Paymentech Offers Web Link

<B> Paymentech Offers Web Link</B>

By Lynn Woods

Responding to the needs of a corporate customer, Paymentech is rolling out an Internet reporting system.

When Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), a waste-management company based in Houston, unrolled a new purchase-card program last August, administrator Scott Smith found himself overwhelmed with paperwork--even though the initial implementation consisted of only 50 cards, distributed to employees at just three of BFI's 500 locations in the United States and Canada.

After running reports on the purchasing-card transactions, Smith would fax them to employees, who would add code numbers and fax them back. Smith then input the coding changes manually on InfoSpan, the LAN-based expense-reporting software issued by MasterCard.

InfoSpan worked fine on a local area network, but it wouldn't function on BFI's wide area network. And downloading the invoice file every day from the bank processor "took forever," said Smith. To overcome these difficulties, he asked his card issuer, Paymentech Inc. of Dallas, to develop an Internet reporting system.

An Internet rather than intranet product appealed to BFI because "we didn't want to be responsible for the databank." Smith also wanted the product to offer users the flexibility to make coding changes themselves. Not only was this less expensive and more efficient than maintaining a staff to do the job, but Smith feared that without such a function, employees might not use the system.

Security wasn't a concern: No credit card numbers would be transmitted over the Internet, and all transactions would be conducted using a company ID number and password.

By December, the new product, called PaymentNet, was available for beta testing. "They allowed us to help custom-design it," said Smith. "We were thrilled."

Currently, PaymentNet is being used by 1,200 purchase-card holders, and by September, a total of 3,500 are expected to be online. BFI is in the process of installing the SAP automated accounting system to better gauge the cost of each invoice.

Smith said his goal within the next three years is to reduce the amount of paper invoices by 15 percent, a total of 500,000 per year.

"The purchasing-card program mainly consists of miscellaneous small-dollar items we can't leverage from vendors," he explained. "SAP is our primary purchasing tool."

PaymentNet is fast and easy to use. After cardholders have posted an expense on their cards, they can pull up the transaction almost instantly by accessing Paymentech's Website. A drop-down menu gives cardholders a choice of billing codes, including the option to split transactions between different codes.

Smith admitted that giving employees the ability to make coding changes made some BFI managers nervous. But he said their concern was mitigated somewhat by the greater ease and control the Internet-based system gives managers.

Also, the fact that purchase-card transactions are for the most part small-dollar expenses--the transaction limit on each card is $500--minimizes the impact of a mistake in coding by an employee. Smith downloads the PaymentNet file to a general ledger system on SAP once a month. This monthly report is viewed not only by accounting staff, but also by local managers. "If it's a big error, it would show up," he said.

PaymentNet also gives BFI managers the ability to close accounts, change an address or credit line, and perform other maintenance functions over the Internet, as opposed to sending a fax or placing a phone call.

Other benefits of PaymentNet are quick deployment, the ability for companies to get upgrades or create, test and process customer reports within a few days, and data querying capabilities. While BFI uses a Netscape browser to access PaymentNet on the Web, the product also is available through company intranets. Paymentech initially tried using pure Java but switched to Java script after experiencing problems with errors on the browsers.

While BFI is one of the first of Paymentech's clients to implement PaymentNet, Cindy Smith, senior vice president of client relations and program consulting, said 60 companies were going online for both purchasing and T&E cards.

One customer still in implementation is the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Based in Pasadena, Calif., JPL spends $25 million in travel. Accounting manager John Porretta said PaymentNet was one of the reasons his organization chose Paymentech as the vendor for its new Visa T&E card, which was issued to 1,050 employees May 1 and eventually will be distributed to a total of 1,500 travelers.

JPL previously used an American Express T&E card but switched to Visa because it wanted cash advances in which the liability was on the cardholder, not the company--a feature that Visa offered but American Express did not. "Because we were liable, it took all day for our employees to turn around their expense reports," said Porretta.

So far, PaymentNet is available only to Porretta and his small staff in the accounting department of JPL's central office, where most of its employees are based. "We're using the product to see who's on the card program, to check addresses and to keep tabs on our travelers," said Porretta.

Porretta praised the product's ease of use. Porretta also liked the fast access to Paymentech's Website, the ability to call up accounts by name, and the line item coding. He described the cost as "very reasonable."

Paymentech is continuing to enhance and refine its Internet reporting product. On June 1 it released a new version that included a notification system that sends cardholders e-mail messages once transactions have been posted.

The new system will enable them to review transactions on a more continuous basis. Cardholders also will have the ability to dispute a bill on line.

The next version of PaymentNet, due out in September, will include enhanced accounting code allocation: Companies will have the ability to authorize which coding centers a particular employee can access, rather than putting the burden on the manager, who in the current version can only direct employees toward the allowable codes and must check that they are adhering to the company directives, according to Cindy Smith.

The new version will include a feature that automatically assigns a control number to the bill when employees close out the screen. The number will enable managers to match invoices to receipts or other paperwork.