Introducing CardLink Control and CardLink Express
Providing greater control over corporate card spending and expediting the filing experience

There are a number of trends in the marketplace that continue to dominate decisions and initiatives related to T&E management.

• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and its emphasis on internal controls have made many organizations sensitive to fraud forcing greater visibility and control over T&E spending.
• Organizations are continually looking for ways to improve employee satisfaction and productivity as it relates to the T&E process
• As one of the largest controllable expenses, management is looking for the tools and information to better manage spending in the business and a way to gain visibility into their spend.
• Corporate card programs are becoming an increasingly common way for organizations to put tighter controls around T&E spending and better leverage certain costs and vendors. Industry leading card vendors are experience 30% growth of card program adoption in the last couple of years.

Gelco’s corporate card integration capabilities called CardLink involve integration with over 32 of the largest corporate card programs. In response to industry trends, we have now introduced two new key enhancements to the CardLink capabilities that are specifically designed for tighter spending controls for the company and streamlining the filing experience for employees.

Our newest CardLink capabilities, CardLink Control and CardLink Express, help organizations:

• reduce the risk of fraudulent card transactions (although a corporate card program provides greater control over T&E spending, there is still room for inappropriate spending as employees can hide transactions as organizations often have limited visibility into their card spend)
• improve policy compliance to the card program
• reduce the time to pay card balances, lowering interest charges and improving a company’s rebate opportunity
• gain greater card program rebates as a result of increased spend on the card
• improve employee satisfaction with both card programs and their T&E filing process

Gelco CardLink Control:
CardLink Control allows an organization to restrict manually entered corporate card transactions and permit only transactions from the corporate card download to be applied to expense reports. This prevents users from entering a manual corporate card transaction, a common fraud activity. In addition, organizations can choose to require reconciliation of corporate card transactions. This prevents the user from submitting any expense report until they have dealt with all unapplied corporate card transactions (debits and/or credits) or transactions applied to a saved expense report that are beyond a designated age (company defined). This control capability also forces users to deal with all transactions on their corporate card – no longer will they be able to hide charges or credits on their card (for example - hiding credits related to returned airline tickets). Forcing users to deal with all card transactions ensures much easier reconciliation of card program balances. This is good news for those organizations weary of experiencing unpleasant central bill reconciliation.

A new report in Gelco Reporting & Analysis shows all unsubmitted corporate card transactions a user may have. The report will display the age of the transaction and the total amount of transactions unsubmitted by a user. This report provides organizations greater visibility into all employee corporate card activity, serves as a proactive fraud deterrence measure and supports travel policy compliance.

Gelco CardLink Express:
Recognizing that tighter controls can sometimes be at odds with creating a satisfactory user experience, Gelco is simultaneously releasing new CardLink capabilities to enhance the user’s experience. CardLink Express can automatically apply unapplied corporate card transactions to an expense report when a user clicks “Create New Report” link or when the user clicks “Edit” to a saved expense report. It can then auto-categorize the transactions based on company-defined parameters. Users only need to assign a business purpose to the report, review for accuracy and add any out-of-pocket transactions before submitting. This can reduce the time to file a report to a few minutes or less.

Since CardLink Express creates an easy way to file an expense report, many users may be encouraged to put most if not all of their expenses on their corporate card. This will improve card program rebates for the organization and create greater visibility around certain types of vendor spend – improving vendor negotiations and rebate opportunities.

Getting Started:
Gelco will be holding Virtual Client Conferences (VCCs) in January 2006 to help you learn more about the new CardLink capabilities. Watch for more information to come.

If you are interested in these valuable CardLink enhancements which are available at no additional charge, please contact your Gelco Account Manager to learn more and schedule your implementation.