BFC Advances - Fact Sheet

In most organizations when employees have advances to apply for they pull out a paper form, fill in the appropriate information, attach supporting documentation, and then forward the request to their supervisor for approval.  The supervisor reviews the request, signs it, and then passes it on until the request has been fully approved at which time it is sent to AP.  AP reviews the request for policy compliance, keys the information into the AP system, and the employee is paid the advance.

This process can be cumbersome for a number of reasons.  Approvals can be very slow; especially when there is more than one location involved. This is frustrating for the employee as the advance is often required for an upcoming trip. When the request finally arrives at AP, staff can have trouble keying the request into the system because coding on the request may be unclear - not to mention the fact that its a lot of work for AP to key in every advance.

BFC Advances can help!

Product Features

• Advances are keyed by the employee

• Coding is edited at source

• Advances are automatically deducted from subsequent expense reports

• Local and federal taxes are accounted for

• Employee can add comments to each advance line and the report

• Administrative staff can enter reports on behalf of others

• Required approvers are automatically filled in

• Approvals can be requested from individuals in addition to the required list

• Approvals are obtained serially so each approver knows who has already approved

• Approvals can be overridden in exceptional circumstances

• Approval status can be tracked online

• Approvers can add comments when they approve or reject

• Submitters are automatically notified of approval progress

• Advances can be extracted and loaded electronically into the AP system

• Approved forms are available online for historic purposes

• Approval data is available online for reporting purposes

Product Benefits

• AP keying of advances is eliminated

• AP can tightly control process

• Everybody is approving the same data so misunderstandings can be avoided

• A formal record of the approval is kept online where it can always be found

• Company approval policy can be strictly enforced

• Approvals can be viewed by anyone, anywhere, subject to security

• Approvers are encouraged to deal with requests quickly due to visibility

• Approvals which can take weeks in a traditional environment can be completed in minutes

• Requests don't get lost, no time needs to be wasted looking for lost approvals

• Product is easy to learn and use

• Product introduces a consistent advance management process across the company

ASP Benefits

• No capital investment is required

• Search cycle is quick and less expensive

• Implementation is fast

• No hardware or software maintenance is required

• No disaster recovery planning is required

• No disk space management is required

• Support is readily available

• Pricing is scalable