Hi Sharan, All, Please find my comments to the mail of Sharan inline.
On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:24 PM, Pierre Smits <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi All, > > I have received following email from Sharan (Foga) and I post it here to > share it with you for your insights and feedback. > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Sharan Foga <email address removed> > Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 6:08 PM > Subject: Expense System Comments > To: "Smits, Pierre" <[email protected]> > > > Hi Pierre > > I've taken a few looks at the Expense System - it looks pretty good. I > tried a few things on it and have some comments below. > > *Attachments* > You dont have any attachment functionality. In a few places I've worked we > had to scan paper receipts or send copies of electronic receipts with our > expense claims. The company said they would do random checks to ensure the > receipts sent matched what was being claimed on the expense report. It was > supposed to deter people claiming amounts but not having any receipts. > > *That is correct.* Currently there is no means available in the app for uploading attachments. While attaching scanned receipts might be a nice feature, there are some implications. I will try to address these: - fiscal implication - while more and more countries allow electronic documents as legal substitutes for paper versions (orders, confirmations of orders, invoices, shipment notifications, goods receive notes) - submitting digitised facsimiles of paper expense receipts might not be in the same class. This has to do with be burden of proof in relation to fraud-prevention (submitting travel expenses more than once). The paper expense receipt is the fiscal document. - In its core OFBiz is an (accounting) transaction management system, and not a CMS/CMIS that is as mature as others it can integrate with (e.g. Apache JackRabbit, Alfresco) visavis security, meta data extraction, etc. Efforts have been done to integrate with Jackrabbit, but these have come to a halt. I would love to see that picked up again, so that it would help to offload OFBiz while maintaining its high permissions functionality it has on. As for the review process, how this is done depends on the policies embedded in the organisation. It is our viewpoint to only provide a basic functionality set regarding this in this reference app. > *Expense Product Categories* > I see that you've split them out into some example categories. I've never > seen Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner split out into separate ones before - this > is normally just a generally "Food" or "Meals" as this would cover anything > you eat such as snacks too. > You also have "Hotel Stay" and this is generally "Accommodation" whether > it's a hotel, Bed and Breakfast, Hostel, Pension etc. > > *This is a demo setup*. Expense products can be defined as the Expense Admin needs/wants these to be in accordance with business policy. > *Expense Report Currency and Expense Report Total* > The person making the expense claim will be paid in one currency - even > though they might travel and spend money in other currencies. This means > that at some point the expense report will need to convert everything they > have claimed into the currency they will be paid in. > > e.g. If my salary is paid in Euro and I spend Czech Crowns, my expense > report should be able to show me what I will be paid in Euros for the > Czech Crowns I spent. I should be able to either enter the exchange rate > manually or the company may have a valid exchange rate for paying employee > expenses. > > Either way it means that a simple calculation could be put in place so > that you can total the complete expense report. (I see at the moment there > is no Grand Total for the Expense Report because of the multiple > currencies). > > *We have already identified this issue*. For our next evolution we will work on a summary of the expenses (per product) against standard conversion rates. This will increase insight regarding the cost incurred by the company. But, how this will affect reimbursement of the reporter for expenses (in the foreign currency) paid thru other means than company cards/vouchers etc. depends on the business policy of the organisation. Think of conversion against standard conversion rate vs conversion rate on the date of the expense. > *Possible Precalculations* > Some of the fields could be pre-calculated - based on the values entered > because there are no receipts, they havent paid anything - this is just an > allowance. > Daily Allowance Total = Allowance Rate * Number of Days > Km Allowance = Allowance Rate * Number of Kms > > *This issue has already been identified by us. * We expect to implement a basic functionality regarding this in our next evolution. However, this can become very complex when applying appropriate rules to address the various circumstances (role/position based, reimbursement amount differences between countries based on fiscal aspects, etc). As mentioned in the reply to Youssef an integration with a BRM might alleviate the complexities regarding execution of these rules (and the management thereof). > *Problem Editing Expense Item* > I did come across a minor bug. I entered a new expense item, then went > back to try and edit a previous expense item. The system would only display > the last item I created not the actual line of the expense item I clicked > on. > > *This issue has been identified by us also.* It is being worked on. > *Generate PDF* > You have a minor typing mistake on the screen it says "Genereate" instead > of "Generate". > I generated the PDF using the Traveler user and got some errors. I'll try > and attach the PDF to this email if its not too big. > > *The typo has been addressed.* The error in the PDF has also been reported by Youssef. And is being worked on. The error occurs when a reviewer hasn't been assigned. Assignment of reviewer is done automatically for projects (the project manager) and campaigns (the campaign manager). In our next evolution we expect to provide functionality to select a reviewer manually for other application types. > Let me know if you want to look at anything else or retest anything. > > Thanks > Sharan > > Regards, Pierre Smits *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com/>* Services & Solutions for Cloud- Based Manufacturing, Professional Services and Retail & Trade http://www.orrtiz.com
