FENXT credit card activity to make the required vendor field more simplified

Maybe this looks like.. being auto-filled since the name of the merchant is automatically recognized? As an organization we decided to make this field more of a category than a vendor. Like "restaurant" for example, rather than Chick-fil-A. With the amount of card holders we have it would add an immense amount of vendors to our database, let alone add data entry efforts to our staff than we want them to worry about. Or maybe this could be a field left for our accounting staff enter, since we understand best how our database is organized and are more experienced with entering vendors.

  • Guest
  • Nov 12 2019
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  • Julia Petit commented
    November 21, 2019 21:58

    Hi Lauren, thanks so much. This definitely helps. Breaking this up into bullet format to make sure I've got everything:

    • Can Vendor not be required, even for Admin users (Defined as users with access to the Credit Card feed by way of Payables > Credit Card activity)?

      • We do allow for the Vendor to be an option field for the submitters through Expense Management

      • Because invoices require a vendor, we're not able to make this optional for the admin users. At their point of entry, since the next action taken would be to create the Invoice - we'd have to require Vendors.

        • If we didn't require it at this stage, what would be the expected behavior upon invoice creation? Would the Vendor always remain blank?

    • Can the Merchant automatically translate to the Vendor and thus be mapped automatically

      • Definitely an interesting idea and something that has been discussed. We had some outstanding questions on this for orgs where the Merchant and Vendor don't always have the 1:1 relationship. For instance, the Merchant for Charge 1 shows as "Exxon Gas 5678" and for charge 2 shows as Gas 1234." The Vendor record is "Gas." What would be the expectation for how these are mapped?

  • Guest commented
    November 19, 2019 20:54

    If the vendor field wasn't required to be filled out by the credit card holder that would be simpler for the card holder. If it wasn't required for the FEnxt admin to fill out either, that would be even better! Too much data entry every month for having over 100 credit card transactions every month. Or are the transactions required to be categorized by vendor I guess is my question? I can see the benefits of this, 1099 purposes, and such. However, the merchant (pops up right underneath the text box for where you search for a vendor) is already automatically recognized when the transaction syncs with FEnxt. 'Walmart' for example. In a sense, it is already recognizing the vendor/merchant for us. Why then do I have to create or pick the Walmart vendor in Englewood, Colorado from our database if it already populates 'Walmart'. We don't care too much to be able to load reports or view credit card activity by a specific Walmart location. If we were to ever pull a report on a credit card activity, it would be broad anyway. For instance, how much did our ministry spend at Grocery Stores (vs at a specific Walmart), is what we might be curious about. Is there anyway FEnxt could auto populate a "credit card" vendor for us instead of requiring manual data entry? Maybe these credit card vendors could be separated from the general pool of vendors in our database. We accumulate them quickly due to being a nation-wide ministry. Several vendors all over the states. Does that help clarify?

  • Julia Petit commented
    November 14, 2019 18:59

    Hi Lauren. Thanks for the feedback! To help me understand this a bit more, can you tell me what you mean when you say you'd like this field more simplified?