Administrator’s
Installation Checklist
May 15, 2006
Copyright
2006, R. James Holton, All rights reserved
The system has been physically setup. ESS is delivered with a database and setup
that may or may not meet your needs. You have to make some changes. At a minimum you’ll need to add users to the
system. But realistically, you’ll want
to change the system so that it contains your expense types, maps to your G/L,
routes reports for approval according to your rules, etc. When installing ESS, here are the items that you’ll
want to deal with:
- Understand
the default data.
- Document your expense process
- Understand
your G/L account numbers and their structure
- Specify
your report approval process in Status.xml
- Define
your departments in the audit module
- Define
your expense types in the audit module
- Define
your payment types required in the audit module
- Specify
you mileage reimbursement rate
- Java
script profile generation
- Populate
the user table
- Define
auditors and support personnel in security.xml
- Tailor
guidelines
- Look
a offset and process entries in System.xml
- Other
control tables
- G/L and A/P feeds
- ACH
Payments
- Expense
log
- Professional
services installation checklist
Here they are covered in more detail
Understand the default data
ESS is installed with default data in its database
tables. The expense types, payment
methods, routing rules and guidelines shipped with the system can be used as a
starting basis for tweaking the system to meet your needs. To take a look at the default data, you’ll
need to log into the audit module as the ‘admin’ user. If you have used an installer to install ESS,
the login information can be found in the ‘ConfigurationInfo.txt’ file. The login email of the admin user is ‘admin@’
plus your normal email domain.
Once logged in, you will notice that the audit menu contains
two sections that, at this point, are important to you. They are:
- File
Editors – These menu choices let you review and change any of your control
tables, such as expense types, payment types, departments, guidelines,
etc. You can access each item’s
edit screen by clicking on the item (e.g., click on ‘Departments’). You notice that each screen has a button
on the bottom labeled ‘… List’.
Click on this to get a list of all the items in the table. You can then select an item to review.
- User
File – The user table functions similarly to the other file editors. However, since the user table has a
large amount of columns, it is broken down across several screens. Also, the list buttons require that some
selection criteria be entered to narrow down the search for users.
Once you have reviewed the default data you’ll be ready to
change or modify it to meet your organization’s requirements. More detailed information on the edit screens
is found below.
Document your current expense process
Next step is to document your current expense approval and
audit process. Ask yourself these
questions:
- Before
a report is paid, what signatures are required on the report? Does it depend on the department,
reason, or user?
- What
receipts are required on your report?
Do all expenses require a receipt or are their minimum amounts?
- Do
you have an expense policy that establishes maximum and allowable
expenses? Can you quantify the
policy?
- Do
you audit each report? Will you only
pay a report if it meets certain criteria?
- Do
reporters enter their own reports or are they entered by an administrative
assistant?
- How
often do you pay reports? How do
you pay a report? Is it through a
separate check, part of payroll, or via your bank? Do you treat reporters as A/P vendors?
- What
G/L and A/P system do you use?
- What
changes would you like to make in the process?
You may want to write these answers down and possibly draw a
workflow diagram of what happens to a report and the associated processes
within your organization.
Understand you G/L account number
Normally expenses are booked to your G/L system. This may be done directly or as part of the
A/P process. G/L numbers usually have a
defined structure to them. Certain
digits represent certain things. For
example, while one part of the number will represent the expense type, say
‘meals’, another part of the number may represent which group originated the expense,
say ‘department’. In some G/L systems,
the number may occur over several fields.
For example a G/L entry may specify the expense type and cost center in
two different fields for one system, but combine them in another. It is important that you understand how your
G/L classifies entries. With the default
set of screens, you can classify an expense with the following fields:
- Department
the expense is tied to. The
department can represent a department, cost center, profit center, etc.
- Department
the user is associated with.
- Department
the report is tied to.
- Client
a travel purpose is tied to.
- Project
or product a travel purpose is tied to.
- An
auxiliary or secondary reason for the travel purpose.
- A
special code assigned to the employee for tracking purposes.
