January 21, 2009
Travel Card
Location: Hartley Conference Room, Mitchell Earth Sciences Building
Meeting Schedule
- 8:00 - 8:30 am
- Informal networking over refreshments.
- 8:30 - 8:40
- Welcome, Announcements
Elizabeth Lasensky, TIPS Chair - 8:40 - 9:20
- Travel Card
Julia Wyman, Associate Controller - 9:20 - 10:00
- Web Ex - An Overview
Chris Lundin, IT Services
Meeting Notes
Welcome, Introductions, and Announcements
TIPS Chair, Elizabeth Lasensky welcomed everyone and had everyone introduce themselves noting the organizations in which they work.
Announcements
Nancy Baumann, Director of Tech Training in IT Services announced that TechTraining is offering new Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007 classes to assist with the transition of the upgrade.
The specific Hands-On classes are:
- Excel Transition from 2003 to 2007 (ITS-1137) Thursday, February 26, 8:30-12 in PHIL (Fee: $195)
- Word Transition from 2003 to 2007 (ITS-0927) Thursday, February 26, 1-4p in PHIL (Fee: $195)
Register at Axess.stanford.edu.
Travel Card - Julia Wyman
Julia is the new Associate Controller. A former Human Resources Manager supporting Susan Calandra, Julie wanted to make it clear that she is not a CPA. After gasps from the audience, she said, "We have enough CPA's". Julia brings her HR background and diverse business views to the organization. She is a Stanford Graduate with a Law Degree from the University of Toronto.
When Julia started her position in the Controller's office, work on the Travel Card program was already underway. Accompanying Julia at this meeting was two of her team members, Marilyn Schwartz and Liane Pfeiffer who Julia deems the "real experts" of the travel card initiative. Marilyn and Liane manage the travel card program providing analysis and support, and will be reviewing the applications as they are submitted.
Julia touched briefly on the focus group participation that convened in January 2008 and continued through the end of October 2008. Representatives from all schools participated in the effort. Although user acceptance testing has been completed, the Travel Card team welcomes more testing going forward so they invited TIPS members to volunteer. If you would like to volunteer for testing, please contact Marilyn (marilyns@stanford.edu) or Liane lpfeiffer@stanford.edu.
Julia continued with highlights of the travel card as follows:
Stanford went with Master Card because American Express was not accepted in many places. JP Morgan Chase is the institution that provides the card services to Stanford.
Q. Does this mean that the American Express card is going away?
A. Yes, for travel.
The University pays charges against the travel card automatically. These charges include airfare, lodging, rental car, travel meals and include conference reservations and seminar registrations associated with travel. No personal use with this card is allowed. This means that food expenses for non-Stanford people are not allowed. The use of the PCard will continue for non-travel related expenses and local business meals.
Q. Is there a max dollar amount for the card?
A. No. The departments will have to police the expenses.
There are two types of cards, the Department Card and the Individual Card.
The Department card is used for purchasing airfare and pre-paid travel expenses for occasional travelers, students, and non-employees. The Department Card stays with the department administrator and is in the administrator's name.
Q. If someone loses the department travel card, can anybody use it?
A. The travel card will have the Administrator's name on it. It should be reported lost or stolen immediately if discovered missing.
Q. How can the traveler get the hotel put on the card if they can't take the card with them?
A. The dept card is used to reserve airfare and hotel. Many hotels will take payment without the card being present. If not, the traveler can be reimbursed.
The Individual card is issued to frequent travelers and the card is issued in the traveler's name and travels with them.
All charges for these cards will flow into iOU for review and expense reporting. All travelers must comply with policy; provide receipts, identifying alcohol and non-reimbursable expenses. Travelers must also supply the business purpose for the expense report.
Q. Can you combine travel expenses with other expenses?
A. Yes, as long as the other expenses are related to the travel or business, you can put them on the MasterCard.
The Assigned Administrators validate the card transactions in iOU and follow up on erroneous and fraudulent charges. The administrator initiates the expense report in iOU and updates card profiles and/or administrator changes. The Disbursement Department oversees the issuance of the new cards and change requests. They also monitor charge activity and expense reporting (i.e., declined, invalidated, disputed, non-reimbursable charges).
Some iOU system enhancements were mentioned such as transaction validation, expense reporting and payment outcomes.
Training
Required training will be in place with a new online, interactive training with mandatory assessment test. It consists of two courses, Traveling for Stanford and Stanford's Travel Card Program. Beginning February 9, four overview-training sessions will be available in the course of two weeks.
Traveling for Stanford training is targeted to the Stanford travelers, travel cardholders, travel card validators, and expense report originators. The course covers travel policy, roles and responsibilities, proper use of the card, and how to obtain a card. This course is approximately 30-40 min.
Stanford's Travel Card Program is a course targeting the travel card validators and expense report originators. The course will demonstrate how to validate travel card charges and originate expense reports in iOU that include Travel Card charges. This course is 30-40 minutes in length.
Early adopters will begin in February 2009. The early adopters are the current Amex Department Cardholders (approximately 200) and assigned validators and reimbursement originators.
The general campus roll out will commence in Spring 2009. This will include the issuance of cards to new individual cardholders.
