet Expenses. You enter a prefix value to easily identify invoices in Oracle Payables originally created as self-service expense reports.

Collecting Tax Information

By indicating that an expense line includes tax and by choosing a tax code, Oracle Internet Expenses automatically calculates the tax amount using the tax code information defined in Oracle Payables.





Multi-Row Display Configuration

You can modify the appearance and behavior of the expense multi-row pages.

Client Extensions

Oracle Internet Expenses provides several client extensions to extend its functionality for specific requirements.

Expense Itemization Rules

The Itemization wizard helps you to require itemization and determine which expense types for the itemization are independent of each other. If itemization is required, you can also identify into which expense types a receipt can or should be itemized for faster expense entry and more accurate accounting.





Credit Card Transactions

If your company issues corporate credit cards to employees, you can set up Oracle Internet Expenses to automatically populate expense reports with credit card transactions. You can also specify whether your company or the employees pay the credit card provider.

The Credit Card workflow automatically informs employees and managers of payments created for corporate card transactions and any transactions that have not been submitted on an expense report.

Home Currency in Workflow Notifications

Display the expense report amount in a currency meaningful to the approver. The total for an expense report created using a reimbursable currency different from the approver's functional currency is converted for display in the approval notification.





Expenses Workflow Process

The Expenses workflow process defines the set of business processes for administrative tasks related to the expense reporting approval process. It handles the manager and the accounts payable approval process for expense reports.

You can set up and configure the process definitions of the Expenses workflow processes according to your company’s needs.

For a detailed description of the process definitions of these workflow processes and the required setup steps and optional configurations you can make to the workflow process, see Module 6, Expense Report Workflow Process, of the 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.





Predefined Methods for Routing Expense Reports for Manager Approval

When you set up the Expense Report workflow process, Oracle Internet Expenses includes three predefined methods to determine how workflow routes expense reports to managers for approval:

- Go Up Management Chain

- One Stop Then Go Directly

- Go Directly to Person with Signing Authority

For a detailed explanation of how these three methods work, see: Finding and Verifying Approvers.

Expense Line Drill Down in Workflow Notifications

Expense report notifications include the ability to drill down into the details of an expense line, providing a manager with additional information to make an appropriate approval decision.





Online Policy Compliance

The Internet Expenses Setup responsibility helps expense administrators to set up role-based, location-based policy schedules for online enforcement of expense policies. With built-in flexibility for local rules, this feature includes:

• Expense types categorization for expense type classification into seeded categories

• Category-based options and rules

• Category-based new fields for less descriptive flexfields

• Exchange rate defaulting and tolerance checking

• Policy violation flagging during expense report entry for employees, managers in Oracle Workflow, and accounts payable auditors

• Prevention or allowance of expense report submission based on policy violations





Per Diem and Mileage Calculation

With the Internet Expenses Setup responsibility, expense administrators can set up rate schedules for per diem and mileage expense reimbursement calculation, accommodating global statutory requirements with built-in flexibility for local rules:

• Time-based per diems

• Free meals and accommodations for per diems

• Distance mileage thresholds

Simple Setup for Per Diem, Mileage, and Policy Compliance

With the Internet Expenses Setup responsibility, you can do the following:

• Set up specific options and rules per operating unit and handle multi-org and multi-business groups

• Share or copy rate and policy schedules and access their change logs

• End date rate and policy schedules and mass update rate and policy schedules

For a detailed description of rate and policy schedule setup, see Module 3, Setup and Administration, of the 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.





VAT Merchant Fields Setup

Through the Internet Expenses Setup responsibility, an expense administrator have merchant-related data captured from users for VAT reclamation based on location.

Locations Setup

The Internet Expenses Setup responsibility includes setting up locations for use in rate and policy schedules, VAT-related setup and future reporting and analysis purposes.





Short Paying Expense Reports

Depending on how you set up Oracle Internet Expenses, your accounts payable department may require that employees provide original receipts or justifications for some expense lines in their expense reports. When it short pays expense reports by identifying the expense lines which have missing required receipts and/or inadequate justifications, the Expense Report workflow process creates a new expense report from lines with missing required receipts and a new expense report from lines with inadequate justifications and eliminates the lines short paid by your accounts payable department from the original expense report and approves it.

Adjusting Expense Reports

If an expense line violates a reimbursement policy, your accounts payable department adjusts the expense report by reducing the total amount of the expense line. For example, if you have a travel policy stating that meals cannot exceed $35, your accounts payable department can adjust expense lines for meals exceeding this limit. The employee receives payment for the expense line, less the amount of the adjustment. When your accounts payable department adjusts expense reports, the AP Approval workflow process informs employees of the reasons for and amounts of the adjustments.





Audit Management

The expense report auditor has a new HTML-based tool with the following features:

- Configurable views of expense report listings and line information

- Currency and exchange rate information

- All Verified shortcut

- Quick and advanced search

- Shared service center support for multi-organization environments

Audit Automation

With this feature, you can automate expense report auditing-related processes, including selecting which expense reports to audit, identifying expense reports with policy violations, and approving certain types of expense reports automatically without audit.