- The employee’s
personnel number.
- A
location that is associated with the report.
- A
location the employee is associated with.
There are other options, but you get the picture, the
default system is capable of classifying your expenses in a multitude of
ways. You need to determine the simplest
way that will fulfill your recordkeeping requirements.
Specify report approval process in Status.xml
The routing process is complex as it is very flexible and
powerful. The default installation is
delivered with three routing rules:
- default
(routing rule not specified or does not exist) - All reports are forwarded
to the individual specified in the USER
table manager column of the individual who is submitting the report. The manager will receive email
notification of any report pending approval. After the manager’s approval,
the report is ready for audit unless the manager’s approval limit is below
the amount of the report. If the
report exceeds the manager’s limit, the report will be forward to that
manager’s manager. This person must have the limit required to approve the
report or else the report will require their manager’s signoff.
- STD
– Reports are forwarded to a person’s manager, as determined in the
manager field of the person’s user record, for approval after which they
are ready to audit unless the report was cross charged to a department
other than the one the reporter belongs to. If this happens, the report must also be
approved by the manager of the department being charged, as determined by
the personnel number in the manager field in the department record. Note: This setup doesn’t use limit
checking. To evoke limit checking
you’ll need to modify the Status.xml
file.
- SPECIAL
– Reports must be approved by the reporter’s manager, as determined in the
manager field of the person’s user record, and by the department’s
administrative assistant, as determined by the personnel number is in the
administrative assistant’s field of the department.
Setting up a new routing rule is covered in the “ESS
Professional Services Manaul.”
Define your departments in the audit module
Each expense is eventually assigned to a department. Users are also assigned to departments for
expense tracking and report routing rules.
Under the ‘File Edit’ section you can enter a new department or modify
and existing one. The department screen
contains the following information:
- Dept
Code – This is a reference to the department that will appear on the
report or that the user will enter.
This must be unique. (Required – can be the same as the GL# in most
cases)
- Description
– A description or comment about the department.
- G/L#
(Cost center) – This is the code that will be passes along to your general
ledger. (Required)
- Company
code – Classifies the department as belonging to a specified entity. This
can also be passed along to the G/L.
- Part
of Department – This is the department (i.e., Dept Code) that this
department belongs to. For example,
“accounts payable” may belong to “accounting” which may further belong to
“finance.” This is used by certain
routing rules to route reports.
- Admin
Assistant# - This is the personnel number of an administrative assistant
or auditor that is assigned this department. This is used by certain routing rules to
route reports or assign audit functions.
- Location
code – Not currently used.
- Manager#
- This is the department manager’s personnel number. This is used by
certain routing rules to route reports.
- Routing
rule – This is the routing rule that is used to route reports that are
charged to this department. (Required)
You need to have your departments defined before you can
assign reporters to them.
Define your expense types in the audit module
ESS comes pre-loaded with a list of expense items. You can have as many expense types as you
want, but you should tried to keep to the minimum number of expense types
necessary as fewer choices are easier on your reporters when they enter
data. You must have expense types for
mileage, lodging and personal expenses.
We recommend that you stick to the defaults for these. Here are the fields that make up the expense
type record:
- Expense
Type – Unique identifier for the expense type. This will be displayed in dropdown lists
as well as be used in all records regarding this expense. In the default database, this can be up
to 20 characters.
- Description
– Further description of the expense.
Only used within the edit module.
- Guideline
Category – Guideline category of the expense. For example: “Meals” may be used for
expense types “breakfast,” “lunch” and “dinner.”
- Show
in dropdown – A “yes” is required to show in a dropdown. Some expense
types, such as mileage or lodging, are usually excluded from dropdown
lists as they are automatically assigned by the mileage screen and the
hotel receipt screen.
- Merchant
Required – A “yes” indicates that a reporter will be required to specify
the merchant that the expense was incurred with. This can be used to accumulate data on
specific expenses that can be used for purchase decisions or negotiations.
- Attendees
Required – A “yes” will require that the reporter indicate all other persons
present when the expense was incurred. Entertain related expenses usually
require this information.
