You can pay an employee an advance (prepayment) and later apply the advance against an expense report to reduce the amount you pay for an expense report. For example, you pay an employee a $500 travel advance. When the employee returns from a trip, the employee's expense report totals $1500. You fully apply the advance against the actual expenses when you enter the expense report. When you import the expense report, the system creates a $1500 invoice, and records a prepayment application of $500, resulting in a $1000 unpaid balance on the invoice.
You can apply advances to any expense report you can query in the Expense Reports window. You can apply an advance at any time before submitting Expense Report Export for an expense report.
Note: The advance is not actually applied until the import process. Therefore, to prevent overapplication of an advance, you cannot select a prepayment number that has been applied to another expense report that has not yet been imported.
Of course, you can also apply advances to an expense report after you import it, just as you would for any other invoice. Query the invoice in the Invoices window and use the Apply Prepayments check box in the Invoice Actions window.
Note: You cannot apply advances to an expense report for more than the amount of the expense report.
You can enable the end users to enter details of available advances in Oracle Internet Expenses. See: Setting Up Advances in Oracle Internet Expenses, Oracle Internet Expenses Implementation Guide.
Enable the Apply Advances Payables option. See: Expense Report Payables Options.
Attention: This automatically enables the Apply Advances check box. If you do not want to apply advances to an expense report you must disable the Apply Advances check box in the Expense Reports window. If the check box is enabled, Payables will apply all available advances to the invoice.
The advance has a settlement date on or before the system date, is fully paid, is type Temporary, has the same invoice and payment currency as the expense report, and has not been fully applied.
To apply an advance against an expense report before Expense Report Export:
In the Expense Reports window, enter or query an expense report. Payables notifies you if the employee has outstanding advances.
Check the Apply Advances check box. Enter information to apply one or more advances:
To apply a single advance, enter the invoice Number of the advance (prepayment). Payables displays in the Amount field the remaining amount of the advance up to the expense report total. If you do not want to apply the full available advance to this expense report, change this to a lesser value.
To apply multiple advances, leave the Number field empty. Payables applies all outstanding advances in chronological order, starting with the oldest advance first, up to the amount of the expense report, unless you specify a maximum amount in the Amount field.
If you want to apply a specific advance first, enter the number of the advance (prepayment) in the Number field, then override the advance's available Amount and enter a greater number. The system will then apply the specified advance first, then apply remaining advances (oldest first) up to the Amount you specify.
Complete expense report entry and save your work.
Payables applies the advances during Expense Report Export.