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. Once 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 Fluid view in PeopleSoft. Important note: The Fluid view will not allow the approver to see multiple split lines, if the cardholder submitted them. If you approve for cardholders who split individual transactions into multiple detail lines, please complete your approvals using the Classic view in PeopleSoft.
Approve an Expense Report
From the Card Services screen, click Approvals.
From the expense report list, click the report that you are ready to review.
Review each individual transaction in the Lines section by clicking anywhere on the transaction row. The transaction row includes the transaction date, expense type, merchant name, payment type, transaction amount, transaction currency, accounting codes, and transaction note, as entered by the cardholder.
When you click a transaction row, you will be routed to the Approval Line Detail screen. If the cardholder has attached a receipt at the line level, click View Attachments to access the link to the document.
Click the file name to open the attachment.
Click Back to Header to return to the report summary.
Click the next transaction to complete the same process for each transaction in the report.
Once 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.
To approve the report, select the transactions by checking the box in the header row and then click Approve.
Enter approver comments, if desired, and click Submit. 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.
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, select the transactions by checking the box in the header row and then click Deny.
Enter approver comments and click Submit.
There are two temporary statuses that the approver can assign: Pushback and Hold. The Pushback 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 push back a report, select the transactions by checking the box in the header row and click More, then Pushback.
Important note: The Pushback feature pushes back all transactions contained in the report even if the approver has approved transactions in the report by line item.
Enter approver comments and click Submit.
To put a report on hold, select the transactions by checking the box in the header row and click More, then Hold.
Enter approver comments and click Submit.
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 by simply selecting another status: Approve, Deny, or Pushback (see instructions above).