2163418 - Expense Reports Can be Updated Even After Reimbursement

You notice that the system allows users to trigger changes in already reimbursed expense reports.

SAP Business ByDesign

1. Go to the Travel and Expenses work center.
2. Go to the Expenses Reports view.
3. Select an expense report Released for Reimbursement.

You notice that the system allows you to edit the report and wonders how does it behave towards changes to the total document amount.

Users can indeed change expense reports even though the expense document has been reimbursed. This is the current system behavior. Nevertheless, any changes need to be audited and approved (if setup in business configuration). The changes made to a reimbursed expense report does not invalidate the original journal entry. What actually happens is that a new journal entry with reference to a new version of the given expense report is posted (i.e.: XX-1, XX-2, XX-3).

Whenever you change a reimbursed expense report, the payment process of the total expense is not reversed/canceled when the Expense Report status is changed. In case there is an additional amount to the total expenses and the Expense Report is released again, this addition/over amount is shown as an open item in the Employee Account Monitor to be further reimbursed. The expense report's Reimbursement Status would then be Partially Reimbursed. When the Expense Report is released with the outstanding reimbursement, new Journal Entries are created for this value, which are related to the previously generated Journal Entries and has reference to a new expense report version (i.e.: XX-2). This same logic remains true when the amount is decreased. When the Expense Report is released, Journal Entries and a Credit Memo with the amount difference in the Employee Account Monitor are created.

Therefore, if there is a change in the total amount, it will be reflected in the employee account monitor as credit/debit memo depending upon the case. The previously posted expense report amount cannot be deleted or reversed directly, but can be credited or debited accordingly. In this case, all the financial transactions are to be logged and reflected clearly in Journal Entries of type Expense Settlement.

The reopening of an already posted and paid expense report is also SOX compliant, because any change results into a recalculation and the delta calculated needs to be approved and posted again into accounting as an additional posting document referring to the original posting. Hence, the changes are tracked and can be reviewed by an external auditor without any problem.

If you would like to change the above system behavior to avoid the change of expense reports already reimbursed, create an case to support. The related switch can be activated via backend by support team. This will trigger an error message ("Expense report cannot be changed because it was already posted.") if a normal user (non auditor) wants to reopen an already released expense report. The message does not occur if the user is an auditor (users write access to Work Center 'Travel and Expenses'), i.e. auditors can still reopen expense reports in status released for reimbursement.

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