Julia then demonstrated the new validation and expense reporting process via the iOU application.
New Invoice Tracking Process
Julia continued the presentation with a brief overview of the new Invoice Tracking Process. The purpose of this process is to "eliminate the black hole." In other words, the new tracking process will bring to Stanford a complete process for tracking expenses from receipt to payment. The new process is also a vehicle for Accounts Payable to follow up when there are problems.
The new tracking process was piloted with DAPER, the Controller's Office, Purchasing and Contracts, and Administrative Systems. Campus-wide roll out began in December 2008.
You can now obtain a cover sheet (with a bar code) for faxing invoices to Accounts Payable through the Fingate web site (http://fingate.stanford.edu/staff/buypaying/forms.html). Complete the form then click the "Generate Bar Code" button to print the Invoice Fax Cover Sheet. You can re-use the Invoice Fax Cover Sheet for all your invoice submissions. If you lose the cover sheet, you can simply generate a new one. You then verify the quality of the bar code on your printed Invoice Cover Sheet. If all is clear and legible, fax the ICS with your invoices and other supporting documents to Accounts Payable. Accounts Payable will take it from there.
WebEx - Chris Lundin
Funded by the Work Anywhere Project, WebEx Meeting Center provides web conferencing, video conferencing, and online meetings services. WebEx has an easy-to-use interface that enables you to meet online with colleagues to discuss work, share files and applications in real-time. WebEx Services deliver online meetings, web conferencing, video conferencing services, and remote PC desktop access.
WebEx Meeting Center will be made available in a pilot project aimed at faculty and staff. The new pilot is intended for new, occasional users of WebEx, or for those who want to try it out. Stanford already has 300+ users of WebEx in the Named Host model (of which there are limitations). If faculty want to use this for ongoing, regularly scheduled classes, they should be assigned an account with their own individual license.
Webex has all the capabilities of in-person meetings but it's online on the web. You can share documents and presentations for review, share screens, web pages and computer desktops, view participants with inexpensive web cams, integrate audio-conferencing, get email reminders of meetings, and repeating meetings can be set up. Some of the benefits of using WebEx include the reduced amount of time spent going across campus to make it to a meeting, reducing the hassle of finding a vacant conference room, more easily involve faculty and staff working at other locations (including home), and recorded meetings might be used to catch-up base team members or as training aids.
The pilot detail include the following:
- All costs are born by the Work Anywhere Program to November 2009
- In return, pilot participants commit to providing feedback on the efficacy of the pilot.
- Cross-platform, all you need is a web browser (webcams are optional)
- WebEx Integrated Audio-Conferencing
- WebEx Audio-Only
- Rates almost half those charged by LINK Conference Services
- Best feedback can come from LINK Conference users who try the WebEx Audio
- Personal Conferencing Numbers are being created.
IT Services will provide support and assistance in the way of assigning licenses, helping with the basics, providing a 7x24x365 support phone number, helping with meeting assist services, providing online, instructor led training, and providing on-demand training via WebEx University.
Questions:
Q. Instead of using the polycom (conference phone) what can we use?
A. Remote attendees call into a conference bridge to listen to the meeting and can see the power point presentations if they are uploaded to the meeting center and the WebEx monitor displays them.
Q. How is the web cam used?
A. If you have a web cam, you can turn it on and remote users can see the room of people. WebEx attendees can also send their image to the WebEx monitor (person in charge of transmitting the web ex session) ahead of time so they can display the correspondence at the same time as the presenter. The monitor can also receive questions from remote participants.
These minutes include the equipment needed for a successful WebEx session, both to project and to receive.
Equipment to Receive a meeting remotely:
- computer with internet access
- speakers or headphones
- phone (if audio conferencing is on
Equipment to run a meeting:
- computer with internet access
- the electronic documents that the presenter is going to use (optional but helpful)
- a web cam (optional but helpful)
- a conference phone
- a person to monitor the meeting and receive the remote questions
The next steps include gathering folks who are interested in piloting the WebEx Meeting Center. Please sign up via HelpSU. Go to: http://helpsu.stanford.edu?pcat=webex .
TIPS will be offering meetings via WebEx starting with the February meeting (February 18, 8:30-10am). To get to the meeting you will start at http://stanford.webex.com and click the Meeting Center tab. Find the TIPS meeting. Login and password information will be available closer to the meeting time.
Attendees
- Marjorie Alfs
- Lori Barth
- Nancy Baumann
- Laura Bridge
- Lex Bunten
- Jo-Ann Cuevas
- Sherann Ellsworth
- Sonia Fahey
- Christine Fiksdal
- Christine Jacinto
- Ed Jones
- Cindy Kogura
- Rayna Krohn
- Elizabeth Lasensky, Chair
- Chris Lundin
- Doreen Lunsford
- Claudia Nadalin
- Thuy Nguyen
- Lisa O'Brien
- Lori Papadakis
- Dana Parga
- Carmel Perkins
- Liane Pfeiffer
- Susan Phillips-Moskowitz, Co-Chair
- Lanie Powers
- Najwa Salame
- Marilyn Schwartz
- Ruby Stanfield
- Melinda Sterling
- Marvie Viado
- Amy Watkins
- Yolanda Williams
- Julia Wyman