Preparing Cash Advances

This chapter provides an overview of how to prepare cash advances and discusses how to:

Create cash advances.
View and modify cash advances.
Reconcile cash advances.
Delete cash advances.
Close cash advances.

Understanding How to Prepare Cash Advances

To minimize the impact of business travel on employee personal finances, you can provide cash advances to pay for items such as meals, ground transportation, and gratuities. With Expenses, you can process cash advances from the initial request through the final payment. Exception processing enables you to cover last-minute emergencies and unplanned situations.

Before preparing cash advances, you must set up:

Employees.
Cash advance sources.
Business purposes.

Common Element Used in This Chapter

Status

Depending on your organization’s approval and audit policies, Expenses may assign these values to a cash advance:

Approved for Payment: The advance is authorized for payment processing.
Closed: The advance is marked for closure.

You can only close advances that have been submitted, approved for payment processing, but not staged for payment.
Denied: The advance was not approved by the approver or auditor.
Approvals in Process: If your organization uses an approver and auditor or multiple approvers, and the first approver has approved the cash advance, Expenses changes the status to Approvals in Process.
Paid: Payment processing is complete.
Pending: An employee has not submitted the cash advance, or the approver or auditor denied and returned the cash advance to the employee.

This is the default status for a newly-created cash advance.
Reconciled: The cash advance is applied to an expense report, and the employee returned excess funds (if any).
Staged: The cash advance is staged for payment.
Submitted for Approval: The cash advance is ready for the approval or audit process.

Creating Cash Advances

This section provides an overview of how to create cash advances and discusses how to:

Create cash advances.
Import automated teller machine (ATM) advances.
View ATM data.

Understanding How to Create Cash Advances

A cash advance has several parts to complete before submitting it for approval. The way you set up your expenses system determines what kinds of data are required and how your accounting system uses the data. If you have set up a report description and business purpose on the Employee Profile - User Defaults page, then Expenses prepopulates these fields on cash advances. As you go through the preparation process, you can import advances initiated at an ATM using a corporate credit card. You can save cash advances for further work, or you can submit them for approval.

Pages Used to Create Cash Advances

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Create Cash Advance Report	TE_ADVANCE	Employee Self-Service, Travel and Expense Center, Cash Advance, Create Travel and Expense, Travel and Expense Center, Cash Advance, Create	Create a cash advance request and submit it for approval or save it for further work.
Import ATM Advances	TE_ATM_TRANS_SEL	Click the Import ATM Advances link on the Create Cash Advance page.	Select an ATM transaction to add to a cash advance.
ATM Advance Detail	TE_ATM_TRANS3	Click the Detail link on the Import ATM Advances page.	View details associated with an ATM cash advance.
Cash Advance	TE_ADVANCE_RPT	Click the Printable View button on the Create Cash Advance Report page.	Print a hard-copy version of your cash advance request that Expenses formats for manual processing.
Submit Confirmation	TE_SUBMIT_CONFIRM	Click Submit on the Create Cash Advance Report page.	Confirm that you want to save the cash advance and submit it for further processing.

Creating Cash Advances

Access the Create Cash Advance Report page.

General Information

Description	Enter a description to identify the cash advance. Expenses prepopulates this field if you have set up a report description on the Employee Profile - User Defaults page.
Business Purpose	Select from a predefined list that was created when implementing your expense system. Expenses prepopulates this field if you have set up a business purpose on the Employee Profile - User Defaults page. Tax laws require a business purpose to justify business expenses, so completing this field is mandatory before you save the cash advance request for further processing.
Reference	Enter additional reference information about the cash advance.
Import ATM Advances	Click to access the Import ATM Advances page and select credit card transactions to import into your cash advance request. This link is available only in create or modify mode. See Importing ATM Advances.
	Click the User Defaults button to access the Employee Profile - User Defaults page and view or modify default settings used for cash advances and other expense transactions. See Maintaining User Defaults.
	Click the Printable View button to access a printable version of the cash advance request. Use the browser's print button to print a hard-copy version of the cash advance request.

Details

Source	Select the method of payment to the employee for the cash advance.
Amount	Enter an amount you are requesting for the cash advance for each source.

