Online Card Approval System (OCAS)

Online Card Approval System (OCAS)

Guidelines to Using OCAS

Author: / Rebecca Donnelly
Date: / June 2006
Revision: / 1.4

Contents

Section / Sub-section / Page
Login / 3
Nominee / 4
View All Cards To Reconcile / 4
Cardholder / 5
Nominate a colleague to reconcile your statement / 5
Add items to your current transaction log (month) / 5
View all of your transaction logs / 6
Add extra fields to your transaction log / 6
View your last statement / 6
Reconcile your latest statements against your log / 6
Unreconciled Transactions / 7
Disputed Transactions / 8
View all your statements / 8
Authoriser / 10
Approve outstanding statements / 10
Frequently Asked Questions / 11
Appendix / 12

Login

To start, go to the URL http://procurement.anglia.ac.uk/ocas

Log in with your Novell username and password (the ones you use to log into your computer with, e.g. your username should be something like abc1) and click the “Login” button

The first time you log in, you will be asked to enter your email address in the box shown. When you have done this click the “Ok” button. You will not be asked for this the next time you log in.

If you have not logged in before, you will be shown a preamble page of text. The finance/procurement departments may update this from time to time to let you know of new development or procedures relating to this system. If you don’t want to see this every time you log in tick the box shown which says “Don’t Show Me This Again”. However, if this page is updated, it will automatically untick the box for you and you will see it next time you log in. Click the “Continue” button.

You should now see a menu page with your name (or your Novell username) and your user type (either “Nominee”, “Cardholder” or “Authoriser”) at the top. If you are nominated to manage someone else’s card then it will say “Nominee”, if you are a cardholder and a nominee for someone else’s card then it will say “Cardholder”. If you are an authoriser and a cardholder then it will say “Authoriser”. If you are all four then it will also say “Authoriser”.

The menu you are presented with differs depending on what your user type is. It may be just one or a combination of the menus discussed below.

Nominee.

“View All Cards To Reconcile”

Clicking on this link will give you a list of cardholders who’s cards who you are nominated to maintain along with the company that the card is registered under (either ARU, ARUE or NPMA).

Click on the cardholder name that you wish to look at (you may be nominated to manage multiple cards).

You will now see another menu which allows you to perform all the same functions on the card (except nominate another colleague to maintain it) as the cardholder so please see the cardholder guidelines below for further information.

Cardholder.

“Change your email address (currently set to )”

When you log into OCAS, your Novell user name (e.g. abc1) is associated with the email address that OCAS holds for you. If you change your email address and you want OCAS to send emails to your new email address, click on this link and enter your new email address in the box provided, the click on the “OK” button.

“Nominate a colleague to reconcile your statement”

If you wish to delegate the management of your card to somebody else, or if you are going on holiday or a period of absence and want to give this task to someone else in your absence, then click on this link. You will now see a list of your cards (you may have more than one if you buy things for Anglia Ruskin subsidiary companies such as ARUE or NPMA) and a box allowing you to enter the email address of your nominated colleague. You can add more than one nominated colleague by separating the email addresses with commas.

“Add items to your current transaction log (month)”

This is where you will be entering your transactions onto your log, in a similar way to you would have done on the old system, using the excel spreadsheet. This will replace the old spreadsheet. Clicking on this link will bring up a page allowing you to enter your transactions. You can use the tab key on your keyboard to take you to the next input box on the form. Some of the fields on this page are mandatory. These are:

·  Date (shown in red)

·  Description (shown in red)

·  At least one of the amount fields (shown in green).

If you do not fill these fields, the system will assume that you have not entered anything and that this is a blank column so it will not save this transaction.

The notes at the top of the page say that you must fill in at least two out of the three fields in green (net, VAT and gross amounts). However, as it is most common that you will only know the gross amount until you receive the invoice, the system will allow you to only enter one of these. You should go back and amend the details when you do receive the invoice. Entering only one of these fields will default the net (if you have entered the gross figure) to the same as the gross and the VAT to 0. In the same way as the fields marked as red, if you do not fill in at least ONE of these fields, the system will assume this is a blank column and will not save your transaction.

The only field which is different on this log to the original spreadsheet is the Requester Payroll Number. This is only necessary when you use subjective code R110. Please see the appendices of this document for the full travel and subsistence codes to ensure that you do not miscode this section. You should enter the payroll number of the person that you are purchasing travel/subsistence for, e.g. if I pay for lunch expenses on my card for someone else then I should put their payroll number in, not mine.

When you have entered your transactions, press the “Save” button at the top of the log. You can be sure that it has saved it because the total amount on your log (shown in red on the right hand side above the log) will increase.

You will notice that there are only four columns on your log. When you have saved four transactions, you will get a link appearing at the top of the page in the white toolbar which says “New Page”. Clicking this link will create a new log page for you. You can have as many pages as you require.

When you save items onto your log, it will re-order them in date order for you so you may find that they are not necessarily shown in the order that you put them on there.