- Comment
Required – A “yes” will require the reporter to provide further
explanation for the expense. The
default required length is 10 characters.
It is often used for miscellaneous expenses or for supplies.
- Omit
Depart G/L Code – A “Yes” omits passing special information along to a G/L
feed.
- Omit
Special Employee Code – A “Yes” omits passing special information along to
a G/L feed.
- Show
Category 1 – The user record has a show list field. A reporter will only see the expenses
that are assigned to their show list value.
- Show
Category 2 – see above.
- Show
Category 3 – see above.
- Show
to auditor – expense type will be accessible to auditors in the audit module. Should normally be “yes” to provide to
the flexibility most auditors need.
- Receipt
required at – The dollar amount that if exceeded, will indicate that a
receipt is required for this particular expense. A zero means that a receipt is always
required.
- Order
in List – relative order in the drop-down list.
- Department
– reserved.
- G/L
Account – Account to debit when this expense type is specified.
- Dedicated
Payment Method – Ties this expense to a specific payment type. Note that
this payment type may then only be used with dedicated expenses.
- Special
Handling – “HOTEL” indicates that this will appear on the hotel receipt
expense breakout lists. A “NOSPLIT”
indicates that this expense cannot be on a split receipt or hotel receipt.
Define your payment types required in the audit module
This describes the various ways a reporter will pay for an
expense. It is best to stick with the
default types and add others that are needed.
- Charge
Type – Name used to track this payment type. “Cash” and “Visa” are examples of
commonly used types.
- Description
– Further description field.
- G/L
Account – This is the G/L account to credit when this charge type is used
- Reimburse
employee – A “Yes” indicates that a reporter is reimbursed when they use
this charge/payment type. A “No” is
usually used for prepaid items or company paid credit cards.
- Show
in dropdown – A “No” will hide this payment type from normal usage.
- Order
in List – Relative order in the drop-down list.
- Department
– reserved.
Specify mileage rate
ESS allows default mileage rates to be tied to time periods.
Profile Generation
See the “JavaScript Profile Generation” under Audit
Documents.
Populate the user table
Each reporter, approver and auditor must have an entry in
the user table. The following information
is entered on the primary screen:
- Personnel
# - Personnel number that must be unique
- Last
Name – last name
- First
Name – first name
- Location/Grouping
– can be the city, department, building, etc of the reporter
- Phone
– user’s telephone number
- E-Mail
– email address, must be unique.
Used for login ID.
- Department
– Department number from department table
- Employee
Tracking Code – special accounting code (optional)
- Bill
Expenses – “Yes” will default bill fields on screens to “Yes”
- Menu
Level – Corresponds to the desired content(n).html that shows on the left
side of the report/approver module.
- Approval
Limit – Dollar limit that an approver can sign on
- Guideline
Category – Guideline category that this user should be checked against
- Reimbursement
Method – Method by which this reporter should be paid for expenses
- Show
Expense Categories – Tells the system what expenses should be displayed in
pull-down list. See the expense
type description
- Profile
Active – if “No” the user cannot log into the system
- Password
– Used to reset the user’s password
- Password
Last Changed – Date the password was issued of last changed
- Manager
# - Personnel number of this user’s manager
There are other screens available to control additional user
attributes. They will be covered in a
future updates to this document.
Define auditors and support personnel in security.xmls
The security.xml
file controls access to important ESS functions. The functions are:
- Audit
– Any user who uses the audit module must have their email address in this
section of the security.xml file. Audit menu information for each user is
also entered here.
- Generate
Profile – To run the ESS profile generation utilities, a user’s email
address must be in this section.
- Reset
Passwords – To reset passwords, normally a help desk function, a user’s
email address must be in this section.
Tailor guidelines
ESS comes with default set of expense guidelines that can
serve as a basis for yours. These
guidelines enforce corporate policy by flagging reports that don’t meet policy
to approvers and auditors. The system
will also use the guidelines to route reports based upon compliance. The guideline screen contains the following
fields that can be modified to meet your needs:
- Guideline
Group – Each user profile specifies a guideline group to use for
compliance checking. It is possible
to have more that one group defined for your company.