Totals

Advance Amount	Displays the total amount of the cash advance request.
Update Totals	Click to calculate the total amount of the cash advance request.
Save For Later	Click to save and complete the cash advance request at a later time.
Finish and Submit	Click to send the completed cash advance request to the approval process. Depending on how you set up your approval and audit rules, Expenses will send the cash advance for payment processing or forward to an approver's queue.

Importing ATM Advances

Access the Import ATM Advances page.

Date	Displays the date that the employee initiated the ATM advance.
Merchant	Displays the vendor from whom the advance was transacted.
Amount	Displays the amount of the ATM transaction.
Detail	Click to access the ATM Advance Detail page and view more information about the ATM transaction.

Viewing ATM Data

Access the ATM Advance Detail page.

Transaction Number	Displays the transaction number associated with the ATM advance.
Trans Load Date (transaction load date)	Displays the date that your system loaded the ATM advance.
Transaction Status	Displays whether the ATM advance is assigned to a cash advance.
Cardmember Number	Displays the employee’s corporate credit card number.
Transaction Amount	Displays the amount spent for the expense item.
Exchange Rate	Displays the rate used to convert the ATM transaction to the base currency of the employee's business unit.
Amount	Displays the amount in the base currency of the employee's general ledger business unit.
Description Line 1-4	Displays additional details regarding the ATM transaction.
Picked Up By Mobile	Not used by Expenses.
Date/Time	Displays the date and time of the ATM transaction.

Viewing and Modifying Cash Advances

This section discusses how:

View cash advances.
Modify cash advances.

Common Elements Used in This Section

Accounting Date

Displays the accounting date for Expenses to use to generate new accounting entries in the Post Liabilities Application Engine process for cash advances reconciled through an employee reimbursement.

Post State

Displays whether accounting entries for the cash advance have been posted to the general ledger.

Action History

This section appears after you submit a cash advance for approval and:

Displays the name of the originator, approver, or project manager and their role.
Displays the completed steps, such as Submitted, Approved, and Denied, in the cash advance approval process
Displays the date and time on which the approval status was assigned.

Pages Used to View and Modify Cash Advances

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
View Cash Advance Report	TE_ADVANCE	Employee Self-Service, Travel and Expense Center, Cash Advance, View Travel and Expense, Travel and Expense Center, Cash Advance, View	View cash advance requests that have already been submitted.
Modify Cash Advance Report	TE_ADVANCE	Employee Self-Service, Travel and Expense Center, Cash Advance, Modify Travel and Expense, Travel and Expense Center, Cash Advance, Modify	Modify a cash advance request and submit it for approval or save it for further work.
View Approver Comments	EX_COMMENTS_RJCT	Click the approver comment button on the Modify Cash Advance Report page.	View approver's comments.

Viewing Cash Advances

Access the View Cash Advance Report page.

Note. Fields on the View Cash Advance Report page are the same as the fields on the Create Cash Advance Report page and are defined in that section of this PeopleBook chapter. Fields and functionality that are unique to the View Cash Advance Report page are discussed in this section.

See Creating Cash Advances.

View Approver Comments

When an employee views a cash advance that an approver denied or returned to the employee for revisions, Expenses displays the first 30 characters of the approver's comments as a red link at the top of the View Cash Advance Report. Click the View Approver Comments link to access the View Approver Comments page to view all of the approver's comments.

Totals

Additional fields appear in this section after you save a cash advance.

Advance Amount	Displays the total amount of the cash advance request.
Applied to Expense Reports	Displays the total amount of the cash advance that the employee has applied to expense reports.
Payments Received	Displays the total amount of checks the employee has written to offset a balance due the organization.

Modifying Cash Advances

Access the Modify Cash Advance Report page.

Note. Fields on the Modify Cash Advance Report page are the same as the fields on the Create Cash Advance Report page and are defined in that section of this PeopleBook Chapter. Fields and functionality that are unique to the Modify Cash Advance Report page are discussed in this section.

See Creating Cash Advances.

View Approver Comments

When an employee modifies a cash advance that an approver returned to the employee for revisions, Expenses displays the first 30 characters of the approver's comments as a red link at the top of the Modify Cash Advance Report. Click the View Approver Comments link to access the View Approver Comments page to view all of the approver's comments.

Reconciling Cash Advances

This section provides an overview of cash advance reconciliations and discusses how to reconcile cash advances.

