T&E Vendors Concentrate On Web-Based Systems

<B> T&E Vendors Concentrate On Web-Based Systems</B>

By Lynn Woods

With the corporate and purchasing card markets expanding and new players jumping in, enhancements to existing products are everywhere in 1998. And as corporate travel buyers begin taking a serious look at the Internet for travel booking, it is not surprising that much of the development involves preparing Web-based T&E reporting systems for market.

PeopleSoft Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif., will introduce a new expense management program, called PeopleSoft Expenses, in the second quarter of this year. Available in Windows or the Nomadic client, PeopleSoft Expenses also will be deployable over the Web, probably through a Java application, said spokesperson Betsy Bland.

PeopleSoft Expenses will capture expense data from the credit card company, import data and populate expense sheet detail lines for receipt substantiation, approval and payment. With PeopleSoft's Workflow Administrator, department managers can approve expense reports and customize their routing by changing query roles. There also will be a policy compliance funtionality, in which the system can flag exceptions. A Central Pay feature will enable the company to reimburse the credit card company directly, replacing multiple payments with a single transaction.

PeopleSoft Expenses will be integrated with the company's General Ledger, Payables, Projects and Human Resources products. PeopleSoft also plans to introduce Payroll, Time and Labor products.

ProCard Inc. has launched PVS Net, a management reporting tool for purchasing and travel cards that utilizes the Internet. The standalone product automatically updates transactions made on procurement, travel and fleet cards on a daily basis and enables users to review them online; automatically appends accounting codes to each transaction; and lets users break out data for management reports.

Users can select from a list the types of data they want to view. Reports and statements are sent via e-mail in up to 21 different formats, including Microsoft Excel and Lotus 123, and then can be merged into most commercial accounting systems. Alternately, users can download transactions in an ASCII format, which they can then import directly into an accounting system or spreadsheet. ProCard provides online access to data for six months and then archives the information.

The main advantages of PVS Net are low cost and ease of use, said ProCard vice president of marketing Philip Skarston. The new product is being marketed and sold through the banks that offer Visa or MasterCard.

This summer, ProCard also will begin beta testing a Web-enabled product, PVS 5, with the rollout scheduled in September. PVS 5 will address all facets of the expense reporting process, including policy compliance, preapprovals, reporting and auditing. The system will integrate purchasing, T&E and fleet purchases into a single software package.

Meanwhile, Paymentech now is offering Internet reporting to its purchasing card customers, following a successful pilot with two clients that began last December. The Web-reporting capability, which is written partly in Java, will be available on T&E cards this spring. "We take all the data every night and load it into a partitioned database, client by client," said David Cramer, senior vice president of business development, sales and marketing for Paymentech's commercial card unit. Using Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer version 3.0 or higher, clients can access the database and view their transactions.

Multiple users can access the system, and in different ways. "While a travel manager might focus on supplier reports, a company's auditor can look at each transaction to compare it with a receipt," said Cramer. Controls can be built into the system so that a cardholder has more limited access to the database than a manager. Cardholders also can split transaction billing between two different departments or projects.

Cramer said that a new "query wizard" enables travel managers to break down the data by date, category code, region and vendor, and to create special reports. Previously, clients received reports in hard copy form or on a bulletin board that had to be downloaded to a user's personal computer and run as a report in a client/server environment.

Three clients already have signed up for the new product, he said, adding that the next step is the development of a product to streamline the payment process.

At GE Capital, the new release of its PARIS--Purchasing and Accounting Reporting Information System--product, which was first issued in November, includes an enhancement that enables program administrators to estimate and calculate sales and user tax for purchases made in more than 6,000 jurisdictions in the United States, said GE Capital spokesperson Mitch Gross.

"Our technology allows you to set up the [tax parameters] once by user and supplier, so that it automatically goes to, say, Cincinnati as the default," Gross said. "Administrators can change the default, split charges and multiple cost centers, put in tax exempt status for people and different suppliers, and set up different organizations." The database is automatically updated monthly.

Gross said PARIS not only "saves headaches and wear and tear at the time the transaction takes place," but also represents a savings for those companies in which managers throw up their hands at figuring out the tax in each jurisdiction and "pay the highest tax in Utah just to be on the safe side."

On the fleet card side, GE Capital just introduced electronic reporting, enabling fleet managers to get detailed information on transactions, including grade of fuel, number of gallons and self service versus full service, by e-mail. Managers also can set up exception reporting criteria as a way of flagging breaks with policy.

Standardizing Merchant Codes

American Express, meanwhile, has focused on easing the reporting process for its procurement card customers, through the development of a universal coding system to standardize merchant codes.

"Each credit card company has it own way of identifying merchant locations," said Amex spokesperson Melissa Abernathy. "Now that purchasing cards have been installed at more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, it seemed like a good idea to come up with consistent coding for the categories. And the credit card associations are supporting it."

Abernathy said that a lot of companies ask their employees to keep handwritten records on their purchasing card transactions because the data provided by the credit card companies often doesn't capture tax data and other essential details related to the service product description. Amex hopes to eliminate such redundant paperwork through its new coding system. Already, the new merchant codes have received the seal of approval in 16 states as the document of tax collection at the point of sale. Such "official" acceptance should cut down on the paperwork required for auditing expenses.