Your department has 14 days from the date of receipt of the FLEXCARD TRANSACTION NOTIFICATION email to allocate and approve the transaction to the appropriate LAFSO, making all necessary adjustments to any use tax that may have been added by the Allocation Module.

If a transaction is not reviewed before the 14-day window closes, it is automatically charged to the FlexCard's default account. (This happens at 1 PM each Monday-Friday, when FlexCard processes its batch jobs.) You do not want this to occur for a number of reasons:

  1. if the default LAFSO is not appropriate, your department will need to prepare a Transfer of Expense (TOE)
  2. if use tax was added incorrectly, your department will need to prepare a FlexCard Use Tax Reversal Financial Journal

NOTE: If a transaction has had its use tax adjusted, or has been re-allocated to another LAFSO(s), and the 14-day window closes without it being approved, ALL CHANGES ARE LOST - since the Reviewer has not confirmed the changes, it passes to the General Ledger exactly as received in the Allocation Module, use tax added and on the default account.

It is a best practice to receive goods and services before allocating and approving a transaction, but this is not always possible; although merchants should not charge the card before goods are shipped, some items may have a long delivery time and not be received within 14 days. If this is the case, the Reviewer should proceed with the allocation and approval, as long as the charge matches the order and can be distributed correctly.

The following subsections provide guidance to assist the Allocator and Reviewer in completing their duties.

Each Monday-Friday, the FlexCard Allocation Module pulls a file of new transactions from U.S. Bank.

If a Cardholder has one or more transactions in that daily batch, he or she is sent an email notification; all Allocators and Reviewers in the Cardholder's department are also notified. Only one email per Cardholder is generated, whether 1 or 100 transactions are received.

New Transactions receive a status of N (it changes to U after one day) and sort to the bottom of the list of transactions in the Allocation Module.

Cardholders, Allocators and Reviewers should should review the email notification to verify that the transaction(s) are legitimate. If fraud is detected, the Cardholder should immediately contact U.S. Bank.

The Allocation Module alerts Allocators and Reviewers when transactions are nearing the 14-day window, generating an email notification somewhere between days 11 and 13 (the weekend complicates things, since the batch job process runs only Monday-Friday).

This email notification is stand-alone, if no new transactions are received on the day it is generated. If there are new transactions, it is appended at the bottom of the email containing the notification of new transactions.

As noted previously, it is a best practice to receive goods and services before allocating and approving a transaction, but this is not always possible; although merchants should not charge the card before goods are shipped, some items may have a long delivery time and not be received within 14 days. If this is the case, the Reviewer should proceed with the allocation and approval, as long as the charge matches the order and can be distributed correctly.

No email notification is generated when a transaction passed UNREVIEWED to the General Ledger at 14 days. However, notifications are sent out to the Cardholder and all Allocators and Reviewers when a transaction is 30 days and still not approved, and again at 45 days. No transaction should be unapproved after 30 days. If there are issues, please contact FlexCard Administration for advice.

Even if the default LAFSO is correct, an unapproved transaction must still be approved. Check the box in front of the transaction and click APPROVE. Remember: once a transaction has posted to the General Ledger, no adjustments to use tax or the LAFSO can be made in the Allocation Module: TOE or a financial journal must be used to make these corrections.

When a transaction has not been reviewed / approved within 60 days, FlexCard Administration is also notified, in addition to the department. It is critical that transactions be reviewed - your department may lose the right to dispute even fraudulent transactions if they are being ignored.

FlexCard Administration will contact your department, and if the transactions are not promptly reviewed, may suspend FlexCards. If cards are suspended, no new purchases can be made until the current workload has been cleared. All departments agree to allocate and approve transactions in a timely fashion, when they sign up with the FlexCard Program, as a condition for their participation.

Even fraudulent charges must be approved in the Allocation Module. Remember, the bank and the merchant have already been paid by the time that the transaction is received: you cannot stop payment by refusing to approve it. The Cardholder will work with U.S. Bank to reverse the fraudulent charge. When you click APPROVE, you are not approving the legitimacy of the charge, only the account to be charged.

Fraudulent charges should be approved to the FlexCard's default LAFSO. When the fraud reversal credit is received from U.S. Bank, you approve it to the same LAFSO and the two transactions zero out. If use tax is involved, remember to treat it consistently: if not removed from the original charge, do not remove it from the credit, and vice versa. The two transactions, if adjusted, must zero out.

Occasionally, when the a transaction is allocated or approved, a system "glitch" occurs and the transaction status is set to E (for ERROR). If you notice a transaction with E Status, CALL FLEXCARD ADMINISTRATION IMMEDIATELY.

The problem may be simple (the status may need to be reset by FlexCard Administration), but in other cases transactions may post incorrectly to the General Ledger and need to be resolved by FlexCard Administration.

 

If you encounter any problems while processing transactions in the Allocation Module, or have any questions on how to adjust use tax, reallocate expenses, etc. - do not hesitate to contact FlexCard Administration via flexcard@bfs.ucsb.edu. Our mission is to help you in any way that we can!