ExpenseAnywhere® System Overview

ExpenseAnywhere creates an easy-to-use Web-based environment with intuitive screens for the business traveler, corporate accounting, auditing, and management. These screens provide all the functionality to enter, submit, route, approve, process, and manage business reimbursable expenses. Additionally, the system monitors and manages company policy and preferred vendor contract compliance, ties expenses entry to credit/purchase card transactions, and captures spending information for further reporting and analysis.

Functionality for Each User Type

ExpenseAnywhere is a “roles-based” system. It provides powerful and flexible functionality for each user-type within the organization. The software utilizes the existing corporate approval and management hierarchy, which together with the built-in routing over the Internet/ intranet, delivers expense reports through the organization from employee to manager to accounting for approval, payment, and general ledger posting. ExpenseAnywhere’s workflow streamlines your processes and ensures conformance with the organization’s business practices at each step.

Traveler: Easy and flexible expense reporting

• Travelers complete expense reports using one simple point-and-click web-based interface. Expense transactions can be entered and updated in any sequence. ExpenseAnywhere monitors policy guidelines, prompts for all required receipts, and maintains the chronological order.

• Travelers do not have to be connected to a network in order to enter expenses. With the offline module users can complete expense reports anywhere and at any time.

• ExpenseAnywhere uses a quick selection method to associate corporate charge card data and pre-populate the appropriate expense reports automatically.

• ExpenseAnywhere provides quick functions to associate and itemize complex receipts like hotel bills, foreign exchange rates, and government Per Diem rates.

• ExpenseAnywhere flexibility enables executives to authorize their assistants to report and submit expenses for them.
  
• Required receipts can be submitted in paper form, by mail, or fax. Or digitized receipts can be attached to the expense claim.

Approver: Automatic notification and quick approval process

• Approvers are regularly notified via e-mail of new expense reports requiring their approval
  

• Expense reports can be viewed in summary or examined in detail with transactions that vary from policy clearly indicated

• Expense reports containing policy variations are flagged to indicate the nature of the variation. The approver can review the transaction detail and either approve or send the claim back for correction to the traveler with comments.

• Approvers can set alternate approvers for automatic re-routing of expense reports in their absence.

• ExpenseAnywhere supports multiple approvals based on corporate policy or amount thresholds.

• Extensive reporting to monitor traveler expenses.

Accounting: Accurate expense reports with categorized amounts

• Accounting receives timely, accurate, and complete data for each expense report.
  
  
• Expense reports arrive having been approved by the responsible manager(s).
  
  
• Telephone calls to Accounting with questions about expense checks are virtually eliminated.
  
  
• Automated processes load data into accounts payable, general ledger, and payroll systems to eliminate data re-keying.
  

• Expense reports are uniquely coded. This helps accounting quickly match expense reports held in the system to receipts submitted by mail or fax.
  

• ExpenseAnywhere provides extensive functionality to support government project expense reporting.
  

• ExpenseAnywhere automatically calculates car expenses based on assigned mileage rates. Multiple rate categories are supported for employees with corporate vehicles.

Administrator: Easy and secure systems administration

• ExpenseAnywhere provides simple to use processes that allow the administration to manage all users from a centralized application.

• Manage employees list (add, change, and delete).
  

• Add new G/L codes (chart of accounts).
  

• Manage/assign user profiles and hierarchy (workflow).
  

• Manage corporate credit cards.
  

• Export data to the Financial System.

• Maintain company policies in ExpenseAnywhere.
  

• Maintain various lists including preferred vendor list, client list, and projects list.

• ExpenseAnywhere helps control costs by incorporating travel policies that require travelers to use preferred vendors.

• ExpenseAnywhere automatically monitors and flags policy violation to ensure compliance.

• Dynamic reporting enables complete analysis of T&E costs and trends.
  

• Comprehensive data helps staff negotiate better supplier rates.
  

• ExpenseAnywhere is designed to operate with Microsoft’s Internet Information Server.
  

• ExpenseAnywhere works seamlessly with your information infrastructure, including your email system, database, Web servers, and financial systems.

