Workday is configured with validations to help departments identify potential duplicate expenses. The validation is based on four criteria:
- Payee’s name;
- Expense line-item date;
- Expense line-item coding (selected expense item; and
- Expense line-item amount.
When all four criteria are a match to another expense report, Workday issues an ‘alert’, a yellow box that appears in the upper right corner of the screen. This alert displays throughout the approval business process.
Best Practices for detecting and/or preventing duplicate expense payments include:
- Review all warnings (yellow box) or errors (red box) that are present in Workday on an Expense Report. A possible duplicate payment warning provides the expense report number(s) that may be a duplicate.
- Run report RPT5724 -WU – Find Expense Report with Details for Organization to ensure the expenses have not already been reimbursed. As a general rule, the older the expense is the more likely that it has already been paid. This report can be run by those with the role of Cost Center Expense Data Entry Specialist, Cost Center Manager, Cost Center Grant Manager, or Cost Center Hierarchy Manager.
- Run report RPT7156 – WU – Find Possible Duplicate Expense Report Lines for Organization This report displays expense report lines that might be duplicates from the previous ninety (90) days, based on the expense report header date. The same roles that can run RPT5724 can run RPT7156.
- When possible, complete one expense report per trip. When pre-trip expenses incurred, best practice is to use a consistent description in the memo field, including trip purpose, trip dates, and location, for example: 2024 Society of Plastic Surgeons (SPS) Annual Meeting – 08/27/24-8/30/24 – Indianapolis, IN.
For additional support with expense reports and the identification of duplicate expenses, please use ServiceNow. Go to: https://wustl.service-now.com/sp Select Finance, then Finance Operations, then Expense Reports.