Summary

On average, CU processes over 10,000 reimbursements to non-employees every year. This was an entirely paper-based process -- until a team of CU System staff developed an electronic reimbursement process using existing functionality in the Concur Travel & Expense System and the PeopleSoft Finance System. The new approach reduces the time needed to reimburse non-employees and provides departments with real-time status tracking throughout the process.

Submission Highlights

Team Information

non-employee_team

Pictured Above:

  • Jaime Mendez, Procurement Systems Administrator
  • Calvin Anderson, Director of Financial & Reporting Systems
  • Adam Rodriguez, Procurement Systems Analyst
  • Linda Warren, Senior PeopleSoft Developer
  • University of Colorado System

Description

On average, CU submits and processes over 10,000 non-employee reimbursements each year and, until recently, this was an entirely paper-based process. In an effort to transition the reimbursement form to an electronic format, our team utilized functionality from both Concur and PeopleSoft to completely reimagine how CU reimburses non-employees.

In moving the reimbursement form from paper to Concur, we were able to devise a unique use of the system by creating new report-level fields to capture non-employee payee information. This would allow departments to directly input the name and address of the non-employee while creating the reimbursement in Concur, which we could then leverage to speed up the actual payment process in PeopleSoft.

By merging those unique report-level fields in Concur to PeopleSoft and building upon the existing integrations between the two systems, we were able to utilize PeopleSoft’s Single-Pay functionality. This functionality allowed us to seamlessly process and pay non-employees with no manual intervention and setup from the PSC’s supplier team.

How does this benefit the University?

By moving the reimbursement form into Concur and utilizing PeopleSoft’s Single-Pay functionality, we were able to provide faster reimbursements to non-employees and increase business process efficiencies by:

  • Completely removing the need for non-employees to be set up as payment suppliers in PeopleSoft, cutting out 1-2 business days of typical processing time;
  • Automating the submission and approval process, removing the need for departments to manually route via fax, email, campus mail;
  • Utilizing audit rules in Concur to drive compliance with CU policies, reducing the burden on our department approvers and Accounts Payable staff;
  • Saving University resources by reducing the number of required paper-based forms;
  • Increasing visibility into the process from beginning to end, allowing departments to track the status in real-time through Concur and PeopleSoft

Implementation/Future Plans

The electronic non-employee reimbursement process had a soft rollout on August 1, 2018 with a full go-live on November 1, 2018. As new functionality emerges from Concur and PeopleSoft, our plan is to expand the use of the non-employee reimbursement process to cover international payees.