Policy and Principle
Church-issued commercial cards are to be used only for business expenditures. Personal use of the Church-issued card is not allowed. Travelers who expect to incur travel expenses at least once every 18 months should use a Church-issued credit card whenever possible. When a Church-issued credit card is available, use of a personal credit card for Church-related purchases is not approved. According to departmental and human resource policy, cardholders are responsible for the timely review and completion of expense reporting and the submission of receipt documentation supporting all card transactions. Untimely completion of card expense reports and receipt submission will result in card suspension or cancellation. The cardholder is responsible to submit or retain original supporting receipt documentation for all card transactions, in accordance with departmental policy. Cards are returned to the Church when no longer needed for Church business.
At least monthly, the cardholder reconciles card activity and receipt documentation to the CARD reporting system to verify that all transactions are accurate and legitimate. Expense reports are prepared and submitted in accordance with departmental policy and procedure at least monthly. The local controller may determine that more frequent reviews and expense report submissions are required.
For Church workforce travelers, airfare costs are charged to the corporate central travel account maintained by the area or headquarters Church travel office.
Credit card transactions, as well as reimbursement transactions, enter the approval process flow in CARD when the cardholder or cardholder proxy creates and submits an expense report. After the expense report is routed to the approver, the approver is responsible to view the receipt for each transaction (either the original or a scanned copy), to confirm whether each transaction is a valid business expense, and to confirm that the transaction is posting to the correct expense account.
The following instructions are for the Classic view in PeopleSoft. Important note: If you approve for cardholders who split individual transactions into multiple detail lines, please complete your approvals using this view.
Approve an Expense Report
From the home page, click Church Financial Information to be routed to the Classic view.
Click Main Menu, Travel and Expenses, Approve Transactions, and Approve Transactions.
From the expense report list, click the report that you are ready to review.
You will be routed to the expense summary page. To view the detailed transaction list, click Expense Details.
To view the full transaction details, including accounting codes, click Expand All.
In this expanded view, you can see the transaction date, expense type, description (this is the cardholder-entered transaction comment), original currency amount, currency, receipt attachment (a plus sign means there is no receipt attached), payment type, merchant name, and accounting details (including multiple accounting lines for split transactions). Please note that in the Accounting Details section, the Amount field is the USD equivalent and the Monetary Amount field is the original currency amount.
If there is a receipt attached, you can click the paper clip icon to view the attachment.
Click the file name to open the attachment.
After you have confirmed whether each transaction is a valid business expense, viewed the receipt (either the original or a scanned copy), confirmed the amount, and confirmed the accounting codes, you are ready to assign a status to the report.
Click Summary and Approve.
To approve the report, click Approve.
After the approver submits the approved expense report, the report can no longer be edited. The transactions in approved expense reports load to the general ledger every business day.
Click OK.
The approver can deny an expense report. If a credit card transaction is denied, the transaction returns to the cardholder’s wallet and will need to be included in another expense report. If a cash usage transaction is denied, the transaction is deleted.
To deny an expense report, enter a comment and click Deny.
Click OK.
There are two temporary statuses that the approver can assign: Send Back and Hold. The Send Back feature will send the entire report back to the cardholder and allow the cardholder to edit and resubmit the report. The Hold feature will put the report in a hold status with no edits allowed.
To send back a report, click Send Back.
Click OK.
To put a report on hold, click Hold.
Click OK.
After a report has been put on hold, only the approver who put the report on hold can change the report status. This is done simply by selecting another status: Approve, Deny, or Send Back(see instructions above).