The online transaction log does include the facility for you to export your log to an excel spreadsheet, if you wish to do so. There is no requirement from either the Finance department or the Procurement department for you to do this, but we appreciate that some users may wish to be able to do this, for example, this will allow you to print out your log or import your log into another system. To do this, click on the link at the top of the transaction log which says “Export Log To Excel File”. You will then get a standard file download dialogue box asking you whether or not you wish to open the file or save it. It is probably easier to save the file, but either option will allow you to see the log in a spreadsheet format.

“View All Of Your Transaction Logs”

This link will give you a list of all the transaction logs you have so far. Don’t worry if you have logs going back to January 2004 with nothing on them – you do not have to complete all of these online! Whilst we were testing the system, we uploaded statements back to Jan 04 – uploading the statements automatically creates a log for all cardholders who have statements that month.

However, if Management Accounts do not have transaction logs from you for past statements, they may ask you to complete them online.

“Add Extra Fields To Your Transaction Log”

If you want to add extra fields to your transaction log for you own reference you can do this by clicking on this link.

You can have up to 15 extra fields and you can alter the order which they are shown. However, they will always be shown underneath the original fields.

“View Your Last Statement”

Clicking this link will show you your most recent Barclaycard statement. You can print this out if you wish to, but there is no requirement to do so. This page is simply for your own use.

“Reconcile Your Latest Statement Against Your Log”

You will receive an email every month to say that you have a new statement (providing you have transactions – if you have not spent anything you will not receive a statement).

When you receive this email, you need to log in to this system, and providing your log is up to date, you can click on this link and reconcile your log to your statement.

The first thing that the system will try to do is to automatically reconcile your statement to your log for you. It matches the supplier name on the statement with the supplier name on your log, and the gross amount. Where these are the same (or at least similar) you will see a page showing you the statement on the left hand side and the proposed match to the log on the right hand side. There are tick boxes in between the two, where the system has matched correctly, tick the box. Click the “Next” button. E.g. see picture below:

[Fig 1]

If the system cannot automatically match any of your statement items with your log items you will go straight to the next page to manually reconcile your statement and not see the one described above.

You will now see a page showing you the first item on your statement which OCAS could not automatically reconcile, along with the remainder of your transaction log with checkboxes next to each one. There is also an additional checkbox for “Disputed Transaction”.

What you need to do here is to tick the log item(s) which matches the statement item. E.g. see picture below:

[Fig 2]

There are some situations where you may want to enter multiple transactions on your log, usually in order to code them to different financial codes, but the supplier only puts through one transaction on the statement. This is known as a consolidated transaction and all you need to do is simply tick all of the relevant transactions which apply to that statement item. This is illustrated in Fig 2 above: you can see that the statement item is for £223.25 and that two log items have been ticked, one for £118.93 and the second for £104.32 which totals £223.25 – the same as the statement item.

When you have done this, click on the “Next” button. If you have more statement items to be manually reconciled then these will be shown in the same way, but you will notice that the list of your remaining transaction log items get shorter each time.

When you have finished reconciling all of your statement transactions, you will then be taken to a page with a dropdown box containing the email addresses of the people who you have sent your statement to before (the person you have sent your statement to most will appear at the top of the list) along with an option for “New Authoriser”.

If the email address of the person you want to authorise your statement is in the list, then select their email address and click the “Go” button.

If you want to send your statement to someone who is not in the list, select “New Authoriser” and click the “Go” button. You will now be taken to a page with a text box for entering the email address of your authoriser. Type (or copy and paste) their email address into the box provided and click the “Go” button.

Your authoriser will now be sent an email asking them to log into OCAS and authorise your statement. When they have authorised your statement you will be sent an email to let you know it is completed.

Disputed Transactions

There may be occasions where an item is not on your transaction log because you did not make the transaction. This is most likely to be instances where a supplier has made a mistake and taken the money from your card twice, so one of the transactions is valid and on your log, but the second isn’t. Or, very unusually, where your card has been used fraudulently by a third party. In these instances, you should select the “Disputed Transaction” option in the list box. This will automatically add a new item into your log called a disputed transaction and coded to a specific subjective code for disputed Barclaycard transactions which is J581. Usually in these circumstances, the supplier will credit your card the following month. When you get this credit, if you also reconcile that as a disputed transaction then there is a credit and a debit on the same code (J581) which balances.

“View All Of Your Statements”

Clicking on this link will show you all of your previous statements. Don’t worry if you have statements going back to January 2004 – you can ignore these. Whilst we were testing the system, we uploaded statements back to Jan 04.

This page shows you seven columns which are:

·  Statement End Date

Clicking on this date will show the Barclaycard statement in a similar format to the paper statement.

·  Number of transactions

This shows you how many transactions were made on that statement.

·  Statement Total

This shows you the total amount spent on that statement.

·  Status

This can be either:

-  Awaiting Cardholder – which means that you have not reconciled it against the log for that month

-  Awaiting Authoriser – which means that you have reconciled it and sent it to your approved signatory for authorisation, but they have not yet approved it.