User Profile Management

User Profile Manager provides specific functionality for each user type involved in the expense management cycle. This component establishes how different user-types and functional groups of the organization interface with the system. It provides administrative level functionality to create the user-profile templates that define what each user-type is permitted to do. This is a quick check-box process that assigns functionality to each user template.

Corporate Policy Management

Corporate Policy Management provides run-time functionality to check, flag and/or enforce, and report on the variations of the corporate travel policy. Specific checks are set up by the administrator to implement the policy guidelines. Flags and appropriate messages are displayed to the user when variations are encountered.

Systems Configuration Management

This component manages the processes that provide data exchange between ExpenseAnywhere and the corporate credit card input files, ACH, financial systems, HR systems, and imaging systems. This is the administrative level functionality that provides the capability to do initial configuration set-up and ongoing management.

These processes are initially developed by and implemented with the Virtual Communications team during the Rapid Implementation Process.

Corporate Credit Cards

ExpenseAnywhere® provides powerful card management functionality. This includes easy management of corporate cards and routing of card transaction data to the cardholders for simple point-and-click allocation to the company expense categories. Regardless of whether the corporate cards are company paid or employee paid, and whether they are purchase cards, travel and entertainment (T&E) cards, or a combination thereof, ExpenseAnywhere® handles it all.

Card data acquisition depends on the client’s arrangement with the financial institution providing the card services. Virtual Communications will work with the card provider to facilitate implementation of the optimal solution for loading card data into the ExpenseAnywhere system.

Virtual Communications, Inc. has the experience and expertise to implement any of these options:

• Push data from provider to ExpenseAnywhere
• Pull data from provider to ExpenseAnywhere
• Create an EDI link
• Define a WEB-download process run by administrator

The card data process provides extensive user and data validation checking. Discrepancies, such as bad cards and duplicate transactions are flagged for correction. Card data is typically received in encrypted form from the provider, is decrypted and verified by ExpenseAnywhere. Clean data is then stored within the ExpenseAnywhere server in encrypted (i.e., secure) form and distributed to the appropriate users. This process can be setup to scan automatically at a scheduled time or it can be invoked by the administrative to run on demand.

ACH

The system provides the capability to make EFT payments of reimbursed expenses directly to the employee’s bank account. ExpenseAnywhere creates a NACHA formatted file and can upload it to the financial services institution as required.

Core Functionality: ExpenseAnywhere Features

• Easy to Use: Simple, Secure and Intuitive.
  

• Easy to manage: Template driven functionality allows you to create as many user types as your organization needs to effectively manage and control access to the product functionality.

• Supports up to 30 segments chart-of-accounts to meet the needs of the largest multinational organizations.

• Choice of workflows best suited to streamline your expense management and processing.

• Supports multi-currency transactions and multi-currency payments

• Online entry of expenses and their allocation to corporate specific expense categories/ sub-categories.

• Import of corporate card (American Express/ VISA/ Master Card, etc) transaction data, with automatic routing of transaction data to specific cardholder and easy point and click allocation and splitting of transaction data to appropriate expense categories.

• Powerful, robust card management functionality: The system supports Purchase cards, T&E cards through the same software application. Supports multiple corporate cards.

• Online Submission and Approval of expense reports.

• Display of real-time status of the expense report.

• Easy import of employee and corporate expense categories data.

• Automatic enforcement of company’s reimbursement policies. Tracks spending and manager’s approval limits. Reports policy exceptions as well as duplicate expenses.

• Automatically calculates mileage charges and allocates per diem charges. Ability to set different per-diem rates for select cities of interest to your business.

• Tracks third party billable expenses and cost center allocations.

• Extensive ad hoc reporting at all levels.

• Approved expenses can be downloaded for import in to your company’s accounting system (Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, etc)

• ExpenseAnywhere provides direct deposit (NACHA formatted) file that can be imported in your company’s Treasury/ Cash management System for direct reimbursement to employees at anytime, independent of payroll (Optional)

• ExpenseAnywhere allows creation and management of total paperless system by allowing images of expense receipts to be attached to expense sheets either at submission of the expense reports or in a centralized environment. (Optional)

• Extensive automatic e-mail messages to communicate with the users/ approvers etc.

• Intuitive selection of preferred vendors.

• Tracks Company paid expenses.

• Approvers can select online alternate approvers

• Supports multiple levels of approvals