An Idea in the PeopleSoft Idea Space clued us into the fact that many company employees who are paid via a direct deposit through PeopleSoft Payroll may not want to have their Travel-related reimbursements paid out through the Payroll system.
Prior to PeopleSoft Update Image #46, the reimbursement method for Expenses and Cash Advances was identified on the Installation Options, so one size is forced to fit all. In real life, organizations would like to move that reimbursement payment option down to the Business Unit Definitions or User Preferences, to let them decide how they would wish to receive reimbursement for Expense Reports and if requesting a Cash Advance, Cash Advances as well.
In PeopleSoft Update Image #46, we have enhanced the Expense system to provide more flexibility for Cash Advance and Expense Report reimbursements.
In addition to the Installation, we have added the capability for a Business Unit or an Employee to indicate how they wish to be reimbursed. The Employee Option will be consulted first when payments need to be created to determine how the employee wishes to be reimbursed.
A new tab on the Employee Profile allows a user to identify how they wish to be reimbursed. They can elect to select Accounts Payable or Payroll. Or they can allow the system to determine the generation of the reimbursement identified either via the Business Unit or Installation options. This provides the maximum flexibility for payments, allowing an organization to provide their users a choice of where their payments are generated. The flexibility obviously allows Payroll to handle paychecks, but if desired, Accounts Payable to generate payments for Expense Report Reimbursements and Cash Advances.
If Organizations want to default a particular Reimbursement Option for a particular Business Unit, they can do so at the Business Unit Definitions page. They can elect to select Accounts Payable or Payroll. Or they can allow the system to determine the generation of the reimbursement identified on the Installation options.
As an enhancement to the flexibility to determine where payments are generated, in PeopleSoft Update Image 47, we provided additional reimbursement capabilities where we now allow an Expense User to identify which direct deposit bank account should be used for Expense reimbursements and Cash Advances. The option to use a different set of bank accounts other than the defaults from PeopleSoft HCM/Payroll, provides a user with a separation of payroll versus expense reimbursements allowing a direct deposit separation of funds.
When an employee indicates a preference for Expense reimbursements be directed to a different account than one Payroll uses, we will not be updating or overriding the preference from Expenses back to Payroll. The Payroll Account preference will remain in place. Only the Expense and Cash Advance reimbursement accounts will be used as defined in the User preferences.
You can also control whether or not banking information gets overridden by unchecking the “Sync default Bank Account” option.
With these two Idea Space enhancements, an Expenses User now has the flexibility to manage their travel-related reimbursements separate from their payroll accounts.