Understanding Cash Advance Reconciliations

When an employee uses a cash advance for business purposes and submits an expense report, the advance offsets some or all of the expenses the employee submits on the expense report. If you do not reconcile cash advances, your company may incorrectly reimburse more than the expenses that your employees incur.

When employees prepare expense reports, they designate the associated cash advance ID from a link on the Expense Report Entry page. The Apply Cash Advance(s), link opens a page where they select one or more cash advance IDs to apply the entire amount or a portion of a cash advance to their expense reports. The selected cash advance items become part of the expense report calculations that determine how much to reimburse the employees.

Expenses tracks the remaining balance due to the organization and identifies on the Cash Advance Reconciliation page the expense report IDs that employees applied the cash advance amounts to. If an employee received a cash advance but did not take the planned business trip or did not use the entire portion of the cash advance, the employee can submit a personal check to offset the balance due to the organization. You enter payments received from employees on the Cash Advance Reconciliation page.

To reconcile a cash advance, the cash advance must have a status of Paid and the total due to the company is zero. When you reconcile a cash advance, Expenses changes the status to Reconciled.

Note. When you define business units for Expenses, you can specify a grace period in which cash advances must be reconciled. If you use PeopleSoft Workflow, you can run the Employee Notification process to automatically send an email to employees who have outstanding cash advances that are older than the grace period.

Page Used to Reconcile Cash Advances

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Reconcile Cash Advance Report	EX_ADV_RECON	Travel and Expenses, Manage Accounting, Reconcile Cash Advance	Reconcile a cash advance. Compare the cash advance against a submitted expense report to correctly reimburse the employee.

Reconciling Cash Advances

Access the Reconcile Cash Advance Report page.

Accounting Date

Select the accounting date for Expenses to use to generate new accounting entries in the Post Liabilities Application Engine (EX_POST_LIAB) process for cash advances reconciled through an employee reimbursement.

Associated Expense Reports

If the cash advance is associated with an expense report, Expenses displays the expense report ID, creation date, report status, and amounts. If there is no report ID, you can still reconcile the cash advance. For example, if an employee received a cash advance but did not take the planned business trip or did not use all of the cash advance, the cash advance can be reconciled by the employee writing a check to your organization for the total displayed in the Due Company field.

Payments

Enter check numbers and check amounts when the employee submit checks for unused cash advance funds. Expenses enables you to enter more than one check payment.

Reconcile

Click for Expenses to validate that the amount applied to expense reports and the total payments received from the employee equals the amount of the cash advance request. If the amount applied to expense reports and total payments received does not equal the cash advance request amount, Expenses displays an error message. If the amount applied to expense reports and total payments received equals the cash advance request amount, Expenses sets the cash advance status to Reconciled.

Deleting Cash Advances

This section provides an overview of deleting cash advances and discusses how to delete cash advances.

Understanding Cash Advance Deletions

Expenses allows you to delete a cash advance request providing that you have not submitted it for approval. You can also delete a cash advance request if it was submitted and denied.

Page Used to Delete Cash Advances

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Travel and Expense - Delete Cash Advance	TE_DEL_ADV	Employee Self-Service, Travel and Expense Center, Cash Advance, Delete	Delete a cash advance.

Deleting Cash Advances

Access the Delete Cash Advance page.

The page displays a list of unsubmitted cash advance requests for the employee whose ID you entered. Select the delete column to designate cash advance requests to delete.

Closing Cash Advances

This section provides an overview of closing cash advances and discusses how to close cash advances.

Understanding Closing Cash Advances

When a cash advance has been approved for payment processing, you can cancel it after you have posted its liabilities. You can close the cash advance if you have not staged payments for it.

Page Used to Close Cash Advances

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Cash Advance Close	EX_CLOSE_ADVANCE	Travel and Expenses, Process Expenses, Close Expenses, Mark Cash Advance for Close	Mark a cash advance for close if it has been approved for payment processing but not staged for payments.

Closing a Cash Advance

Access the Cash Advance Close page.

The information on the Cash Advance Close page comes from the cash advance description. To indicate the reversal date for Expenses to use to reverse the accounting liability entries, select Use Current Date or Use Specific Date. This opens a field for you to enter the date to reverse liability entries.

After you click Close and confirm your selections, Expenses marks the cash advance for closing and changes the status to Close in Process. You must then run the close liability process to generate accounting entries.