With an automation engine, you can automatically select expense reports for audit. Based on these rules, the system routes the selected expense reports either to a receipt-based audit process or to an online audit queue for a paperless audit. You can easily configure the automation engine without IT coding or Workflow modification.





Audit Queue Balancing

With the Audit Queue, Oracle Internet Expenses manages the paperless audit workload between multiple auditors. When an expense report is marked for paperless audit and approved by management, it is placed in the audit queue of a specific auditor based on the audit manager's definition of available auditors and their workload.

Expense and Violation Reporting

Analysis of expense and employee adherence to company policies is critical for enterprise spend management. Expense and violation reports provide top management with a multi-dimensional view of employee expenses and their adherence to company policies and assist decision-makers in forming new policies and evaluating employees.

This multi-dimensional view includes display of expenses by management hierarchy, expense category, time period, and policy violation types. You can also drill down to the details of expense receipts and expense policy violations.





Management Reporting

Search for employee expense reports by employee name, cost center, and period. Managers can also drill down to expense report details and view expense lines. Expense report details are categorized by expense type.

Enhancements to Credit Card Outstanding Transactions Management Processes

The Credit Card Outstanding Transactions Management processes provides three programs and reports with credit card transactions aging, new options and parameters, and escalated notifications to managers and employees, ensuring timely submission of credit card transactions on expense reports and obtaining discounts for early payments.



Workflow Processes

Workflow Processes

Expenses Workflow Process

The Expenses workflow process consists of several workflow processes:

• Server Side Validation process: Ensures company policy compliance in expense reports and populates Oracle Payables tables for Payables Invoice Import program

• Manager (Spending) Approval process: Defined when setting up Internet Expenses and checks Manager Approval, Manager Notification, or No Manager Involvement

• AP Approval process: Checks if AP department manual review and approval is needed and adjusts (Short pays) the expense report with missing receipts or policy violation

• Shortpay Unverified Receipt Items process: Initiated by short paid report, creates new expense report with short paid line(s), and notifies employee via email

Credit Cards Workflow

The Credit Cards workflow consists of independent workflow processes and notifications that perform various activities.

For more information, see Internet Expenses Workflow Processes in 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.



Workflow Processes (continued)

Workflow Processes

Expenses Workflow Process (continued)

• Bothpay process: Initiated only if the expense report has corporate credit card charges and both the employee and company are responsible for paying the credit card issuer.

• For expense reports with out-of-pocket cash and credit card expenses, this workflow creates a separate report for credit card charges and notifies the employee by email.

• Rejection process: Initiated by report rejection during approval process.

- It notifies the accounts payable department of its previous report approval and the employee, then waits for the expense report to be resubmitted.

- Workflow restarts when the report is resubmitted and deletes the report from the Oracle Payables interface tables if it is not resubmitted within the specified time.

Instructor Note

Note for second bullet point: The notification just informs of report approval, payment creation, or specific amount.



Product Integration Overview

Product Integration

Oracle Projects Integration

Oracle Internet Expenses integrates with Oracle Projects to add project-related information to expense reports.

You must use a project-related expense report template when entering expenses. You can use the Projects and Tasks tab on the Expenses Home page to see a list of available projects and tasks in Oracle Projects. You enter a unique project and task for each expense item. When the expense report is submitted, each project-related expense item is assigned to an expense account in Oracle Projects.

Also see Module 2, Applications Setup, of the 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.

Instructor Note

The project-related expense report must be defined in Oracle Payables. See the Oracle Payables User’s Guide, Release 11i for more information.

(Help) Oracle Financial Applications > Oracle Payables > Setup > Invoice > Expense Report Templates



Product Integration Overview (continued)

Product Integration (continued)

Oracle Grants Accounting Integration

Oracle Internet Expenses integrates with Oracle Grants Accounting to enter award information on their expense reports and collect reimbursement from the award that sponsored the activity.

Both products provide the following features for entering and managing award-related expenses:

- Enter award information on expense reports.

- Enter award information in disconnected mode in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and upload to Oracle Internet Expenses.

- Search expenses by award number.

- Display the award number in the workflow notification.

Oracle Grants Accounting introduces an Award field in Oracle Internet Expenses. You must associate an expense with the appropriate project, task, and award(s) to collect and bill costs by award.

For more information, see Module 2, Applications Setup, of the 11i Implement and Use Internet Expenses.





Oracle Approvals Management (AME) Integration

Oracle Approvals Management builds routing rules for document approvals expense reports. With this integration, the expense report workflow process uses the Oracle Approvals Management definition in place of the Find Approver Method of the Find Approver function in the Oracle Internet Expenses application and the signing limits of the Verify Authority function are ignored.

• Through approval rules, you automatically route expense approvals to cost center owners, cost center business managers, project managers or award managers.

• You can also set approval rules to control the escalation of expense reports for policy violations.


For more information on Oracle Approvals Management, refer to the Oracle Approvals Management Implementation Guide available on OracleMetaLink.





Oracle Internet Expenses also integrates with the following products:

• Oracle Applications Library

• Oracle Human Resources

• Oracle System Administration

• Oracle Payables




Summary



Education

iExpenses Introduction