- Expense
Category – This matches the category field in the expense record.
- Location
– Matches against the report location field. A blank location is the default.
- Check
Method – These tell the guideline check process how to check an expense
item.
- Daily
– Check expense amount for any given day.
- Days
– Check the average expense amount over the purpose.
- Nights
– equals “b” minus one
- Report
– total amount of the report
- Line
– not currently used
- Total
–Check total of an expense category for the report
- Reimburse
– total reimbursement amount of the report
- Advance
– total advance amount on the report.
- Weekend
– replaces “a” for a weekend date.
- Date
– checks for old receipts
- Limit
Amount – amount used in the check
method. For the date method this is the number of
days old.
- Warning
Message – Message that will display on the guideline check if guideline
check fails.
- Company
– not really used. Select any
available company to pass check if edit is enforced.
See the “Professional Services Manual” for more information
on setting up guidelines.
Other Control Tables
ESS contains several other control tables that assist in
information capture and compliance checking.
These are:
- Clients
– list of clients that will appear on a trip purpose pull-down.
- Projects
– list of projects that will appear on a trip purpose pull-down.
- Merchants
– list of merchants that will appear in the merchant pull-down on receipt
entry screens.
- Company
Codes – list of legal entities. See
the professional services manual.
- Locations
– List of cities or geographical locations that map to the locations used
in the guidelines.
- State
Table – Used for accepting a report and initial routing. See the professional services manual.
- Special
Handling – reserved for feed processes. .
See the professional services manual.
G/L and A/P Payments
ESS is capable of providing feeds to your accounting and
payment systems. Most systems have
standard import specifications. For
information on constructing a feed see the “Professional Services Manual” and
the “Programmers Manual.”
ACH Payments
ESS comes standard with an ACH feed that will generate a
NACHA file for submission to your bank. Consult the “Professional Service
Manual” for more information.
Expense log
ESS logs most significant actions into the expense.log. The expense.log
should be backed-up and then deleted so it doesn’t get too big. If you have any problems, support personnel
will need the expense.log so be
prepared to send it with any support request. The log is located in different
places, depending on your system and file setup. You may have to search to find it. Here are some possible locations:
- If
you have a c:\ess folder on Windows or /var/ess folder on Linux/Unix, the expense.log file will be there.
- On
Linux/Unix, the log may be in the ~/var/ess folder if one exists and the
process that starts Tomcat has access to this folder.
- On
Linux/Unix, the log may be in the ~ folder if one exists and the process
that starts Tomcat has access to this folder.
- On
Windows, the log maybe in the c:\windows\system32 folder.
- On
Linux, the log maybe in the {tomcat}/bin folder.
Professional services installation checklist
Although ESS is open and fairly easy to tweak to your needs,
you may want to take advantage of having a service professional setup your
system. You’ll need to provide
information about your company and you processes. This list is targeted towards getting a
smaller company up and running with a standard package as quick as possible. This
checklist assumes that there are no ACH payments, no credit card import data,
and no central-paid credit cards. It
also assumes that you will peruse many of the control tables and make modifications
on your own. If the service professional
needs more information, they can let you know.
At a minimum, the following information should be aggregated
for each new installation and given to a service professional:
- If
reports requires more than the signature of the immediate manager and
processing by an auditor, provide a description of the desired workflow.
- Provide
a list of the G/L accounts (i.e., chart of accounts). If the list is really long it can be
limited to accounts related to travel expenses and to the accounts used to
reimburse employees for expenses.
- Provide
an example of an A/P entry.
- Provide
a list of departments.
- What
is the current mileage reimbursement rate?
- Provide
a list of users with:
- Personnel
number (if they have it)
- Last
name
- First
name
- Email
- Depart
they belong to (if they have multiple departments)
- Phone
number
- The
person who is their manager
- If
they have any client or project tracking, provide the appropriate list
The service professional will use this information to setup
your system.
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